Never ceases to amaze me when reading all these war stories about terrible tenant experiences.

When I was younger,...and less experienced and less cynical,.. I certainly made my share of mistakes in both judgements about tenants and contractors as well as the tricks of the trade that are avoided only with exceptional mentoring or years of street fights and experience,...and usually a combination of both.

Today, with the Internet, there is an incredible amount of free information and tracing on everyone.. If we are willing to spend some time . There are many LL services with reasonable fees which harvest public record information fairly well,....with the understand that reliability is less than ''''' six sigma """" and the understanding is acknowledged that garbage in is garbage out.

Yet it remains incredible how many LLs are simply putting any warm body (s) into their properties, and hope for the best, which usually doesn't come or is short lived. Yes,....I know,... A vacant month is eight and a half percent of a year, and the vandalism and utilities and squatters and showings and commissions and the dust that settles on the horizontal surfaces. Yes, yes, yes.

In my A and B properties I charge processing fees of 100 per person.

ÇxIt's harder in the B minus and C to command that much. I don't own soft C's or below. Never have and never will. I just don't have the personality for it. I realize there's Good money to be made down there with wonderful cash on cash ratios. I enjoyed reading the recent OT post on CC handguns with the staggering amount of chime in's by our colleagues. Little too tony soprano or """ two big guys with a truck to help you move"""' for me.

Why are so many of us venting about our terrible experiences ?

Well, they say you don't know someone until you rent to them.

Look at all the complaints about someone who has been good even very good for years and then turns bad,..sometimes very bad.

Some people are hard to vet,.even with the internet services. They are savvy to know to list that they are living elsewhere esp with friends or relatives prior.There are books to tell them how w/o being detected. There are same/different books that are called something like "How to xxxx your LL" I know I have obtained some of them to try to stay ahead of them.Great tactics on how to do this to LL's

In recent years, the only tenants I have had "go bad" is not because the tenant changed, but bad family members showed up. I have one older lady tenant, health care worker, in an over-garage studio. Her wayward adult criminal son gets out of jail and keeps showing up and sleeping in her garage. Twice now. Threatening to evict her gets him out again without incident but she knows now if it happens again she is gone.

Middle class people, who are going to be the majority of small mom and pop landlords, simply have no idea how large the percentage of the population consists of scummy dishonest people. They have lived sheltered from that type of person.

It was a real shock to me when I went into law enforcement to learn how many people are dishonest, totally self centered, and proud to get away with crime and destruction. It was another shock when I went into landlording to find how huge that population of scum really is.

It's a big adjustment to the thought process.

When I first got into landlording, I made a couple of mistakes because of too much trust on my part. It's hard to realize that people actually are hoping to hurt you and steal from you.

I don't find our information online to be increasing. it's gotten impossible to reverse directory a phone number, which was one of our most valuable tools for screening.

"I mean seriously, you aren't supposed to screen out felons because that is racism?"

Hi Dave...

Well, I'm not one to post about my problems, because--thank the Good Lord--I haven't had many since we started really being careful about screening.

Yes, I've got one tenant who paid a few bucks short 2 weeks ago and hasn't paid since last Friday when pmt #2 was due. But that is one person. She is the only problem person out of the entire portfolio. I'm not too worried. She gets 48 hours from my "Rent?" reminder this morning until we start finding reasons to evict. Can't evict for non-payment, so we will be going other routes if needed. And, if we can't find another route, we will try the non-payment route and see if she can provide the documentation to avoid eviction. There are quite a few hoops she will have to jump thru to avoid it.

I too don't get it. We post here about the 2-minute in home inspection, but so many LLs refuse to do it or poo-poo it as "weird" or "intrusive" or "my applicants won't stand for it!"

How many of those actually TRIED it? My guess is few to none. It has made all the difference.

Someone above said, "You don't know someone until you rent to them." That is partly correct, but you can sure find out a lot about them by diligently screening and meeting them in their current home. Why someone refuses to do this is beyond me, but it's their valuable investment they're turning over to a complete stranger. Sort of like letting your teenage daughter date a dude from school or one she found online without sitting him down and having "the talk." I'm sure some people think that's weird too. I don't care. I'm weird. It's what I do, and it works.

.

People have changed for the worst over the last 20 years. I am 69 and a small time LL retired from a good W2 job.

More and more people believe it is OK to lie to get what they need or think they need.

Years ago I could do a little bit of screening, get some references, do a face to face never had any major trouble.

NOW - my attitude is the prospect is lying about something and if I don't find it I have done a poor job of screening.

Inspections and tenant policing is an absolute must.

Laura - Thanks about my dad. I used to go out with him sometime - you would not believe some of the stupid people he had to deal with. And how quickly a situation could become very dangerous.

Plenty - I know exactly what you are talking about the truth teller who has a sad story. But in the end as you said - don't get involved and keep the emotion out of it.

PG beat me to it. People, as a group, have changed for the worse.

When we started me screening criteria was "Did they fill out the application? and Did they say they can afford it?"

There were not online court records to check and we did not know to call their employer.

But it worked well. We made money and had very few issues.

When I started the advice was "If you let them fall 2 months behind you won't see ANY money."

Years later I pushed that to one month behind.

As of a few years ago I switched to ZERO TOLERANCE. Due on Friday, Evict on Tuesday.

Negative stories: they are more exciting AND offer great lessons. "Everything went fine" does not make the 6 o'clock news.

ANYONE can be a LL. NOTHING required - no training, no experience, no professional membership, no continuing education...and no business sense required!

BRAD

...ANYONE can be a LL. NOTHING required - no training, no experience, no professional membership, no continuing education...and no business sense required!...

Very true - however, being a successful landlord generally requires a lot of time, effort and hard work... including the school of hard knocks and the willingness to change and adapt for various circumstances.