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So, Your Tenants Late with Rent…

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Dealing With Late Paying Tenants

late rent payments - tenants late with rent

I received an email recently asking me what steps a landlord should take when a tenants late with rent and I was kind of taken aback.

You see, this is one of those issues that is so easy once you’ve gone through it a couple hundred times. The problem for me is it was so long ago, I’d forgotten what I do is a learned response.

And I learned it so long ago that when a tenants late with rent, I simply take action.

So, rather than making you learn it on your own, I’ll just go ahead and break down the steps you need to follow if this occurs to you, but before I get there,  I want to talk about the challenges of evicting a tenant.

It’s these challenges that create the need for your actions to follow a specific process on your end as a landlord, so let’s dive in.

The Challenge of Evicting a Tenant

Just about every jurisdiction has a specific process for evicting tenants. Sometimes it involves a three day notice to quit, other times a 14 day notice to vacate. Some places require a court application to make it official and others have tribunals.

The one consistent challenge this represents for landlords is you need to prove your tenant has breached your lease and/or that you have a valid reason to evict them.

In my experience those valid reasons for an eviction tend to revolve around three main issues,

  • Non-payment of rent
  • Damage to the property
  • Conflicts with other tenants

You would think any of these would be easy enough to prove, but when you end up in a hearing, landlords often find themselves ill prepared compared to the excuses or lies that a nefarious tenant may be able to come up with when faced with eviction.

I’ve had tenants late with rent lie about paying cash and not receiving receipts, I’ve had tenants try to explain the gaping hole in the drywall was there when they moved in and I’ve had tenants explain they had no idea there were conflicts.

So what’s a landlord to do? Especially when a tenant is outright lying?

Preparing For Evictions Before They Are Necessary

Now, the point of this article is about what to do when a tenant’s late with rent. It could just as easily apply to damage to your property being damaged, conflicts between tenants or any other reasons that could lead to requiring an eviction of a tenant.

The important sub message for you is that every issue like this you need to understand could be the first step to building up a case for eviction. Assume the worst, and hope for the best!

That’s why the first step you need to take is to create paper trails you can refer back to if the situation doesn’t correct itself and goes further out of control.

When I’m consulting with landlords about evicting tenants I continually harp on documenting everything. It’s not just a matter of talking with them, you need to document it as well.

That’s part one of preparing, but just because you’ve documented it doesn’t end there.

Part two is making sure the tenant receives copies of your notices/documentation so you have a complete paper trail and takes the ability away from them to say they weren’t aware.

Creating a Complete Paper Trail

Tenants late with rent so create a papertrailSo what is a complete paper trail? It’s evidence that shows everything along the way, whether it’s the written notice you provide informing tenants rent is late, to complete documentation showing the condition of the property when they moved in all the way to dates and instances of previous conflict issues with the tenants.

Hopefully this is making sense, but to clarify even more let’s walk through an example.

It’s the 1st of the month and Joe your tenants late with rent. Now maybe he usually sends electronic transfers later on the 1st, so you sit back and eagerly check your email on the 2nd, again no money!

Tenants Late With Rent

Step 1

I’d suggest calling and/or texting the tenant immediately advising them they haven’t paid rent for the current month yet.
It could have been an honest mistake, or it could be a sign of pending trouble. You can often tell by how easy it is to initially contact them. Although sometimes you may simply get strung along as well if you do reach them first time, so be diligent and stay on top of this.

If you get paid great, you still want to move onto step 2, but at least the pressure is off.

Step 2

If you were paid, great, but you’re not done yet.

Follow up with a written letter for the tenant informing them that you understand late payments can happen, but this can only be a one off type situation as the rent payment is required to cover your bills for the property like a mortgage (you may need to ad-lib here a bit depending on your situation).

If you weren’t paid, you want to create a more stern letter for the tenant explaining all of this.

In both cases you need to refer to the conversation and/or text correspondence that you previously had about this issue. This is a matter of building up your evidence and paper trail.

I’d suggest bringing up potential repercussions if it’s not dealt with immediately and what may happen if the situation isn’t corrected (eviction, extra costs to the tenant and more, but all without being threatening, just informative).

Step 3

***UPDATE – Thanks to some great feedback from one of our readers, who also happens to be a Constable located in Massachusetts, he’s recommended the following tips regarding service of paperwork;

1) Certified mail does not need to be accepted and won’t be returned immediately. First class mail cannot be proven to have been delivered. Worse still is there is no proof what was delivered.  Tenants can claim that they received an empty envelope or one containing a blank piece of paper.

2) Proof of service.  I am an officer of the court. As such my return of service is accepted by the court as prima facie evidence that service was effectuated as indicated. Also I am a disinterested person and have no involvement in the action.

I would strongly suggest that whenever possible a Constable, deputy sheriff or Marshall should be engaged to serve this process, ensuring  that the case  can move forward with little delay. – Constable MP Weisberg

Now rules and variations do occur depending on where you are located, so make sure you understand them locally. Service by a process server, Constable or Sheriff may be mandatory, or simply advisable depending on your unique circumstance. Thanks for adding your voice to this MP and thanks for helping other landlords!

It’s important that you hand deliver this if possible. If it’s not, you want to create some potential trail of delivery and receipt.

If you’re hand delivering make note of the date and time and follow up with a text and/or email referring to the letter you dropped off. A frequent tenant response in hearing is they never received any notice about the problem, this solves that.

If you are not able to hand deliver you can send it via registered mail or courier which provides a tracking process.

If neither of these are possible as the tenant is trying to avoid you, then your option may be posting the notice on the property.

The challenge with this is it’s still hard to prove they received it, so here’s some additional steps.

Make sure you post it on every entrance to their unit. If it’s an apartment, it’s easy, just post it across the door and the door frame so they can’t miss it as they go in or out.

If it’s a house with a front and back door, post a copy on the front and back door, again across the frame and door. If it’s a house with a garage, post it on the two doors and the garage door.

Perhaps most importantly whatever the circumstance, once it’s posted then make sure you take a photo with some sort of date and time stamp to verify when you took the picture(s), just in case you need to prove it later.

Just as a warning, be aware some pro-tenant jurisdictions may claim this is tenant harassment or potentially slanderous if it’s posted for everyone to see. Always be aware of local rules and laws and make sure you can back up any claims that may be indicated to protect yourself.

Step 4

Follow up!

Once you’ve talked to the tenant, left them notice or documentation about the issue, follow up with an additional text, email or follow up phone call which you also document.

I’ve run into numerous situations where tenants have confirmed via text they received the notice, then in a hearing deny it and their entire claims fall apart due to the text evidence showing they are lying.

The final proof ends up often being your follow up, so don’t take a short cut and miss that final step as often it can be the deciding factor.

Final Thoughts

One way to stand out if you do ever end up in an eviction situation is to be a professional. If your tenants late with rent it requires more than a phone call or text to be a professional. You need to do the extra work!

As is often the case it comes down to treating this like a business and doing your job professionally. If you’re in a hearing and you come across as a professional who has all the evidence, is following all the rules and are going through all the proper processes evictions become much easier.

Now it’s your turn for a final thought.

If you’ve ever evicted a tenant, tell me what the experience was like below in the comment section. If you think this article would have helped you I’d like to hear from you even more!

What You Need To Know Before You Own Your First Rental Property!

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Advice For New Landlords

Pieces of the puzzle with your first rental propertyI’ve been helping landlords for years now and as I look through the masses of info = I have shared, one gap I find is what a new investors needs to know before they own their first rental property.

The trigger for this was just a quick comment a subscriber named Matt left me the other day.

You see Matt’s been reading my articles and watching some of my videos preparing for his first rental property which he closes on at the end of the month.

He’s being pro-active, he’s getting prepared and educated and he’s being very smart about getting started!

I love it.

To hopefully get him off to an even better start I replied back to his comment with some additional tips and suggestions, but  I realized that unless someone is reading that specific article they will miss that specific information!

So I realized maybe I need some information all in one place to help others just like Matt! So here’s what I have.

Getting Started With Rental Property

Some of the information I’m going to talk about here you’ll find in other articles on the site or videos here and on YouTube I’ve done and I’ll include some references to these at the bottom of the article.

In my experience I’ve found that I read one article and don’t quite get a concept, but when it’s explained slightly different or from a unique perspective suddenly it becomes crystal clear.

I’ll also include a subscription form at the bottom where you can get my guide “The Secrets of Successful Rental Properties” where I also talk about some of these tips that apply to your first rental property and to your fortieth rental property, or at least in different ways.

So rather than babbling too much more, let’s get started!

Leases – They Are Not All Created Equal!

leases for your first rental propertyIf you’re not familiar with my background, my online start was with a site that helped landlords evict tenants in the province I’m located in, Alberta Canada.

Sure I had my own sites for my Real Estate biz that I’d created in the past or paid someone to build, but AlbertaEviction.com was all my own.

This site came about because of my own personal experience with so many evictions over the years. Now I hope it’s not a shock that a guy who educates landlords has had to evict a ton of tenants.

It should be more of a reality check.

Because just about every landlord I know has had to evict a tenant at some point in their career. Time and circumstances change situations and a perfect couple one year may be divorcing or laid off the next causing you the landlord problems as their problems trickle down.

It’s not uncommon for me to get emails from landlords telling me how they’ve had great tenants since they bought their first rental property five or even ten years previously, but suddenly they’re stuck evicting someone.

It can be a bit of a numbers game and the longer you own a property and the more tenants you have the better (or should I say worse) chance you have of getting a bad tenant.

In my case, I’ve just dealt with so many more tenants than the typical landlord that I’m that much more experienced with the negative aspect of the business.

Which bring me full circle back to my point about leases. One of the biggest problem so many landlords I helped through my eviction site had, was they used the wrong or if not wrong, a poor lease. Leases are not all created equal and the rules in various states, provinces and countries also vary making it important that your lease applies where your rental property is located.

An example of this is in my local area is that I recommend to landlords to only use “Fixed Term Leases” rather than “Month to Month Leases”. The reason being (at least in Alberta Canada) a landlord doesn’t need to renew a fixed term lease (find out local rules that apply in your area!).

“Fixed Term leases refer to leases with a start and end date, they can be as short as a one month term or as long as several years, but they have a defined end date.”

In English, that means that if I have a tenant who is constantly late with rent, doesn’t maintain the yard or I’m just not getting along with, once the lease term ends, I’m not obligated to renew it, they have to leave.

If instead I used a month to month leases that just rolls over with no fixed ending date, I require a valid reason to evict the tenant, so unless he is doing something in serious breach of my lease, I’m stuck!

The lesson from this is, understand your local tenancy laws and make sure your lease fits what’s best for you! You may not have the same rule about fixed versus month to month, but you need to understand what does apply and make sure your lease includes what benefits you the landlord the most.

Next step is to ensure you have a very specific lease for your region.

If you’re buying a generic lease from an Office supply chain, a corner store or downloading it off of the internet, it better apply specifically to your region.

Now just about any generic lease will work everywhere, but the problem is they are generic and they don’t contain the specifics you need to enforce them for your benefit.

If you can make your properties non-smoking, your lease needs to contain that information. If you don’t allow pets, your specific lease should state that. If you don’t want tenants to sublet rooms or the basement or a garage, your lease requires a clause stating the restriction.

I could go on and on, and I already have I believe, but I need to because it’s that important. Generic leases get you started, much like generic house plans are the building blocks for your dream home.

You need to fine-tune that lease much like you choose colors and materials if you are building a home, so it suits your needs and protects your interests.

It may require buying a lease from a local landlord association, it may require getting a custom lease created by a Real Estate specializing lawyer in the area or it could be somewhere in between. Just make sure it’s not generic!

For a reality check it should also not be a single page! My standard lease I’ve modified and edited over the years as rules change, is four pages long and uses a small font in order to contain all my clauses and information.

It’s that long because I try to cover everything!! And your lease should too!

Now onto the next priority.

Tenants – They Too Are Not All Created Equal

Tenant problemsMore reality checks for you, not all tenants are equal or will look after your property the same way.

That nice looking couple who seem so pleasant may be professional tenants who bilk landlords out of months worth of rent and understand how to live rent free for months or even years at a time by being smarter than their new landlord.

There are so many districts throughout the world that have set up very tenant friendly legislation that makes it virtually impossible to evict tenants in a timely fashion.

They’re set up to allow tenants to appeal or delay hearings month after month and even then they are awarded extra time to vacate. Professional tenants understand these rules and once they are in, they can cause havoc.

All while not paying, or while damaging your property or worse building drug labs or grow ops which you get stuck fixing later.

The lesson from this?

Screen your tenants diligently and rigorously. Create systems and processes where you check and double check the information applicants provide you.

This includes calling and verifying all references, previous landlords and contacts. I even go so far as to check online profiles for their Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more to see who these people really are.

If you put in the effort up front to do all this fact checking, research and verification, you’ll find you can save yourself a ton of headaches going forward.

As my friend Julie The Street Smart Diva and I often talk about with students who have gone through our coaching programs, it’s far easier to let the wrong person in than it is to get that same person out.

Your job as a successful and educated landlord is to make sure you never let that wrong person in and makes sure they end up somewhere else while you reserve your property for the fantastic tenants you deserve!

The Final Lesson For Your First Rental Property

Processes, systems and checklists for landlordsCreate Systems! I just referenced this when talking about screening tenants!!

As new landlords and investors you have a ton to learn as you get started with your first rental property. From the incredibly important skill set of screening tenants to property maintenance and much more.

Some you may do yourself, some you may hand off to others to do, but long term, many of these processes need to be repeated over time. Often over and over as you own a property for years or expand your portfolio.

The challenge being, if it’s been a years since you last screened a tenant, can you remember all the steps?

If you happen to own several properties already and you’re ready to do your annual or semi annual inspections, do you know what furnace filter sizes to bring to replace at a specific property?

Do you know how many smoke detectors are in the property that take batteries and which kind of battery so you have them with you?

Or if you are adding a second or third property to your portfolio, what did you forget to do or ask the first time that you need to know for the next time?

Did you talk to your insurance people in advance to get the proper rental insurance in place?
Did you have a list of home inspectors you know and trust at the ready?
Did you have a list of requirements for your Realtor of what your next property needs to have?

These are just a few examples of the hundreds of questions that need to be answered as you maintain and expand your portfolio.

And yes it is a lot of work, initially at least. But that extra work at the beginning as you take notes gives you references and the start of check lists and the systems you need to streamline your landlord business going forward.

Once you get the basics of these processes down and in some semblance of order you’ll find it a helpful resource that you can go back to for years and years and that will make your land lording experience simpler, less stressful and ultimately more profitable!

Now just to tie all this together and to help make this easier to remember, I want to share with you what I call,

The Educated Landlord’s Mantra

  1. Remember how hard it is to get them out (bad tenants)
  2. Do your due diligence (on new properties & new tenants)
  3. Trust your gut, but have processes (so you don’t forget steps or get caught in emotional decisions versus rational decisions)

If you can remember these three steps as you get started as a landlord, it will carry you forward many years!

Landlord Lessons
Wrapping Up

So, those were my thoughts and words of advice about your first rental property, what would you add to this? I’d love to get some feedback from you, maybe share your advice or some lessons you’ve learned as you started in your Real Estate investing journey!

Just leave me a comment below and share any stories you could add and any feedback you might have! I look forward to your thoughts and will reply back to everyone!

Also, if you didn’t grab my guide The 7 Secrets of Successful Rental Properties yet, simply fill out the form below and you’ll get it emailed to you!

And finally, if you belong to a Real Estate group, know other landlords who this could help or could simply share this with people on your Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter feed, I’d really appreciate it!

There are handy share buttons right at the bottom of the article and the more people we can share this with, the more successful and educated landlords we’ll have out there!






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Did Your Goal Planning Work Out?

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Did You Even Goal Plan?

Goal Planning Your Real EstateOr did you even do any goal planning? Without goals, you simply end up coasting through life and as the last several years of my life have shown me, you need to know when to coast and when to push.

When I look back at my most successful years, it all started with goals, plans and a destination. When I look back at my least successful years they all involved no goals, haphazard plans and zero destinations. Think it’s a coincidence?

I don’t.

I’m getting up there (in my mind anyway). I’m not as energetic as I used to be, I’m not as athletic as I used to be, I’m not as aggressive as I used to be and the list of not’s can now go on far longer than I’d like. But one thing I’m not is dumber.

That’s why I want to do what’s worked for me before and why I’m going to make it work again.

The Problem(s) With Goal Planning

The problems that pop up when people start goal planning could end up being a list as long as my arm, but I’ve taken so many seminars, courses and read so many books that talk about goal planning I’ve got some helpful tactics I want to share with you.

The big problems I see people running into with goal planning are making their goals realistic, making them achievable and staying on track with them.

So let’s talk about those.

Realistic Goals

I want make a billion dollars! Realistic, or just wishful thinking?

For the majority of us not just unrealistic, but also not very specific which can be another problem. By making goals specific they also become easier to accomplish, so a better example would be as follows.

I will increase my monthly income by $2,500 by December 31st, 2020.

Now it’s become not only realistic, but specific as I’ve listed an amount and a timeline to achieve it.

Keeping Goals On Track

Tracking Your GoalsSo now that it’s realistic, I need to keep it on track, so as a Real Estate investor, how would you be able to achieve this goal?

First thing that pops into my mind would be to increase my portfolio, but then what?

Well, I see several options now. If I plan on increasing income by $2,500 per month that means I need at least one, but realistically several more properties to achieve this.

If I have determined that I make $1,250 cash flow from a single rental property I own I would need to replicate it twice to achieve over the next 12 months to achieve that goal. If I only make $500, I would have to do it five times to achieve my goal.

If you’re like me though, it suddenly creates new problems. I don’t have enough money lying around to buy five more properties, so if that is the situation I’m in, maybe that goal wasn’t realistic and it needs to be redefined, or I have to get more specific!

Specific Goals

With Real Estate there are so many ways to skin the proverbial cat we could easily create a new list as long as my arm of how to make money in Real Estate.

Maybe that original realistic goal morphs into the following.

I will increase my monthly income by $2,500 by December 31st, 2020 by partnering with two or more investors who will help with financing.

Or,

I will increase my monthly income by $2,500 by December 31st, 2020 by increasing the income from my current properties by $500 each and adding another property that generates $1,500 income per month.

Or maybe,

I will increase my monthly income by $2,500 by December 31st, 2020 by learning
how lease to own properties work and adding two properties that
generate $1,250 each to my portfolio

Notice how each iteration becomes it’s own specific goal? A goal that could be achievable by just about anyone reading this article? the sky is the limit when it comes to setting goals, as long as you also include some specifics and a plan as to how to get there.

But that plan also needs to be trackable and accountable!

Tracking Your Goals

The tracking part is where goals often fall apart and they are also what separate the people who achieve them from the ones who let them fall to the wayside.

With goals like our $2,500 increase we’ve already set the deadline to achieve it of December 31st, 2020, but our next step would be to set timelines as well.

Looking at the first goal which involves adding two or more money partners, you need to donate time to find them before you can even start. Suddenly your goal morphs even more and might look like this.

I will increase my monthly income by $2,500 by December 31st, 2020 by partnering with two or more investors who will help with financing. I will acquire the first investor by March 1st, 2020 and the second by July 1st, 2016 with two additional properties purchased by September 1st, 2020.

Using the second goal and morphing it, you may find something like this.

I will increase my monthly income by $2,500 by December 31st, 2020 by increasing the rents on my current properties by $500 each by June 1st, 2016 and adding another property that generates $1,500 income per month by September 1st, 2020.

And since we’re morphing, let’s look at the third goal.

I will increase my monthly income by $2,500 by December 31st, 2020 by studying lease to own properties for the next three months and adding my first lease to own by June 1st and my second by September 1st
adding $1,250 each to my portfolio.

Now these are all achievable, trackable and you should be accountable to at least yourself to reach these goals. Of course, these are all generic goals and I’m not saying any of you should specifically use them, they are just examples. Yet they are examples I hope you can learn from.

My Wife’s Take On Goals

Everyone should have their own little tactics and strategies for achieving their goals, but my wife has put together a pretty helpful walk through for folks and she’s been kind enough to let me borrow it and post it here.

As an entrepreneur herself she has had to coach people along the way and created  steps on goal planning that she shared with her fellow artists and entrepreneurs, so here you go. It was from January a couple of years ago, but since this is coming out in December, that means maybe you can start early!

I hope between the two of us you’ll get something out of this and it helps to make 2016 your best year yet!

The Great thing about goal planning is that you get to start fresh….a time to re-evaluate what worked for you last year and what didn’t.  This time is a chance to tweak things, or just to start fresh.  Any successful business person must be able to plan for their business.  I want you to really focus on your business in regards to this goal setting.  Yes, you can apply it to your personal life, and that’s a good thing to do, but for today’s benefit it’s all about your Business.

Now, we’re going into this year with January almost over, but that’s okay.  Any time is a good time to start your goals.  My husband and I have created an annual event on New Years Eve where we sit down with a nice glass of wine and talk about the past year, and set our goals for the new year.  We’ve done this for many years, and now our girls join us.

1.  Take a look at last year.  Take a sheet of paper and divide it in half.  On one side write down what worked the prior year.  What got you excited, what your customers liked, what were your successes.  What made you the most money.  And what do you enjoy doing the most.

On the other side write down what didn’t work, things that didn’t make you money, wasted      your time, or you just plain didn’t like.  Think about what you need to stop doing…..perhaps it’s  saying yes to everything that bogs down your life.

2.  Start planning your goals.  First think about the things that were a success, they are already working, what can you do to improve them or stream-line them?  Do this before you start adding new Goals to your list.

The thing about goals is that they should be reasonable, and measurable.  Sure I would like to earn $10,000 a month….but is that reasonable based on how much work I’m prepared to do.   Whether you intend to go hard with your business or not, being clear on your intention and what you can achieve is really important.

3.  Setting goals can also create a great mountain that seems impossible to conquer.  So you need to make sure that your goals are broken down into mini-goals.  When you are able to check off little tasks that will eventually take you to your goal, you will be motivated to continue, and feeling good about your progress.  If you feel good about what you are accomplishing you will continue forward with a positive frame of mind.

Pat Flynn from  SmartPassiveIncome.com  has a great phrase.

Write it down…get your goals out of your head where all the other stuff is rattling around and write it on paper, or a white board.  Once you do this, then the goal is real, and not just a thought.

Break it down…Task it out into little mini-goals.  The only way to get the big goals completed is by giving yourself achievement along the way.

Take it down… this is where you start chipping away at those little tasks, checking them off to   get you closer to your goal.

4.  Review your goals!  This is so important for you to succeed.  Putting all those mini-goals into months so that you can focus on them individually.  If you try to focus on all the mini-goals, you will not be giving the appropriate attention that you need to get that goal completed.  The reason I want you to review your goals monthly is to help you keep on track.  If you fall off, it’s only a month that you need to make up for.  If you review quarterly, you will either forget it’s the quarter, or if you missed the goal, you are now three months behind.

If you are a goal planner, I’d love to hear from you! Maybe leave a comment here and share how it’s helped you. If you don’t goal plan, maybe this was the incentive for you and next year you can come back and tell us how it worked!

Either way happy 2020 to you!

You Will Fail As A Landlord

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It will happen at some point.

Turn failure around as a landlord so you succeed

It might be something small, it might be something big, but you will fail at some point as a landlord and sorry it’s not an option.

It’s what you do with that failure though that will separate you from the landlords that simply quit after there first bad situation.

As many of you are aware, I have one website that teaches landlords (and tenants) about the eviction process where I’m located (www.AlbertaEviction.com for those that are interested). I have thousands of visitors each month and many of them are landlords who have just gone through their first eviction.

And often they are so disappointed with having to evict a tenant for the first time they are telling me they will be selling their property and it simply baffles me.

What the hell were they thinking and what lesson are they learning? They failed to have the proper tenants in place either through a mistake on their part, or bad fortune and they are taking their ball and going home? Not only did they fail, but they failed to learn and that’s far more depressing.

We all fail.

It’s how we learned to crawl, it’s how we learned to walk, it’s how we learned to run and it’s how we learn to grow. If we quit every time we failed we’d all still be sitting around on the floor in diapers never taking a chance to learn to crawl, walk or run.

Yet here are people who have invested typically their hard earned money into property and becoming a landlord and turn tail once it gets hard. These people are destined to continue failing as they won’t learn from their failures and use it to improve.

The few landlords that I do get to talk to I try to break it down for them.

They’ve just gone through one of the worst problems a landlord faces, the eviction process. They’ve gone through it and they now understand the process which does three things.

First it educates them (yes I am a big proponent of landlord education surprise right?), second it makes them highly aware they don’t want to do this again and leads to better screening, more diligence about their property and a renewed interest in treating their property like a business and third it shows them what they need to do if it ever happens again which takes a ton of fear, uncertainty and doubt (also known as F.U.D) away from being a landlord.

Now that you’ve gone through this and are better educated and informed, is it really the best time to walk away? That is an even bigger failure than going through an eviction.

Learn From Your Failures

Failures are lessons we need to learn from and adapt so we don’t repeat them.

And the more painful the failure the more we should learn to avoid repeating them!

Whether it’s evicting a problem tenant, discovering your property is illegal and is getting shut down, discovering your lease is inadequate or a million other instances or problems that can pop up in the life of a landlord these are all lessons we need to learn from rather than accept as failures.

I’ve failed more than most, but that’s simply by sheer volume, the important part is I try to learn from each failure and not repeat it.

I’ve learned about partners the hard way, I’ve learned about mortgages the hard way, I’ve learned about bad tenants the hard way, I’ve learned what needs to be done when tenants die in your property, what happens when sewer pipes collapse at your property and so much more.

Some of the problems were out of my control, some could have been avoided I learned after the fact, but I learned from all of these examples and a multitude more. Many of these lessons I now try to share through these articles and posts so you too can avoid them.

So it’s your choice, you can fail and quit, or you can embrace failure as an opportunity to improve, to rebuild and to come out better than ever. Just make the right choice!

 

Rainbows and Unicorns, Exit Stage Left – A Landlord Nightmare

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Dealing With Rental Disasters & Disappointment

Dealing with a fire at your rental property - another one of my landlords nightmaresSometimes your world falls apart and you get caught in a landlords nightmare. Or so it seems. Right now I am on week two of significant problem after significant problem of both the disaster type ( fire at a rental property) and disappointment type (tenant who I attempted to help out who burnt me hard, this time with garbage rather than fire).

I started out writing this as an email to all the subscribers, then after I had been writing the email for roughly 20 minutes and I wasn’t a quarter of the way through the story, I realized I needed to turn this into an article so I could cover more of it.

This post has actually taken me a month and a half to work through, to write and to finally get near the end of. It’s also the first post in almost nine months on this site. I’ve become a bit burnt out and tarnished, but I am making a comeback!

The intent of this isn’t to make you feel sorry for me and my problems, it’s to make you aware of potential problems that can occur and hopefully some additional lessons about dealing with what seems like overwhelm and how dehabilitating it can be.

We all face problems and as landlords these problems affect not just yourself, but your tenants who you are also somewhat responsible for and that can make these issues even more important.

I’ll start the story with disappointment and then we’ll move onto disaster. This will be a long one, so grab some coffee or some tea and get settled in.

Explaining The Parameters

Rental Markets FluctuateI think I need to preface these stories with a little background of our local economy. Often time what’s happening locally with unemployment, job creation and the economy all contribute to the experience you have as a landlord and in this case it’s very apparent.

The first parameter of note, the local economy where I live and own properties is driven by the energy industry which has been taking a beating lately with low oil prices. This is translating to unemployment rising, wages dropping, uncertainty in the local housing and job markets, higher vacancy rates, lower rents, and a significant amount of doom and gloom in the air among people.

Now if you’re in Real Estate for the long term, swings in the economy happen. If you’ve bought based on cash flow and long term value, these types of scenarios are reasonably easy to ride through. It may involve reducing rents, taking a hit on cash flow and making time your friend as you wait out the inevitable ebb and flow of economic cycles.

The second parameter is I like to help people. Often times more than I should. And often to my detriment as people in general appreciate help, but it’s becoming more and more common for it to be expected rather than truly appreciated.

This most often occurs when I try to help tenants out when they get laid off due to the slower economy or situations that are often out of their control.  In return for me giving them more time to pay and to get on track, I do expect a few things and maybe my expectations are too high.

They’re tiny little things like, if you’re “looking for work”, don’t spend the little money you have left getting drunk in the middle of the day. Little things like if you can spend $10 a day on booze and $10-30 a day on take out pizza, don’t complain you don’t have any rent money.

I know lofty expectations. Apparently far too lofty and for these expectations perhaps I should be punished.

Disappointment

So, near the middle of October, just before 7:00pm, I get a text from one of my working tenants complaining that the last three or four nights straight three guys who aren’t currently working (and coincidentally owe me money) have been partying it up until late in the night in one of my rooming properties.

He’s getting up (or trying to) at 6 in the morning after trying to sleep through these bozos who are displaying zero respect for the other tenants and zero respect for my house rules which involve quiet times from 11pm until 6am. Queue the disappointment.

​I immediately head out and park half a block away so I don’t alert them and walk up the alley so I can come in the back way unseen.

This particular property is two sides of a duplex, so I go to the south side first where two of the culprits live and walk in surprising them.

I find one guy in the kitchen, the other guy sitting on the couch smoking in my non-smoking property and a plethora of empty beer and liquor bottles lying around. Ramp up the disappointment to sheer anger.

One thing that sets me off is tenants smoking in my properties. From burns to odours to picking up cigarette butts after they’re gone, the entire issue of smoking in my properties just pisses me off. I find it shows a complete lack of respect for me, for my properties and for my rules. And to top it off,this is the second time I caught him!!!

I immediately tell him, he’s done and to be out in the morning (true, this isn’t even close to legal as far as evicting someone goes, but he wasn’t arguing with me at that point most likely due to the colour of my face (red with anger) and my tone of voice. I also inform the other guy, he has until Saturday to vacate.

After that brief explosion, I head over to the north side of the property to deal with buddy number three.

On this side I find more empties, evidence of smoking, but no actual smoking going on and buddy who I read the riot act to. At this point I made another mistake (perhaps two). This guy, let’s call him Richard (cause it’s his name), owed me a lot of money.

Richard owed me multiple weeks of rent, but had been diligently been paying me back. He was a brick mason, so he got paid quite well when working, but much of his work had been drying up with the slower economy. He’d fallen behind in the past and I’d helped him out and he had caught up previously.

My first mistake was letting Richard get this far behind, the second mistake was not kicking him out that night as well. I erroneously though the other two guys were the instigators and he was dragged along due to peer pressure. That may partially be true, but this guy was bad news as well.

In the end I told him he could stay, if he caught up quickly and he informed me he was working full time again and would have no problems catching up. Lies…

I’m going to omit a bunch more depressing details to fast forward to the weekend which is when I collect rent. Both of the first two guys are gone by this time and buddy Richard is supposed to have a bunch of money for me and things are supposed to be turning around. Except he’s not there…

And one of the other guys tells me he hasn’t been working full time, but rather has been working at a temp agency sporadically and is supposedly where he left for that morning. Or so he told the other guy.

To top it off, I also find a ton of empty beer bottles, more smoking evidence and a huge mess in the kitchen and common area which I know are all Richard’s doing. I know it’s him as the only other upstairs tenant is away for the long weekend and had left two days ago (this becomes important as we go forward). No wonder he didn’t want to see me that morning.

As my anger rises, I write up a note telling him to vacate by the next morning and I would be by Monday and wedge it into his door frame so he can’t miss it when he gets home.

A Landlords Nightmare – Disappointment Turns To Disgust

So far it’s been a heck of a week. And I still haven’t talked about the image at the beginning of this article which happened the week before. To recap my seven days I evicted three tenants, had a fire at a property and with everything going on, it felt like my world was collapsing.

So obviously it got worse..

On the holiday Monday I received a call from the tenant who had been away for the long weekend. He’d just got back and someone had broken into his room, stole his flat screen TV, his new Xbox, his tablet, jewellery, money and other miscellaneous items. Gee, I wonder who that could have been?

So I drop what I’m doing and head on over to the dark side.

Suspecting it may have been Richard and one of the other tenants I evicted before I leave I stop to photocopy their pertinent information that I gather when I fill out my rental application. This includes full name,  birth date and usually some form of government ID complete with number.

While I’m doing this I text the fellow at the house to call the police to report this, to start inventorying what is missing and to find his insurance companies number. In situations like this the tenant needs to be covered by his own insurance as my insurance does not cover tenants belongings.

Roughly 40 minutes later I finally pull up to the property to find perhaps a dozen empties scattered across the front lawn and on the front deck, one of the chairs from the deck laying out on the lawn and a sense of even more trouble inside.

Little did I know what awaited me inside.

I’ve Seen It All, Or So I Thought

With almost 1,500 tenants under my belt and after having been in the landlord and specifically the rooming house business for over a decade you see a lot of things! And every time I think I’ve seen it all, I get surprised.

To get right to it, I’ll shorten the intro to this as it could be a novella otherwise (and probably already is to some of you). It appears Richard kicked the other tenants door in, stole everything to pay his crack dealer, and then bailed. It was when I opened Richards room to see if he was around I got to add a new something to my ‘seen it all’.

dealing with a horrible tenant - landlords nightmares
Sorry for the blurriness, I was shaking with frustration when I took this

Garbage was piled up all along the bed (and under I found out) almost even with the dresser and top of the bed. I could see pizza boxes, empties, plates, bowls clothing, chip bags and more at first glance.

Disappointment was the first thing I felt.

I created these properties as a safe, affordable place for people and this is what I get for it. Of course disappointment evolved into anger, but the reality of it is, it had to be dealt with.

So over the next two days I started cleaning up.

Cleaning up after a tenant

16 black garbage bags, two large city garbage bins and two large city recycle bins later the main garbage was done.

During our clean up we found hundreds of cigarette butts thrown in the garbage,pizza boxes with maggots, beetles and all types of bugs in them.

We had pizza boxes stuck into the carpet and we discovered that our tenant had a peculiar habit of urinating into two litre pop bottles, beer cans and pop cans.

We threw out over 15 sealed large pop containers and I had to empty around 20 cans of urine out into the toilet. Definitely one of the most disgusting clean ups I had ever done.

When we had the garbage out and we had a chance to look at the furniture it was decided none of the furniture was worth saving. The mattress had cigarette burns, stains and who knows what else on it, the frame and furniture had spills and stickiness of an unknown nature and would have taken days to look clean, so we threw it all away including the carpet we had to remove.

Horrible tenant trashes carpet
Guess what the bottle was full of……

By the end of the week, once it was all done and all cleaned up, I realized I was getting burnt out.

Within a couple days from there, we talked to our Realtor and had it up and listed and actually just closed the sale on it December 1st. The new owner is going to carry on as a rooming house and he’s excited about the cash flow, the possibilities and as part of the sale I’m providing him with my systems, contacts and more to ensure he does achieve success, even after hearing of my setback.

Retrospective – What Went Wrong?

As I look back, the fault for how this tenant ended up does partially belong to me. Granted he has to take responsibility for his life and how he lives it, but I tried to help him (as I do many of my tenants) and I let him slide far too far. If I would have followed my normal procedures and hammered the guys for getting out of control, none of this would have happened, or at least on a much smaller scale.

I was burnt out and I was tired of the business. I’d been helping people for so long and getting so little back (or more realistically letting the bad over-shadow the good) that I let things slide, I didn’t show up at the properties as often as I should have and I realized I over stayed my commitment.

Typically I try to see inside a tenants room once a month just so I know the condition, in this case it had been several months and I had previously warned him to clean it up, but didn’t follow up. All bad mistakes in retrospect!

I’m excited about the opportunity to help this new owner make this a success, but I’ve already cautioned him to have a five year plan to move forward and so that he doesn’t get caught up in it for too long and also become burnt out.

This has also turned into a positive as its made me realize all the systems and processes I put in place to help make this a success and I can see me creating some programs to help other rooming house owners succeed and avoid many of the problems that can occur.

This particular property was a huge benefit to me over the years and not only generated a nice profit when we sold it, but grossed in excess of $500,000 worth of  cash flow while we owned it. Even with the headaches and the disappointment on the way out, it was still a winner!

Now Onto Disaster

So we’ve talked about my disappointment, now it’s time for disaster.

This fall was extremely taxing for me and really wore me down. Disasters and disappointment have that affect as they can be emotionally draining and I can vouch for that from first hand experience.

October 3rd, just after 5am the first call came in. It was a Saturday morning and it’s not unusual to get a call early in the morning from one of the guys, it’s just unusual to get it this early. Normally it’s just to let me know they are off to work and left money hidden for me to grab when I collect.

I leave my phone plugged in by my desk at night, I’ve learned that if someone is calling in the middle of the night either the police or the fire are better suited to deal with it, I can deal with it when I get up. So I ignored it.

The second call came in about ten minutes later and I ignored it as well, but started to get a sense of problems. It rang again one more time a few minutes later and I continued to lie in bed until around six which is when I normally get up on weekends (yep, I’m one of those early risers and sleep in until 6 on weekends).

First message was from a tenant just saying call me as soon as you get this, second message was from the neighbour telling me my house was on fire…. Now was a good time to semi-panic, I just didn’t have time for that.

I got dressed and headed out the door and tried calling the tenant along the way but couldn’t get an answer.

When I show up 20 minutes later there are police and fire vehicles all over the place, with the road blocked off so I park a block away and walk to the house.

By this time the fire is out and it doesn’t look like anyone is around except for a tv crew. Not being excited about talking to them without knowing anything I walked back looking for any firemen or police and noticed a city bus parked an idling down the street.

I head over there and find all of my tenants safe and warm and finally find a police officer and start getting the story from everyone.

Apparently an arsonist had been running around early in the morning and had lit three or four separate fires so the police and firemen were scattered all over making sure everything was under control.

At my property the fire was started in the detached garage and it destroyed three quarters of the garage and ran across to the back wooden steps blowing out the back house windows into the kitchen, burning the deck entirely, spewing smoke into the house and damaging the roof and back section of the house.

The good news again was all the tenants were out and the house wasn’t destroyed, it just wasn’t habitable. Fortunately I had some vacancies in other rooming properties and was able to shuffle everyone around so they had a place to sleep and stay until I knew what was going to happen here. Dealing with a rental property disaster

The Repercussions of Disasters

Dealing with a situation like this can be draining. Much like my previous story of disappointment there is a lot of emotional weight involved with disaster. In my case I took on the burden of the upheaval of my tenants, several of whom had been there for a considerable time.

I had to deal with the mother of one of the tenants to confirm he was ok, I had to deal with police and fire reports and dealing with insurance and fallout of everything after.

The biggest blow being the insurance company deciding they didn’t want to insure any of my properties after this claim. Trying to obtain insurance on rooming properties is bad enough, but trying to acquire it when the original insurer cancels it becomes expensive and time consuming as dozens of new forms and tenant info sheets needed to be filled out.

In the end I saw my insurance increase by over 3.5 times. I went from just under $4,000 per year to around $14,000 per year in just a few weeks. Talk about a hit to the cash flow!

As for the repair work, here we are just shy of two months later and we are almost done. the garage was finally demoed and removed the other day and I’ve decided to take a payout for it rather than rebuild (more on that shortly). The only thing left is the repainting of the outside stucco which they left until it was too cold to paint outside…. and now has to wait until spring, unless I get paid out on that too!

But it doesn’t end there.

I decided to forgo replacing the garage and instead get paid out by the insurance company. The best demo and repair estimate they came up with was just over $27,000 for a single car garage, but I found out when they pay you out, you don’t get any profit or taxes which that number included.

Additionally as it was a rental, first payee is the lender as per the mortgage agreement, although they do make exceptions. The positive about this is it does go on the principle, although I could have used the extra cash to cover payments while it’s vacant (I did have loss of rent coverage, but it was inadequate and only covered about 60% which is nice, but never enough as complete!).

This property was also due for renewal on December 1st, so when I called them to inform them about the payout from the fire it caused more problems (I really noticed a trend during this, when you do the right thing it causes more problems). Since the garage was not being replaced they informed me the property would need to be re-appraised, at my expense, to see if they would even renew it or if I had to potentially put more money in to decrease the loan to value (LTV).

Having dealt with buying foreclosures in the past, having dealt with previous lenders who wouldn’t renew, and with my previous history as a mortgage broker, I explained how anything but renewing was going to cost them extra money as I would force a foreclosure and sell the property before it got anywhere leaving them on the hook for a large internal costs. Lo and behold they came back a couple days later with an open mortgage that fit me perfectly with no appraisal required.

Another lesson from this, if you have knowledge about the process and how it works, you can avoid being pressured or leveraged into situations that others might fall into. I am positive if I didn’t know and completely understand my options, they would have stuck me with the appraisal fee, they would have required me to top up the mortgage and they wouldn’t have provided me a mortgage that fit my needs.

Knowledge is power!

Light at the End of the Tunnel

So, here we are into the first week of December and the dusts from my previous several months of my landlords nightmares has settled. My horrible tenant property is sold and I have cash and time on my hands again (hence finally finishing this).

My disaster property is all repaired and officially listed and although it’s a horrible time of year to sell as most people are focusing on Christmas right now, I know the buyers who are coming in are pretty serious.

I’m excited as going through the process of selling this rooming property is opening my eyes to how much I know about rentals of this nature and the new owner is finding the information I’m providing to be, and I quote, “Awesome” and helping him get off to a huge headstart without all the headaches.

Life may not be quite great, but it is under control and pretty darn good and I like that. Your lesson from all of this is simply that there are lessons from bad things. That if you focus on dealing with the situation whether it’s good or bad, you can get through it and maybe end up in a better spot like we feel we have.

It may not have been where you wanted to be, or it may have taken a circuitous route, but you can get there, just don’t put your head in the sand as I’ve seen other investors do and hope, it simply doesn’t work out!

You Got Your Lease WHERE?

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Paperwork Is A Key Component Of Your Business

Leases, contracts and landlord paperwork

And this includes your lease! Your lease is the single most important document you can have with your tenant as it sets the groundwork for your relationship.

But have you even read it?

I’ve talked with hundreds and hundreds of landlords and read dozens and dozens of different leases and the things I’ve seen have made my head spin.

From landlords who don’t bother with leases and just do everything verbally to hand me down leases that aren’t even legal in the state or province they are being used it.

You Need A Legal Lease

That’s part of the reason I’ve decided to work with LawDepot.com to help make sure more of you have the proper forms in place. LawDepot approached me last year about advertising on my site and I held off at the time, but the time felt right now to add them as as option for visitors here.

From leases to eviction forms and everything in between and around, they have the forms you need to protect yourself properly and to make sure you are doing your business right.

Now, to be completely transparent I do receive a commission if you do purchase through them, so it helps me as well, but more importantly, it gets the right forms in your hands.

To find out more, go visit them at www.LawDepot.com (that is an affiliate link) and see if they can help.

Alternatively you can also do some research and find a local apartment owner association. Groups like this often offer lease packages that tend top have the most current and up to date clauses and wording in there packages.

I’d definitely recommend you stay away from the off the shelf type products you find in office supply stores. These packages often tend to be extremely generic and tend to miss-out on specifics that would affect you in your state or province.

Ask The Landlord – Marketing Your Rental Garage(s)

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Questions to ask a landlord

Ask The Landlord Feature

Welcome to the first Ask The Landlord Post! After an informal survey the majority of readers of the Educated Landlord overwhelmingly preferred email/article format so this is where we’ll start.

It may evolve to the occasional video or audio file, but I’ll also include the answer in text to try and satisfy the majority. So let’s get started with our first question.

The Background

Our first question comes from Prit who’s located in the North Eastern part of the US. He is focusing on one specific area of  rentals right now, garages and his plan is rather brilliant.

Ask The Landlord - Garage rentalsThe more I’ve thought about it the better it seems and it’s a low cost way to get into Real Estate.

Prit negotiates with property owners to rent their garages and then sublets them to other individuals and in only his first month has six deals for garages in process. The beautiful part of this is the low point of entry.

If he can negotiate the garage for say $200 a month he may need to put $200 plus an equivalent deposit down so it’s $400 to acquire, then he needs to rent it out for $300 per month with a matching deposit and he is now $100 up per month.

I’ll ignore the deposits as they are basically cancelling each other out and aren’t profit, but on his $200 investment he is making $100 profit. That’s a 50% return on his investment which isn’t bad at all. If someone doesn’t have $10,000, $25,000 or more to put down to purchase a rental property this allows you to get your feet wet and learn some basics of Real Estate, contracts and rentals.

Now if you can get that garage for $100 a month and still rent it out for $300 that return gets even better. But there’s still challenges.

To make this really work you need to scale it up, you need solid contracts to protect yourself and you will also need insurance to cover your liabilities. These last two will eat into your profits, but as you scale the costs go down.

I can see Prit expanding this as he gains confidence and moving to potentially renting full properties and subletting and from there who knows. There’s lease options or rent to own situations which are similar, but on a bigger scale and even commercial opportunities. The sky could be the limit, but the important question for Prit is the focus of this article. So here it is.

What Are Ways I Can Market My Garage(s)?

To be successful in this venture one of Prit’s keys will be to have people ready to take his rental garages as quickly as he lines them up. If he secures a garage for June 1st, but doesn’t have a tenant until July 1st, it can take him two additional months to just break even.

If this is a once in a while occurrence it’s not bad, but if this happens on every unit or it takes even longer to fill, suddenly it’s not very profitable and becomes a huge headache. So you need to create a system to funnel interested parties to call you. you want to be come the GoTo Garage Guy!

So how do you do this? (and this is where everyone needs to pay attention as this doesn’t just apply to garages!)

First, Who Would Want To Rent A Garage?

You need to start thinking like your typical tenants. You need to find out who they are, where they hang out and make sure you’re there.

People who rent garages usually fall into a few categories. Many of them are handymen who need a place to work on their projects or they can be small business owners like plumbers,  renovators or even landscapers to name a few that need storage space and lets not forget those weekend mechanics who want a place to tinker on their vehicles or their friends vehicles.

I suggested initially he start by doing online searches for garage rentals to see where people are already advertising garages. This also gives you a way to track current rental rates and availability.

With supply and demand prices can go up and down. With garages, especially in Northern areas, there is increased demand in the fall usually right after the first freeze or snowfall, then in the spring when outdoor conditions improve it slows down.

The rational is that it’s ok to work on your vehicle or store stuff outside in the warmer months, but once it starts getting colder it’s nice to have it indoors, especially if it’s a heated space!

Next targeted area would be the weekend mechanics or the guy who wants to store his precious vehicle during the off season (again back to the winter months).

Garage rentals - ask the landlord questionsFor this you could contact local car clubs or even some of the car dealerships. I know one garage owner who rented out half of a garage to a vehicle owner who kept his collectible Porsche stored indoors in a heated space all winter and then took it out every weekend during the summer months just to drive.

You could also contact auto parts stores and see if they have bulletin boards where you could post you have garages available. Many weekend mechanics get a lot of flack from spouses for taking up the garage with their old vehicle, auto parts stores would be a great source of potential clients.

I personally rented a garage to a weekend mechanic who needed to get his vehicle off the street so he could really tear it apart, he found me on an online ad and was with me for four years until I recently sold the property. Once they get used to having it, it’s hard to give up.

Side Note – Prit already contacted a car club and they want him to come attend an event on the weekend. What if he not only got a new tenant, but also had a list of additional people who want a garage and would put a deposit down in advance so he can go find them a garage! He could have his funnel filled for the next half dozen garages

Let’s talk about small business owners now or trades people. Where do they congregate? This can depend on the type of business, but why not check union halls for plumbers, electricians and carpenters?

Also, how about plumbing and electrical distribution companies? If any of these have bulletin boards that allow you to post on them why not create a nice simple brochure to attract potential clients.

Small landscaping companies can use space as well. During the winter months they may want to store summer equipment and then in reverse during the summer. Most year round landscaping companies have snow removal services in the winter to keep busy so they need to store plows, shovels and items for extended periods.

I can’t think of where they may congregate but I know every spring I get all kinds of door hangers, flyers and brochures that appear at my house so why not start calling a few of them? The big guys can typically pony up the money for nice buildings and storage yards, but the smaller outfits need ot keep costs down and a garage may be just the ticket.

You Need To Think Further Outside The Box

By knowing who potential tenants are you can start approaching them before they even know they need you. With the car folks if you provide a good product and a good service word of mouth may be your big ticket.

If you believe you can get referrals, reward people!

Whether it’s $50 off the upcoming month for a referral that rents for a minimum six months or something more creative, if you get tied in with the right people you may have a constant stream of referrals. Maybe if you’re just focusing on car people you reward them with gift cards from select auto parts places.

Now you’re helping the auto parts place and they may be even more helpful going forward. Or perhaps just hearing why you are buying the gift cards is enough to start the conversation about what you’re doing. That conversation could open new doors and referrals!

Rules and regulations vary incredibly from city to city, district to district and state to state, so know your local rules before you go too far down this path.
There may be restrictions on what can be stored in a garage, what work can be done in a garage or even whether renting a garage itself is legal in your area. Knowing this in advance you save you considerable headaches.

Updated Ideas For Garage Rentals

So I recently stumbled across another way to advertise not just your garages, but storage space you may have.

It’s a peer to peer storage search site set up with a similar concept to AirBnB called StoreAtMyhouse.com. As landlords you’re able to list your space and get it in front of way more potential tenants.

Being able to list your space is free so there is no cost to you although you can pay a small fee to “feature” your property which I’m assuming means getting pinned to the top of the listings for s certain duration. Also they have other referral services they get commissions from, so bottom line why not give it a try!

Another site for our Australian visitors is https://www.spacer.com.au/. Similar to StoreAtMy House, Spacer provides a place for both people with space and people looking for space for storage to connect.

They collect a small fee as part of the process which would obviously be worth every penny if you can get your spaces filled quickly!

Wrapping It Up

This concludes my first Ask The Landlord post. Hopefully you found it interesting and you can see ways to apply some of this to your landlord business.

Maybe you don’t have a garage you rent, but instead a house or suite, knowing who is renting in the area or who your tenants could be makes it easier to market.

If you have any comments or feedback, I’d love to hear it! Leave me a comment at the very bottom of the page or you can use the handy form just below and I’ll receive the question via email!

But before you ask, I have a couple rules.

1. The question can’t be about specific rules or laws in your area, this is meant to help landlords around the world!

2. Specify whether I can use your name and/or where you are from in your question.