A bad tenant can be a nightmare.
Yet many landlords, especially new landlords, get caught up in having to fill a vacancy as quickly as possible no matter who they put in place.
What a mistaka to maka…
As more and more tenant friendly laws come into place the protection a landlord may have regarding his property evaporates.
Evictions can often take months with tenants being able to stall and launch appeals often on a whim, especially in the pro-tenant regions.
Months that you’re footing the bill and that typically end up with additional thousands on the back end cleaning up the property.
When you initially do the math, you may think putting the first borderline acceptable tenant in place is the right thing to do as it saves you paying a mortgage payment out of pocket along with the additional expenses of taxes and insurance and any possible utilities you have to cover.
But that $1,000 or more you save gets savagely eaten up when that bad tenant ends up not paying for several months and leaves you three thousand dollars worth of cleanup, repairs and additional vacancies.
I’m Not Trying To Scare You With Bad Tenant Thoughts
But I am trying to scare you!
Scare you from making dumb foolish mistakes that new landlords make.
Saving pennies to lose dollars is not a wise decision.
Your first line of defence as a landlord is making sure bad tenants never ever get into your property. By accepting that first borderline tenant just to save a few bucks you’re taking your defence off the field!
Being a successful landlord requires following proven strategies, sound business practices and lots of time.
By having strategies to buy proper properties, to screen to find the proper tenants and by giving yourself a decade, or much longer, for tenants to pay your mortgages down you can be a successful landlord.
Being A New Landlord Is A Learning Experience
As landlords we’re constantly learning. That’s why it’s important to find as many resources as possible to educate yourself, to warn you about potential problems and to guide you to your future success.
I’m on a self driven mission to push out a ton of short, helpful (well I’m hoping they’re helpful) articles over the rest of the summer.
I’ve joined a ton of landlord groups in the last six months where I’m trying to actively help and even mentor folks in some cases and there is so much confusion out there.
Perhaps I’ve simply forgotten everything I’ve learned or maybe I was fortunate to have stumbled onto the right resources as I became an educated landlord, but there are a ton of landlords and potential landlords that need help.
So, if you’re one of these individuals and have a question you’d like addressed in an article, leave me a comment below, or if you’d prefer to be slightly anonymous email me and I’ll address it in an upcoming article to help others as well.