I have a situation here that I'm not sure if I want to go for. I have two rooms available and I have a mother and daughter who want to rent the two separate rooms. Mom is a retiree. I don't have the details on the daughter yet as I'm awaiting her pre-screener.

I always mindful of the downside if the situation should end badly. My issue is that if you have a problem with one, you'll possibly have a problem with both. Even though I can evict with a lockout, that's still always stressful and something I want to avoid. Of course, the upside is that mom and daughter are there to help each other out and I get a long no hassle tenancy from both. Generally, I get very little turnover and the residents stay for a long time. I consider retirees in particular to be the best.

What are your thoughts?

Are they living together now? If they are, that's a plus. I'd have a gentle chat with each one separately to find out their reasons for living "together." That will tell you a lot.

This could be the seeds of a tenant union, or it could be that daughter is feeling obligated to help mom as she is getting older.

I had that tenant scenario when I wasn't screening to the max the way I do now. They did pay their rent on time but the adult daughter had a checkered past and mom was upfront about it. Mom worked at Walmart and received SS. When adult daughter showed up out of the pen, she went on DSS so her share was covered by DSS.

After letting them move to a downstairs apartment because the stairs were getting to be too much for the mom, they started to become "activists" mainly due to the daughter after 2 solid years. We gave them a break on the rent for the downstairs apartment and after the year was up, we notified them that it would be going to market rent. Adult daughter became abusive and started feeling she was "too good" for the apartment. Tried to pick holes (3rd bdrm really isn't a bedroom because there's a place for a washer and dryer there, etc)

Needless to say, we moved the washer/dryer hookup and gave them their walking papers.

How many rooms are in the house?

How many women are in the house already?

I've noticed that in my market, women generally don't even consider the rooming house, period.

So while there may be some red flags where a mom and a daughter are looking for a pair of rooms rather than a cheap apartment, and that reasoning should be investigated, there's also a chance that it's part of a strategy to control a greater proportion of the house variables/dynamic by controlling double the rooms, eliminating the chance for one more stranger to coexist in the house at the same time they're in residence.

When I had some Cubano construction workers taking rooms while they were in town for a project, that definitely changed the vibe in the house. A big part of that was because they were a friend group. On the plus side, they knew how to get along with each other, and their schedules and routines were all perfectly aligned. But on the other hand, they also dominated the house until they moved on--- in the early days of their stay, when I was trying to figure out if someone was angry with his friend, one of them explained to me that that was just how Cubanos normally communicated, and even though his voice was aggressive, he wasn't upset.