17 Things you can do to be a good landlord and to make it pay
1) Take full use of free Craigslist with the 4 most flattering pictures and descriptive details.
2) It’s better to show the rental after it is vacated and cleaned up. Otherwise, you risk your departing tenants & their stuff poisoning your potential tenants. Vacancy eats up your annual cash flow faster than even repairs, so it is better to suffer it when it’s fixed and looking its best.
3) Spend more time & money filtering through tenants and you’ll spend a lot less time & money in vacancies, turnover & repairs. You didn’t destroy the home & not pay your rent when you rented, right? Tenants who are at least as responsible as you are all over the rental world.
4) Run credit, criminal, and rental background checks on every adult that will be living in the home – and have their names on the lease. Marginal tenants will take a hike when they hear this.
5) Charge an application fee and take a fully filled in application for each adult that will be living in the home. It’ll cost you time & money to process them, but the good ones rise to the top.
6) Don’t accept cash payments – especially over the weekend in a desperate rush by the tenant.
7) Require rent payments to be automatically deposited into a bank account set up only for your rental property. You can check it online and deal with any issues immediately. No chasing down rents after working hours will be necessary.
8) Require a security deposit equal to one month’s rent. Explain that this is not last month’s rent.
9) If you accept pets, require a large pet fee. Why a fee? Because pets make costly mistakes and few landlords accept pets. It’s a privilege people will pay for. What does it say if they won’t pay for that privilege? A refundable pet deposit unwisely spreads risks from tenant to landlord.
10) Explain you’ll strictly enforce late fees & delivery of Notices to Vacate, according to local law.
11) Find a reliable handyman to do some of the miscellaneous work which will be required on occasion. You will need to be able to rely on their judgment as to why something broke. A good example is the garbage disposal. You provide one and it works at move in – but then it stops working. If you send your handyman to fix it, then he/she will determine what caused it to break. If you find toys and dinnerware inside, then the tenant will be charged for the repair. Sometimes it requires only pushing the reset button.
12) Have accounts set up for necessary systems in the home - Plumbing & Heating, for example. Your replacing heater filters a lot, with regular cleaning & servicing is cheaper than new systems.
13) Spell out everything both you and your tenants are agreeing to – use extra paper and handwrite it if necessary – and get all adults to sign it.
14) Assign a “Head of Household” – usually the one with the better credit. Deal with only that person for communications between you and the household – it keeps things clear & reliable.
15) Charge what your rental is worth, for sure, but minus $25 or $50/month – tenants stay longer.
16) Absolutely keep the lines of communication between you and your tenants open, but they should keep it all during business hours. Emergencies should be called into emergency services.
17) List everything, in detail, that comes with the rent. I had a clause stating “I include the washer & dryer for tenant use, but if they break & don’t work anymore, then I will remove them – and tenant is free to install and use their own washer and dryer in the premises.”
Ken Jelinek has been licensed in the State of Alaska since 1994 and has been with REMAX since 1997. He is uniquely qualified for and focuses primarily on First Time Home Sellers - but is equally enthusiastic in helping First Time Home Buyers. Click here for current info: http://www.OneGoodRealtor.com.
