What is a way to reduce a tenants move-in cost without sacrificing the LL's income or profit?

Any ideas out there?

6x6, you said that you would like more of my input. And I said I would do so (because you asked:). To directly answer your question, the following is one way to reduce a resident's move-in cost without sacrificing your income. In fact, this strategy of offering new residents TWO OPTIONS for Move-in Cost will actually increase your income. This is just one of the many ideas I shared at the recent Convention.

In the lease, a "qualified" new resident is always offered TWO options for Move In Cost. For simplicity sake, let's say the landlord normally wants the following at move-in:

LEASE CLAUSE - MOVE-IN COSTS

Option A (typical scenario): $1,000 for first month's rent and $1,000 for deposit. Total of $2,000 Move-in Costs required.

Option B: New resident agrees to 10% higher rent - $1,100 for monthly rent. And the landlord agrees to cut the deposit in half, only $500 required. Total of only $1,600 Move-in Costs required.

You have thereby reduced the Move-in costs by $400 (20%), but you have actually increased your annual income by 10%.

And in case you as the landlord are concerned that you have a lower amount of money to cover yourself against damages (if the new resident chooses option B), at the end of the first year you have actually collected more money overall between the slightly higher rent and the lower deposit than what the typical landlord has collected in rent and deposit.

Very few "people" that are of a legal age that wish to rent a property, should have savings or assets to come up with ALL OF THE MOVE IN COSTS!.

During the L.A. Fires, Floods and Earthquakes, many had nothing saved and couldn't put down the full move in costs. I had around 20 vacant rentals that the "City" forced me to offer to these select "losers".

One family had a collection of motorcycles kept in storage. I asked for 1 of them to be transferred into my name, as collateral for 1st and Security. They refused.

Hearing that clause cost under $80 when Jeffery visited Erie earlier this year. If only a single resident elects to do this the cost of education doubles my money. With 80 plus door a bar of one is rather low. Nope, instead I got a resident to sign a two-year lease instead which allowed me to work with them and double the benefit in an end of May move in.

An even bigger nugget I got though, is stop saying no in my mind and give the qualified lead two choices to say yes. As I was digesting that, I was thinking to myself, these folks can say yes or no typically. Jeffery's approach also gives them two choices - yes or yes. Which approach yields better result?

With the key being "Qualified", fully screened, hopefully there will be little damage to worry about when they leave. Especially when it is managed well with periodic maintenance visits and timely repairs.

I am thinking about move-OUT before they move IN because that's when things go sour, if they are ever going to...so I *will* work with people, take payments on deposits, do pro-rated rent if that means the first month is less, but I will not forego deposit. Never works for me.

I do understand that I would earn more money if I raised rent and lowered deposit. I don't need more rent though. I need my place returned undamaged and clean. Clean. Clean and Empty and ready to occupy by the next person within 24 hours. Did I mention I want it clean?

I find that not having a large deposit means folks will NOT return the place as I want it, with a large deposit at stake they will. They will also cooperate with showings and just in general be more pleasant and easy to deal with.

I see the good and bad with both of these strategies.

With Jeffrey's you are collecting more rents. If you put the extra rents into a separate sub account you can easily track the extra income to see if it will 'pay' for the loss at turnover.

With WMH's you know what everything is up-front. No extra money made but no loss in rents at turnover.

Would be interesting to see what the differences work out to in specific periods of time.

I know that I got somewhat lucky with my last turnover. Tenant moved out. I went over to change the locks and do a walk thru. She forgot to clean off the top of the fridge and under the stove. She also didn't wipe down the bathroom, which had hair around. Then I checked the tub drain and pulled a wookie out of it.

All in all I was there maybe half an hour. Place was Already rented as the tenant coming in had been waiting for the other to finally leave.

I sent her deposit back minus $100 for cleaning. I didn't miss a day of rent (woo hoo!) so I considered all as good.

Thank you everyone.

Jeffrey, I appreciate that. I was thinking along the same lines. Plus, if they move out and the damages are more you can still go after the monies for damage over the smaller deposit. I like getting your input.

That said, I do see WMH's point. They might be less incentivized to clean when leaving.