No longer a landlord!

[doublebase]

Doesn't sound worth it to me.

I work in the Legal Department of a multi-family management company. We manage 300+ properties, about 2/3 "affordable". I'll just say what I always say here when we talk about the general public.....they're nuts. They don't care about their own belongings, much less someone else's property. Holding your rent check hostage for new doors? There'd be an eviction notice on the front door. They definitely need to be non-renewed.

I don't have the detachment that's necessary to own a home and let strangers come in and turn it into a disgusting, destroyed mess. I barely want friends or family in my house, so you can imagine how I feel about renters. I'd never get any sleep.

Free yourself from the shackles. There are people who seem to be born landlords. Let them take it on.

It's tempting and I am getting close, but like I said, I am attached to the income. I kind of rely on it now. And if I sell the home I'll pay capital gains and I won't receive the monthly income. And worse, I'll spend the money. Right now it's there, going up in value almost every year for the past decade, and the whole time paying income. But It's a headache, definitely...and I'm getting too old for this.

 

[Zee09]

92Saturn - Ceciltucky is a snarky name for Cecil County Maryland. The area is a mix of rednecks and educated professionals. The two factions do not always get along. I tried a property manager with no success. The area where the rentals are has become so dangerous, only truly poor or marginal FICO people will live there. Time to hit the eject button while real estate prices are high. The deciding factor was the tenants grandkid tossing a cigarette into some trash piled out back. No apology, just a sneer. Replacing the siding was $5000, which insurance covered. The tenant was upset that I banned her special snowflake from the property.

Wow I have lived here my whole life but I live in Fairhill.
I don't like Elkton or NE. Much...
Live right on 273.
Good you got out of it.

 

[Blagoje]

As of today both of my class D rentals are vacant and will be sold! One is in OK shape, the other is trashed beyond all belief

Either way, I am out of the rental business FOREVER. The area has had two drug murders since May. Time to sell while the properties are still worth something.

I have a heck of a job cleaning and fixing up. The good news is I only have to do it one more time. Please join me in hoisting your beverage of choice to toast my retirement from landlording.

My mom's husband had a property in Flora, IL that they spent a lot of time and money fixing up and putting in great condition only for it to be completely destroyed by some druggies. I mean I literally cannot conceive of how anyone could have so thoroughly wrecked that property as badly as these tenants did. No luck collecting anything from them and the property eventually had to be bulldozed because there is no way it could be salvaged.

I was thinking of getting into real estate and property management after this current bubble bursts and I think it is imperative to learn for now and be as scrupulous as I can be when the time comes to jump in if in fact I do at all.

 

[dareo]

I think you may be right, the next time I'm open for tenants I'm going up in rent...high enough where instead of getting 50 applicants, I'm getting 15-20. And I'm getting enough rent where I won't care about upgrading things and improving the home. Because right now I do...I worry they are just going to destroy it, or that my profits won't be high enough to make this worth while. Taxes keep going up, water bill, insurance.

High rent can attract the worst tenants too. People who would never get chosen in a more competively price rental. My mom, a career landlord, goes for the low rent high application pool strategy and gets to be very selective. This leads to lower problems and of course lower revenue.

I'd rather be in stocks!

 

[opus1]

Congratulations.

I've debated renting before, but I would watch a couple of "People's Court" episodes where some sort of landlord/tenant dispute is covered and I'd change my mind. When I'm done with a property, I want all the way out.

 

[Wolf359]

Congratulations.

I've debated renting before, but I would watch a couple of "People's Court" episodes where some sort of landlord/tenant dispute is covered and I'd change my mind. When I'm done with a property, I want all the way out.

The real secret is that those are rare. Maybe one in ten or 20 you end up in court. But when you have 10+ properties, eventually you end up in court regardless of how well you screen the tenant. Screening only works for the first couple years. You don't have any control later when the tenant either hooks up with a bad boyfriend/girlfriend, becomes an alcoholic, starts doing drugs etc. So if you just have one property could be years or decades before you end up in court. Court is pretty simple for me though, there's no real defense for non payment of rent. I win all the time, but you really lose because even though they're suppose to pay up, most of the time they don't. The win is just getting them out of the unit.

 

[PandaBear]

High end renters are the way to go. Low end people are well low end people.

Low-end tenants are very high cost, with the damage they do and the laws protecting them to sue you into obvious. I would love to help them out but renting to them is out of the question.

 

[PandaBear]

High rent can attract the worst tenants too. People who would never get chosen in a more competively price rental. My mom, a career landlord, goes for the low rent high application pool strategy and gets to be very selective. This leads to lower problems and of course lower revenue.

I'd rather be in stocks!

High rent for the quality (being expensive because you are looking at your own unit with rose tinted glasses) attracts worse tenants who got rejected by other landlords. High rent because you have a good unit but you are still cheaper than the others (i.e. a good school district, only ok quality condition, but also a decent price) would attract good family who won't do bad things to your unit and pay their rent on time.

Most important lesson is to price it right and a good neighborhood to avoid dead beat. Low income hoping to get their kids into good school are the best tenants.

 

[Dave Hess]

Good for you.

I couldn't imagine being a landlord these days with the stories I hear.

Some people think it’s easy to be a landlord.

I knew a plumber from NY that came down to FL and bought some rentals for Section 8 income. It turned into a disaster and he walked away from the duplexes in a bad, low income - high crime area. He told me the horror story and i kind of felt sorry for him.... and at the same time I didn’t.

30 years ago I thought about rentals but decided just to put into the stock market. Lost $50K in the Dot Com bubble but then had a very good (20 year) run up until today.

 

[Duffyjr]

And it they get busted for using the house as a meth lab or even just smoking it in there, plan on gutting it or possibly demolishing it. This happened earlier this year to a house down the street. They had to tear all the sheetrock out, pull all the carpeting/wood floors etc.

 

[wag123]

Once upon a time I was a landlord. Nothing but headaches and aggravation, almost daily. Many were the nights that I didn't get any sleep. I never did it again and try to talk everyone I know out of doing it.

 

[CKN]

As of today both of my class D rentals are vacant and will be sold! One is in OK shape, the other is trashed beyond all belief

Either way, I am out of the rental business FOREVER. The area has had two drug murders since May. Time to sell while the properties are still worth something.

I have a heck of a job cleaning and fixing up. The good news is I only have to do it one more time. Please join me in hoisting your beverage of choice to toast my retirement from landlording.

Are you going to be put in a "capital gains" situation?

 

[Wolf359]

Some people think it’s easy to be a landlord.

I knew a plumber from NY that came down to FL and bought some rentals for Section 8 income. It turned into a disaster and he walked away from the duplexes in a bad, low income - high crime area. He told me the horror story and i kind of felt sorry for him.... and at the same time I didn’t.

30 years ago I thought about rentals but decided just to put into the stock market. Lost $50K in the Dot Com bubble but then had a very good (20 year) run up until today.

I remember a broker asking me if I knew anyone that specialized in section 8. I said that was like specializing in failure. If they don't destroy things, they tend to be very demanding. Guess they just want to make sure the government gets their money's worth. Sometimes they do pay better than market but usually if you have a choice you'd rather not.

 

[dbias]

Congratulations. At one point I had a total of 49 units ranging from single family houses to duplex, 4 plex and 6 plexes average of 30k a month in rent.
I compared the joy of selling them off right up there with selling my boat.

 

[Jimmy9190]

I must be an anomaly on this one. I started living on my own and paying my own way when I was 19, I always paid on time and never caused the landlord or apartment complex any trouble. My first wife and I rented for the first few years we were married, we always paid on time then too. We actually bought the townhouse we were renting in 1994 and sold it for a small profit in 1998. We moved to Clearwater, Florida and rented for a couple years there too. We always paid on time and did not destroy the duplex we were renting. Our landlords were a nice older married couple and they lived just a few doors down the street. The landlord was basically stunned when we moved out of there, I remember him looking around the place the day we moved out and saying to me "James, they just don't leave 'em this clean" and writing me a check for the full security deposit refund.

After that I rented a house in Zephyrhills, Florida for over 6 years, always mailed the landlord a check for the rent a week before it was due. None of my rent checks ever bounced, either. My wife had cancer and she died in that house 6 months after we moved in but I stayed on and lived there by myself until the summer of 2009. Maybe I am the oddball tenant but I always kept the house spotless, grass mowed, bushes and trees trimmed, kept the yard clean, and if anything ever went wrong I fixed it myself rather than causing a headache for the landlord. I remember replacing a leaky toilet tank valve and also replacing the thermostat on the water heater at my last rental house. On both of those I just sent a note about what happened with the next month's rent check with a receipt for the parts and took that much off the rent check. The landlord did not have a bit of a problem with it either time. I did not deduct anything for labor, I was happy to do the work and the landlord was happy I took care of the problems. I never asked for any discounts for taking care of the yard, either. I like doing yard work and back then I was glad to have something to do outdoors to keep me occupied.

I have never caused any problems for any landlord and always got all of my security deposit back when moving out. I never damaged or destroyed any part of any house or apartment I rented, but then again I never had any pit bulls/punk teenagers/crazy room mates/drunks/meth heads/crack addicts or any other type of low life living with me. I was raised right and was taught from a very early age to work hard, pay my bills on time, respect other people and respect their property. Reading this thread however lets me know for sure I never want to be anyone's landlord.

 

[CharlesInCharge]

I did the landlord gig and would not recommend it. You're putting your financial welfare in the hands of strangers would can literally bankrupt the average person. Landlords/owners generally have very little leverage, generally 1 month's deposit, and the laws tend to favor renters. A renter can cause tens of thousands of dollars in damages and skip town.

Houses are also not very liquid and tend to appreciate slowly in typical markets, ignoring the nutty 2021 situation. Even just the wear and tear and aging home repairs costs, that tends to deeply eat into any profits.

It's a poor way to invest money. In normal times, you need about a 20+ year timeline of good reliable renters to make money IMO. Houses are not liquid, and the transaction costs to sell are quite high, often 7% to realtors plus possible tax implications. There's much better, more liquid, and more useful investments IMO.

 

[KneeGrinder]

I remember a broker asking me if I knew anyone that specialized in section 8. I said that was like specializing in failure. If they don't destroy things, they tend to be very demanding. Guess they just want to make sure the government gets their money's worth. Sometimes they do pay better than market but usually if you have a choice you'd rather not.

LOL, I inherited 1 section 8 tenant when I bought my 6 plex, gave me so many problems over many years because I was too soft on her. The day she finally crossed the line, and so did another tenant, I evicted both of them. The section 8 tenant I nicknamed only in my own mind and to my wife as the "Crazy Lady" totally trashed the apartment and it cost me $3700.00 in materials, and I did all the labor except the carpet. And she wanted her deposit back, lol!
"Renter's suck 4 the most part"

Up here there is a large divide between government dependent people, low wage earners, alcoholics, druggies, and just flat out dumb and others with some type of psychological disorders. Then on the other side of that are retiree's, most fairly well off, some extremely wealthy. There are many famous people that own second or third, 4th homes here. Some fly in on their Gulfstream jets. "Viggo Morrison" lives a few miles from me. Some of my neighbors fly here from Southern California because our private community has a private Airstrip and many of us have Airplane hangars on our property. Thats the level of divide that exists here.

 

[PandaBear]

Over the years we have seen a lot of crazy people, most of the normal human have no problem with common sense being good tenants, some are poor and have problem with the reality that not everything is perfect (i.e. home insulation is not perfect because it is an old house, refrigerator or stove is old because this is a mid range apartment not a luxury one). Most often if you explain to them they would understand, but there are always desperate people wanting more but not wanting to pay for it. It is important to screen tenants and look for signs of trouble and deter them from renting your place, and it is always important to price it slightly lower, not looking at your property with rose tinted glasses and wanting to charge what you "deserve", so you have a pool of candidates you can choose from and pick the most "normal" person. Most of the ones we picked end up saving enough money with their hard work and end up buying a home when they move out, I think we did pretty good on that. We do keep our duty of maintaining very seriously and we do repair everything, sometimes an old still functional appliance if they are starting to act funny but still functional, to keep them happy.

There are a lot of tenants who pay their rent on time but, shall I say hard to work with, even if they are paying on time and didn't destroy your property they curse at you like they are your boss, or complain about everything because they are entitled to quality of living in their mom's house when they are just renting an empty apartment. Usually when we have enough we would ask them to find a nicer apartment and we would let them end their lease early with no penalty, and most of the time they would immediately stop complaining. Emotional toll of managing these people all add up to something in the quality of life department. Most of these problem IMO attribute to people trying to rent too much housing with their too little paycheck. People who don't overstretch their budget tends to have fewer problems.

Iit is in all ethnicity and all walks of life, all income levels, all education level, all N genders. The most accurate predictor tends to be rent to income ratio and credit score.

 

[Dave Hess]

For me it’s too risky to put your financial success in the hands of total strangers.

Why take on all the debt, taxes, liabilities and deal with the stress and aggravation if you have a bad tenant ?

Not to mention rent moratoriums that killed lots of mom & pop landlords.

 

[Wolf359]

Over the years we have seen a lot of crazy people, most of the normal human have no problem with common sense being good tenants, some are poor and have problem with the reality that not everything is perfect (i.e. home insulation is not perfect because it is an old house, refrigerator or stove is old because this is a mid range apartment not a luxury one). Most often if you explain to them they would understand, but there are always desperate people wanting more but not wanting to pay for it. It is important to screen tenants and look for signs of trouble and deter them from renting your place, and it is always important to price it slightly lower, not looking at your property with rose tinted glasses and wanting to charge what you "deserve", so you have a pool of candidates you can choose from and pick the most "normal" person. Most of the ones we picked end up saving enough money with their hard work and end up buying a home when they move out, I think we did pretty good on that. We do keep our duty of maintaining very seriously and we do repair everything, sometimes an old still functional appliance if they are starting to act funny but still functional, to keep them happy.

There are a lot of tenants who pay their rent on time but, shall I say hard to work with, even if they are paying on time and didn't destroy your property they curse at you like they are your boss, or complain about everything because they are entitled to quality of living in their mom's house when they are just renting an empty apartment. Usually when we have enough we would ask them to find a nicer apartment and we would let them end their lease early with no penalty, and most of the time they would immediately stop complaining. Emotional toll of managing these people all add up to something in the quality of life department. Most of these problem IMO attribute to people trying to rent too much housing with their too little paycheck. People who don't overstretch their budget tends to have fewer problems.

Iit is in all ethnicity and all walks of life, all income levels, all education level, all N genders. The most accurate predictor tends to be rent to income ratio and credit score.

The best indicator for me was always how much money they had in the bank. The ones that had savings and a good credit score were always the best. My basic test was to demand 3-4 months worth of rent up front before they got the keys. If they tried to work out a payment plan I passed. I'd also ask for pay stubs and proof that they paid their rent on time. Government allows you to use the 30% rule here, rent shouldn't be more than 30% of your income although many people go up to 50%. When you allow more than 30% you usually run into problems later when their car breaks down, lose a job etc.