What Would Make You Quit Being A Landlord?

As you gain knowledge being a landlord you do it two main ways, through good experiences and through bad experiences. As a landlord bad experiences can be problems with tenants, lenders, insurance or even neighbours.

It’s one of those bad experiences that drove another landlord out of the business.

As many of you know, I help landlords in my area (Alberta) get through the process of evicting tenants. It’s knowledge I’ve gained through many bad experiences!!

One way I help is I’ve created an easy to follow step by step guide that walks landlords through not just the eviction process itself, but what to expect along the way. I really take the unknown out of the situation for landlords and give them confidence to get through an eviction.

Confidence they didn’t have before.

Now I’ve sold a lot of these guides over the years, we’re talking hundreds!! And I’ve only ever had to do a handful of refunds. So whenever someone asks for a refund I get curious.

Half of the time I know they’ve just taken advantage of my refund policy and the other few occurrences they’ve had very valid reasons. Well I had another refund request this week…

And the reason for the refund? Well the tenant left before the landlord could start the eviction. And he left a ton of damage behind. And he’s tired of being a landlord so he’s quitting…

Another landlord down.

Now it’s too late for this fellow, but the question comes up, could it have been avoided? And more importantly would it make YOU quit?

Be Prepared

You will have problems, challenges and bad experiences as a landlord. Solving them and getting through them will differentiate you from being a landlord who simply quits when the going gets tough or worse yet has to quit.

Now I’m not saying this particular individual gave up too early, I don’t have enough of the details I just know there is an important lesson here.

Unprepared landlords have fewer options to recover, fewer options to get them through tough situations and most often few or zero reserves to deal with a financial hit like lost rent or larger repairs.

If you want to survive the bad along with the good you need to be prepared.

This requires setting aside cash reserves to deal with bigger expenses, it involves understanding eviction rules so you can get tenants out quickly when necessary and it involves understanding potential financial, insurance and other pending challenges.

So really it involves being prepared and educated! And that’s the important lesson!

If you go blindly in thinking you will become wealthy by just buying and holding you may get a big surprise along the way. A surprise that can set you back significantly if you’re not careful.

Be prepared to not just survive when times are tough, but to thrive!

Today’s question, could you survive if you had a $2,000 hit against your rental property? A $5,000 hit? what about a $10,000 loss? Would you be forced to sell or could you make it work?

Leave me a comment below and share your strategy or plan during a bad experience with others. Also please share this with other friends and landlords you know so they can start thinking about being prepared!