Question Applicants who don’t qualify financially are offering to have a co-signer. What benefit do I as landlord get from this? Do I add the co-signer to the lease agreement? Answer The following discussion is an abbreviated version of an article I once wrote for the Web site. Cosigners or guarantors are sometimes of importance […]

Question Is there a lease clause that can provide landlord the right to prevent a problem guest to access a property? Answer What, if anything, a landlord can do about a “problem” guest of a tenant depends on why the landlord considers the guest to be a problem, what clauses might already be in the […]

Tenant Property Left Behind In a previous article we discussed some of the issues related to moving tenants out. We stated in that article that moving tenants out can potentially be more complicated and troublesome than moving them in because of the fact the tenants have possession of the property at the end of tenancy […]

Question For the first time in my short rental management experience, I recently evicted a bad tenant and need to collect rent and damages from him. What do I do? Answer Many novice landlords refer to termination of a tenancy as an eviction. However, in legal terms eviction is lawsuit procedure whereby a landlord asks […]

Define Maintenance Responsibilities A good lease agreement will spell out landlord and tenant responsibilities regarding maintenance issues in detail. Failure to adequately address these issues within the agreement can lead to erroneous assumptions as to which party is responsible for specific maintenance issues and result in landlord-tenant conflicts and/or damages to the landlord’s property due […]

Expenditures – Part 7 In this article we explore a little further certain issues related to non-deductible expenditures, the subject introduced in Part 6 of this “Expenditures” series – that is, expenditures that must be depreciated, amortized, or added to basis rather than deducted in the year of expenditure. We’ll first briefly discuss a way […]

Some Home-Based Business Issues According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, more than half of America’s businesses are home-based. Most landlords are almost certainly operating as a home-based business, as relatively few landlords maintain an office in a commercial building unless they are either owners/managers of an extensive rental property portfolio or are also licensed […]

Question       A tenant gave notice by phone on 9/25 that everything would be moved out on 9/29 and appears to have not returned to the property since at least 9/27. However, the keys and garage door opener have not been returned or left on the premises and there is some trash left on the property. […]

Question            Where would I find information on a tenant who left the place damaged, dirty, etc. We had to use all of his security deposit to fix and clean everything. He still owes us over $300.00 and said he would pay. Can you help? Thanks. Answer There are a lot of potential issues related to […]

Question I’m a somewhat new landlord who has not previously had trouble with non-pay tenants. The tenants in one of my 4-plex units has not yet paid the rent that was due a week ago and a friend, also a landlord says that I should serve a pay or quit form. What is a pay […]