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If you have a property that you are trying to rent and you are either preparing it for rent or doing some marketing for it, you will find that creating and using flyers to market it an important task. We cover creating and utilizing flyers for rental properties in the For Rent Flyer Checklist.
In this checklist, we cover how to create your flyer including the particular service that we recommend for quickly making professional looking flyers.
We give you a rough idea of the number of flyers to have printed up to have enough at the house and to distribute out to neighbors to encourage them to help select their neighbor or refer friends and family as potential tenants in your property.
Since using flyers is an inexpensive and highly effective way to fill vacancies, you will find yourself using this checklist often.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. Are you landlord looking for ways to improve your property management skills to add more money to your bottom line? Download and listen to the Secret Property Management Tips and Tricks real estate investor audio course (free for a limited time).
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To help avoid claims that you have violating fair housing laws you need to have a well documented system for selecting tenants and follow that system. The Screening Tenant Checklist is a great tool to help you have a written system describing exactly what you expect each tenant to provide to you when they apply to rent your property.
The checklist describes the process you would follow as a landlord when you take calls from prospective tenants and how to correctly gather information from them to be able to process their rental application.
We cover the types of identification and proof of income they should provide when you meet them at the house to complete an application.
We also stress that you should have each adult over the age of 18 that will be living in the property complete a separate application.
In this checklist we also discuss our policy for holding a rental property and what a prospective tenant must do to have us hold a property for them.
Until my next post,
James
P.S. Want more information on how we recommend you manage your rental properties? Download, for a limited time for free, the Secret Property Management Tips and Tricks real estate investor audio course.
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I hope this does not sound familiar to you, but it does sound too familiar to too many landlords. The first of the month comes and rent is due, but where’s the check?
You decide to give it an extra day or two in case the mail is slow because the tenant has been great about paying the past.
A couple days go by and its the weekend… I’ll just wait until Monday you think. Monday comes and you get called out on urgent business.
In fact, its not until Wednesday that you even remember that the tenant’s rent is late and by then, its 11 at night. So, on Thursday, you finally call and get the answering machine. I’ll give him a day to get back to me.
Friday comes and goes: no call back. You decide to give it the weekend. Still no word, so you finally go out and post a notice to pay or quit. That gets a call from the tenant. That’s odd they say… it must have been lost in the mail. I’ll resend it out to you.
Well… by now you get the idea. In the end, you don’t even start the eviction process until the first of the next month (if you’re lucky) and then it takes time to do that entire process.
First off, I hope this isn’t you and I am sorry to say it has been me in the past, but let me share with you a much better solution.
What if, instead of the above you had a very non-emotional system set up. Tenants have a 30 day grace period to pay: the period from when you paid rent on the first the month before to the first of the next month. If it is not received on the first, its late.
On the second you put up a Notice To Pay Or Quit. After the legal amount of time you need to wait (usually 3 to 5 days depending on your local laws), if they still have not paid you turn their lease and the Notice To Pay Or Quit over to a Collection Attorney (links to exclusive content for our Real Estate Investor Bronze Members only) and they start the eviction and collect unpaid rent, late fees and pay the attorneys fees (as outlined in your Rental Agreement or Lease Agreement). Isn’t that a much cleaner, easy to implement system?
So, go ahead and look in your phone book to find a collection attorney and use the Collection Attorney Interview Questions as a starting point to find the right one to work with you and your properties.
Until my next post,
James
Inner Circle Membership - Daily, Live Training for Bird Dogs, Wholesalers, Real Estate Investors and Real Estate Entrepreneurs with Q&A and consulting and more.
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If you have rental properties, then chances are that over the years you’ve received a few certified letters from your city’s neighborhood department citing ordinance violations for your rented properties. These violations can take many forms. Most commonly they are simple *nuisance* infractions for things like not mowing the lawn and leaving garbage and trash out.
For these sorts of nuisance violations, unless your property is vacant, it is usually the tenant’s fault and therefore their responsibility to get it taken care of. That said, it requires follow up on your part to make sure that it happens and that the city doesn’t stick you with a heavy fine and possibly place a lien against your property. So, it’s helpful to have a clear system to follow to make sure that you get it taken care of in a timely fashion at the least cost to you.
Our Received City Ordinance Violation Notice Checklist on the Real Estate Investor Wiki is a great place to go to see a thorough rundown of the best practices to use to take care of these situations efficiently. It will take you through the simpler process of getting in touch with your Property Management Company to the slightly more involved steps of dealing directly with your tenant. The links provided are to additional resources that we have exclusively for our Real Estate Investor Bronze Members.
One thing to remember when receiving these notices is that sometimes the infractions are not the tenant’s responsibility, but rather yours, the landlord’s. We once received a notice because the address numbers on the house were not visible from the street. It turns out that the last time the house was painted, someone accidentally painted over them. This was our job to fix. So, be sure to read the description of the violation before automatically calling your tenant.
Another thing to note is that sometimes a violation notice for overgrown lawn, trash, etc. can be an indication that a tenant has moved out without notice and has abandoned the property. So be sure to drive to the property and check it out in person if you don’t get a response from your tenant via telephone.
With good luck and great tenants, hopefully you’ll never receive one of these notices, but chances are the inspectors will be out at some point when your property is waiting to be cleaned up during a vacancy or when a tenant may be temporarily remiss in their duties. When this happens, know what to do by reviewing the Received City Ordinance Violation Notice Checklist.
Until my next post,
James
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