Not asking about their food, asking about tenants as waitresses really? How many of you with Class C houses, in a D neighborhood rent to waitresses?

I have a prospect that says she's been in the same place since 2012. But has a husky mix, & 2 male neutered cats. I didn't even ask if they smoked yet because he has pictures of mary jane plants on his FB page. She said the reason she is moving is because landlord lives over them & has 10 dogs in his place. He is putting in a kennel in the yard so he can rescue more. (I have to admit this tops any other "Why I'm moving" story.) I do see on the statewide criminal/traffic where she has had one charge of shoplifting. Not saying I am going to rent to her but on the plus side, they already have hard water where they are so she might not complain about the water.

Are renters hard to find in VA? If your considering this application do you like to inflict pain on yourself?

Thank you o' lord for owners who consider these types and rent to them. It keeps them out of our property's.

The question seems to read: How many of you with Class C houses, in a D neighborhood rent to waitresses?

Please folks, did you see the part where I said "I did not say I was going to rent to them?"

This is what I am dealing with right now. These are the types I am getting as prospects! I did have a State Police Sgt., and one of his troopers interested until they saw the neighborhood. (junk around several abandoned houses, & the neighbors are poor on either side and cannot keep up their houses).

I m not concerned about the waitress job. I am concerned about the tenant's history and "character".

I have had a 50 year old waitress in one of my houses for 8 years. We applied for Virginia rent relief when the cafeteria was closed during the pandemic. Otherwise, she has paid mostly on time.

She did a $100/month self imposed rent increase last fall!

She works at a cafeteria and knows how to work the patrons - lots of touching on the shoulders, talkative, friendly, etc.

She makes $800 - $1000 per week in tips.

I would rent to her again.

This is the pool of tenants that you attract from bandit signs and CL ads.

You have to fix your advertising.

You will not get good tenants using your methods.

Don’t do anything else today until you have Zillow and Zumper ads up with good quality pictures and ad copy.

Anytime you have rentals in Class D hoods, your tenant choices are never great. As a LL in these hoods, you have to learn how to separate the wheat from chafe. It takes years of experience in learning how to do this. And I will admit that I am now a lot better at it than I use to be.

The shoplifting was in 2017. 2 years probation, 30 days 30 suspended, fine was hefty at 100. & costs 206.00. That definitely concerns me. The only positive take away I could see was used to hard water.

We have 3 vacancies this morning it is 23 degrees, heat on low (50 degrees) at all 3. I pride myself at getting and keeping tenants. This has been the worst year ever. The people looking/remaining after everyone is buying is unbelievable in my area.

Pat, there are still good tenants in Va. take Sisco’s advice on where to run ads to fill your vacancies.

Even though you have 3 vacancies, never lower your screening criteria this is crucial to making a profitable rental business and a nonprofit able business.

Here is what I would do. As I said before on the other thread your pre-screening seems to be a problem here, along with the avenues your using to find these applicants.

1) try the suggestions Jeffrey and Sisco gave.

2) make a hard list of things you won't accept and pre-screen for them. Basic things like types and number of dogs, minimum income, their move in date. If they miss on any of these block the email/number and move on. Don't engage with that person again.

The calls have started from newspaper ad. First 2, one sister needs a place for 7 people, on SSI, social service agency has them in a motel. Mine is a 2 bedroom, so she sends her sister after me. Thank goodness she called me from her BF's phone, he has 2 pages of criminal history.

I decided to run the vacuum for a while so I can't hear the phone!

BTW, I've already had 2 people tell me to stay away from the sister. One was her former landlord, and one was a tenant of mine that said it's too much drama from her.

She screamed mold on the former landlord, but somehow thinks she will give her a good reference.

Pat...I don't know if this will help but the smallest (2 bedrooom, 1 bath) house I have is in a class C house that is in what used to be tottering on the edge of a D neighborhood but seems to have improved to a C (or better). This is because investors have come in over the last few years and bought up smaller houses, remodeled them and sold to young home owners as their first properties. As the number of houses for renters has declined and been replaced with home owners I have noticed an improvement in the area. That's a positive sign.

At any rate...this house was previously rented for just under $600 a month and after screening what appeared to be hundreds of deadbeats I finally got a stable older couple. They rented for a little under 4 years and only moved out to care for her aging mother. After move out we went in and did quite a bit of updating on the place; new sheetrock, replaced the aging windows (the house was originally built in 1924 and I swear it must have had the original windows), new flooring, paint, some electrical work, etc.. Once completed I put this little one up for $900 a month, jacked up the score requirements, increased the pet fees (along with requiring my approval vaccinations and spaying/neutering of pets, etc.).

Even with that increase in rent for a house under 900 square feet and no central heat or air I'm receiving a good number of inquiries. Have I gotten deadbeat emails from folks who don't seem to be able to read the ads? Sure but it's easy to discard there. I can't help it if some people slept through remedial reading in grade school.

Jeffrey, I'm sorry I didn't see your comment. That might be a valid point and a good solution for me.

We have a huge landlord here in the county that owns over 40 rentals and that is what is keeping him going.

you need a target GROUP for each house and should have that written down.

Werther sec 8 or Walmart employees or professional people-- you need to know your target audience and not the day of listing. Sisco made great points as did Jeffery-- well planned out.

We stopped newspaper ads for years now and no yard signs either.

Very first instruction: YOU MUST DRIVE BY the blinds are up and we have a COLOR flyer in the window. Check out the place and give a call after reviewing. This knocks most out of the running-- simple for the fact there to lazy to even drive by.

I agree with the others that you might want to change WHERE you're advertising.

To fill my rooming houses, I advertised 4 different ways.

1) Craigslist. Can you say "bottom of the barrel"? Rented 1 room and DQ'd everyone else.

2) Local paper, ad for 2 weeks. Got a whopping 2 calls and rented 1 room to a retired guy.

3) FB Marketplace. By far my best source of leads. I could see the person's profile immediately and accidentally delete the messages from certain individuals.

4) Sign in yard. Got about a dozen calls, almost all of them from people looking for a house to rent. I guess they couldn't read past "For Rent" to see "Rooms $XX/week". Rented 1 room from the sign.

Ditto what Sisco said. Quality leads don't come from bandit signs, newspapers, or Craigslist.

I saw where you said you weren't going to rent to her. So why post about her? I think that's the part most of us don't get. Especially after another recent post about having problems with a different applicant bugging you about her rejection and sicking her social worker on you

There was another poster on here awhile back from my state. She always had the worst issues with tenant management, but they were the same issues over and over. People tried to help her, but she'd hide behind not having good English language skill (she was not a native speaker). Many of us stopped responding to her posts because it didn't matter what we said: there was always an excuse or she never acknowledged when people gave her good tips. I don't see her on here any more. Hope things got better for her.

Eat some turkey today. Friday, find an internet savvy teenager and pay him/her $100 to get your Zilllow account set up. Take good quality pics of that house and get them loaded. Post a link here on Mr. LL.

Let's see some positive steps being taken.

She smokes, uses dope, has 3 pets, one of which might be forbidden by your insurance company, and she is a convicted thief. Her shack-up companion is basically unemployed. Or maybe he grows marijuana, maybe that's what "tree work" means,

And the only thing you are worried about is whether or not a waitress might make a good tenant?

Here are the 2 items that i am going to start looking for in this market=====

1. They already have the deposit in their hot little hands Tired of unprepared lookers who are going to get their deposit from a local organization, Dept of Social Service or a church.... Prefer someone who has put money away for the move.

2 Someone who does not start off our conversaton with complaints about their current landlord. You know, the ones who are not fixing things