Tenants, who to choose

In a perfect world you would have lots of tenants with great credit, no criminal history and a spotless rent record. Sadly reality has to rain in on our parade, making the perfect tenant a rare animal and not the norm. This is even more true now with the economy the way it is. And for anyone living under a rock the last couple of years, I mean its completely horrible.

So before you write off tenants with black markets in their past, its a good idea to take a look at exactly what they are. For example I wouldn't write off someone who has a minor shop lifting charge when the were 19 if it was 10 or 20 years ago. After all, how many people did stupid crap in college. Most of us were just luck enough not to get caught. It is highly likely that the one incident was enough to scare them back on the straight and narrow, so why penalize them for something stupid they did in their youth, especially if everything else is spotless. You could be losing a great tenant.

Credit is a major sticking point for most landlords, with good reason. I mean who wants to rent to a tenant who has a habit of not paying. No one with any sense. Having to evict and take someone to court to get late rent is no walking in the park, so most landlords would prefer to avoid it. However that being said, it never hurts to take a closer look at why someone's credit isn't overly high.

After all lets face it, how many business have let go of employees to stay afloat or just gone under completely? A whole bunch, and finding a new job is a painful slow process for most people now a days. This could easily make it impossible to pay bills, especially large ones like mortgage. As that was the only issue and the tenant had a steady job and had been there for sometime, why let the fact that they haven't yet had enough time to erase the past from their credit stop you. Especially if their credit was good before things went down hill.

That being said, avoid people immediately tell you a sob story. The more dramatic and heart wrenching it is, the more likely it is to be a scam. Make sure you do your research, don't assume what the potential tenant is telling you is the truth. Happy tenant hunting.

Bad Landlords, Make the rest look bad

Its landlord's like this that give landlords in general a bad name. Its a business, practices like that make it hard to get good tenants. Only someone who doesn't care about long term tenants and is looking to make a quick buck would let their property get like that. The property I currently own had a bad landlord, prior to my purchasing it. It took me years to escape the bad reputation. I spent weeks working on Tenant Screening trying to find a good tenant my first year. 90% of the applications had multiple eviction and some had criminal records. Now when i have to fill an apartment I have a lot of good choices. But it took a long time to earn that reputation, so seeing landlords pull this crap annoys me.

Couple sues landlord over mold in Bound Brook rental home

Published: Sunday, August 09, 2009, 6:27 AM     Updated: Monday, August 10, 2009, 10:44 AM

 By Tom Meagher 

BOUND BROOK -- A husband and his pregnant wife are suing their former landlords, accusing the Jersey City couple of failing to remediate "toxic mold" from the Bound Brook home they rented until May.

A complaint filed last week with Superior Court in Somerville alleges that the mold may have caused the health problems Floyd and Tabatha McColley suffered from while living in the Cedar Crest Road house, and also suggests that it had an impact on the woman's unborn child.

"There's a definite problem with the baby that will require... immediate action after birth," Floyd McColley said Thursday, but stopped short of saying mold is responsible for the unspecified medical issue that was diagnosed by an obstetrician.

The girl, expected in about two months, will be born at Columbia University Medical Center in New York "so she's right there with the best doctors when she's born," said Floyd McColley, who now lives with his wife in Brick Township, Ocean County.

The couple's complaint, filed on July 27 by attorney John Charles Allen of New Brunswick, claims Sameen and Yameen Khan, the Jersey City husband and wife who rented the house to them, failed to respond to complaints that there was "severe leaking" and "substantial growth of toxic mold" in the home they moved into in August 2008.

Both McColley's had become sick after living in the home, Floyd McColley said.

"It was a gradual worsening of symptoms," he said.

They had issues with being over-tired and had trouble breathing, said the husband, who's sickness were more pronounced.

"As a result of the defects to the property and more importantly, the hazardous conditions with the property, plaintiffs were forced to move out," the complaint says.

Both McColleys are healthier since leaving, said the husband.

After moving, the landlords hired contractors who the court filing calls unqualified and not properly equipped to remove the mold. The complaint says workers destroyed property left behind by the McColleys, and Floyd McColley, who hired his own mold expert, said Thursday that the mold was made worse by the contractors.

The Khans never paid for the cost of alternate housing or relocation, the complaint said.
Reached Thursday, Sameen Khan referred questions to the couple's attorney, Michael Wroblewski of New York.

"My clients vigorously deny the allegations and have acted responsibly through this matter," he said later that day, but didn't want to elaborate.

The McColleys' suit, which is requesting a jury trial, asks that the couple be awarded compensation for various damages, as well as legal fees.

Floyd McColley, a military contractor, said he and his wife moved to Bound Brook from Illinois after his employer called him back from Iraq to work in New Jersey.

The home appeared nice when they moved in, but the flooding started with the first rain storm, he said.

"We had high hopes of staying in this place only to find out we'd moved into a nightmare."

Why Landlords Tenant Screen

Ever wonder why your landlord asks you all those questions? Why you have to fill out endless forms every time you go apartment hunting? Well there is actually a good reason for it. Being a landlord is like being a business owner and the apartments are your business. Its the landlords job to insure that the apartments are a safe environment, both for the tenants benefit and their own. 

After all, if they get a tenant who decides to destroy the property because they are having a bad day, the landlord is responsible for paying for the damages.Its true that they can often get the money back in  court, however that takes time and even more money, and until they manage that they have to pay for everything out of pocket, which could be thousands of dollars.Many landlords also depend a great deal on the money that comes from the tenants. There are a great deal of property taxes involved in owning an apartment. Without having that money coming in, many have no way to pay for it. So in truth its in the landlord's best interest to find a tenant who is capable of paying rent, likely to stick around, and not liable to go on a rampage and destroy the property. They also want to make sure you personality is a good match for their buiding. 

However, landlords, aren't mind readers. That's why potential tenants are required to fill out applications and submit to tenant screening. The information asked is only part of the process. Landlords take that information and use it on sites www.atenantscreen.com to get information such as credit reports, criminal records, and number of prior evictions. The also verify that you are who you claim to be, something that has become more important in today's society, where identity theft is rampant.

Landlords look at things like credit, how steady your job is, the amount of money you make and how much you have in account as a way to judge how likely you are to pay rent. Eviction records and criminal records generally can tell landlords how likely you are to cause issues. Last thing a landlord wants is to find the  cops at their door because of something a tenant did. 

What seems like an endless pain to tenants is the landlords best protection against scams and risky tenants. So when your filling out one of those applications, consider this, you probably don't want a neighbor selling drugs next door, or damaging any of your property either. 

BedBugs

48-hour bedbug rule may not fly

Posted 03/29/2012 by Janet Portman

Q: I've just signed a lease that has a clause about bedbugs. It says that I must report any evidence of bedbugs in my apartment within 48 hours of seeing it, and that if I don't, I'll be responsible for the cost of getting rid of them.


The lease also makes me agree to inspection without prior notice, when the purpose is to check for an infestation. Are these legal provisions? --Marcus D.


A: Like many landlords, your landlord is getting serious about detecting and getting rid of bedbugs. He may have had trouble in the past with tenants who had the problem but failed to report it.


Some tenants think they can handle it on their own; some are afraid of retaliation if they inform the landlord; and some are just in denial or too embarrassed to bring it up. The consequence of delay is often a building-wide infestation, which is a huge problem for other residents and the owners.


Your landlord's idea of holding you responsible for eradication costs if you fail to report an infestation within 48 hours is similar to a provision in a bill being considered in Iowa, House Study Bill 520.


That bill goes quite a bit further, however: Tenants who fail to report bedbugs will be responsible for building-wide remediation. The Iowa bill also provides that a tenant who doesn't report an infestation within seven days of moving in is acknowledging that the unit is bedbug-free.


Interestingly, the state's attorney general has come out against the bill, pointing out that its provisions remove any incentive for landlords to act on their own. And expecting every tenant to recognize an infestation may be asking too much if tenants are not aware of the telltale signs of bedbugs.


It's one thing for legislators to change the rules. Judges will enforce these changes unless there's something seriously wrong, public policy-wise, about the new regime. But your landlord is trying to change the rules on his own, without any help from the Legislature. And here is where your landlord may have a problem.


First, what about that "no bugs within 48 hours, it's bedbug-free" acknowledgement? Presumably, if an infestation appears one week into the tenancy, the landlord can argue that it's the new tenant who introduced them.


Consequently, the landlord will argue, the tenant should pay the remediation costs. But this reasoning ignores a fact of bedbug life: These hardy creatures can go dormant and live on for months, without a source of food, then spring to life when food (a tenant's warm body) appears.


In other words, bugs in a vacant apartment may well simply hang out for a while -- more than 48 hours after the new resident moves in -- before becoming active. Their activity does not mean that the new tenant brought them with him.


Second, the provision that allows for no-notice entry to deal with a bedbug problem may run afoul of your state's access laws. Most states regulate how much notice a landlord must give before entering, though all allow entry in case of an emergency.


A bedbug infestation, albeit nasty, is not an emergency at the level of leaking gas or billowing smoke. If your state has notice requirements, asking you to waive your rights to notice so that the infestation can be addressed will violate your state's law.


Q: I need to break my lease to take a job in another city. My lease says that I will be responsible for the landlord's costs to ready, advertise, show the unit, and screen any replacement. Is this legal? --Rich S.


A: When tenants break a lease without legal justification, they are still responsible for the rent for the balance of the lease term. However, many states require landlords to use reasonable efforts to re-rent the unit; once a new tenant moves in, the original tenant's responsibility ends.


In all states that impose this "duty to mitigate," if the landlord fails to take steps to re-rent, the tenant is off the hook. On the other hand, if the landlord is able to find a new tenant only at a lower rent (perhaps the market has cooled), the tenant remains responsible for the difference.


Whether the lease-breaking tenant is also responsible for the landlord's costs to re-rent is not so clear, however. A few state laws say so directly.


For example, Washington allows landlords to collect their "actual costs" of finding a new tenant (see Washington Revised Statute Section 59.18.310). Arizona effectively allows the same thing, by declaring that the security deposit of a tenant who abandons the rental is forfeited, to be applied to "any accrued rent and other reasonable costs incurred by the landlord by reason of the tenant's abandonment" (see: Arizona Revised Statute, Section 33-1370).


Some states simply don't address the issue. Others give vague directions: For example, California allows landlords to recover from the tenant, in addition to lost rent, compensation for "all the detriment" caused by the tenant's breach (see: California Civil Code Section 1951.2).


So, whether your landlord can stick you with re-renting costs will depend on your state's law on the subject. If there is no clear answer, you might try arguing against having to pay those costs this way: The landlord would have incurred re-renting costs had you stayed until the end of the lease term, and you certainly would not have been responsible for them at that time.


Why should you pay now, simply because the costs are hitting several months earlier? To say that it's part of your punishment for breaking the lease without justification won't fly. People who back out of contracts are expected to pay for the actual damages they cause, not to pay penalties.


But that's not to say that your early departure did not cause damages besides the loss of the rent. There is a fair way to measure your landlord's damages: His early re-renting efforts meant that he spent money several months earlier than he had planned. For those months, the money he had to lay out was not in his bank account, earning interest.


That lost interest is a true measure of his damages. In addition, he's had to devote staff and personal time to a chore that he expected would arrive later; he may be able to put a reasonable monetary figure on the value of postponing what he and the staff would otherwise have been doing.


Taken together, these are the landlord's true damages caused by having to find a new tenant sooner.

article from www.tenantverification.com

Why use TVS for tenant screening

Why use TVS

Landlords and the Fraud Rental Game

• TVS is an effectivetenant screeningservice that will help you prevent fraud and reduce income loss.
• The applicant's Social Security Number (USA) Social Insurance Number (CDN) is validated on the credit report that TVS obtains for you, so if the number shown on your rental application is not valid, you will know. Fraudsters often provide false information that includes wrong date of birth and misspelling of last name. The SSN & SIN will generally pull up a file even though false information has been given; this is one way to determine the identity and truthfulness of your Prospective Tenant.
  Little or no credit history=red flag. Click Here for the reasons why!
• TVS obtains a complete report for site inspected members that includes a current & previous address, current & previous employer, liens, collections, civil judgments and bankruptcies. It includes Credit Grantor information where the accounts are rated 1 thru 9 - "1" being the best rating which indicates that the account is paid on time and 9 being the worst which indicates that the account has likely been closed by the Credit Grantor. The FICO score (Beacon or Empirica) is an indicator of a good OR problematic credit history. The Identity is scanned for previous fraudulent activity in every instance - which further minimizes your risk.
• TVS is a Tenant Screening Service that allows landlords and property managers to report tenant pay habits, this benefits good tenants and negatively impacts delinquent tenants. TVS Members also have the ability to send tenant debts to a Collection Agencywho can report the debt to the major credit bureaus if payment is not received for your rental debt.
• Without TVS you risk renting to tenants who may be playing the fraud rental game, and have intent to use you as part of their revolving line of credit.
  TVS will help minimize your risk of fraud and income loss!

Withholding rent over dog nuisance

Posted 04/20/2012 by Janet Portman

Q: We rent the top half of a duplex in Chicago. The tenants below adopted a shelter dog eight months ago, who has severe separation anxiety and barks loudly and incessantly any time he's alone. We've spoken to the neighbors (who don't want to give the dog drugs or use a bark collar, thinking that these will "hurt" the dog), and then we took it to the landlord, over a month ago. The landlord talked to the neighbors twice, but nothing has changed. Are we within our rights to withhold rent until the dog is gone or the problem is resolved? --Fred and Alice

A: Withholding rent is an option for tenants when the landlord has failed to maintain the property according to law, if state law provides for this remedy. Not all states give tenants this option; only about two-thirds of the states do, and some of them limit the withholding remedy to specific types of repairs.

It would be unusual for a rent-withholding statute to allow tenants to use this strategy for the type of problem you're facing (a lack of reasonable peace and quiet), which does not involve making structural repairs or providing essential services.

In fact, in Illinois, rent withholding is allowed only when the property has been taken over by a receiver, after the landlord has failed to pay for utilities. The court directs the tenants to pay rent to the receiver directly. (Ill. Comp. Stat. 735/2.)

But in the city of Chicago, which has its own rental ordinance, rent withholding is available to tenants. They may withhold rent when the landlord fails to maintain the property, but that's not all: The list of maintenance failures that will support withholding is introduced with the phrase, "includes but is not limited to." (Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance.)

This handy phrase may give you the ability to withhold rent due to the landlord's failure to live up to his duty to give you "quiet enjoyment" of your rented home. An age-old concept, this duty exists in every rental, requiring landlords to deal with noisy tenants by getting them to quiet down or by evicting them. If a judge were to decide that failure to give you quiet enjoyment was a valid reason for withholding rent, you'd be on safe ground. (To find out, you'll need to do a little research to find out if similar cases have prevailed.)

Suppose, however, that you can't use withholding in response to a breach of the duty to deliver quiet enjoyment. Not all is lost. By law everywhere, if the landlord doesn't fulfill this duty, the tenant may consider that failure to be a breach of the rental agreement, justifying the tenant's moving out. Typically, the tenant must give the landlord notice of the problem and a reasonable amount of time to fix it.

I realize that moving out is not the remedy you asked about, but it could give you a way to exert pressure on your landlord to resolve the problem and allow you to stay put. Alert the landlord that not only will you move, but you'll also sue in small claims court for the damages you've suffered as a result of his breach of the lease. Such damages could include the cost of moving; applying for a new rental; and the difference, if any, between the rent you're now paying and the rent you end up paying for a comparable apartment.

Any savvy landlord will think twice before allowing this scenario to unfold. Even a less-savvy owner will realize that unless he deals with the barking dog, he'll face this problem again, with new tenants. The only sensible solution is to confront the dog-owning neighbors and demand that they solve the problem. If they cannot retrain their dog (or refuse to try), they are the ones who should move out or, sad as it may be, find another home for the dog.

Q: My tenant, who lives alone in her half of our duplex, has left for a monthlong vacation, which I knew about. I did not know that she was planning on having someone come to the property twice a day to feed and look after her cats. This person is quite annoying -- she parks in our driveway, plays loud music while she's there, invites others to come over, and stays several hours each day. Is there anything I can do about it? --Deborah E.

A: At this point, the horse is out of the barn ... rather, the cat is out of the house. Your best bet is to meet the sitter when she arrives and speak to her about her activities. Point out to her that, as your tenant's guest, she is legally bound to the same standards as her traveling friend -- no parking in the driveway, no loud music. You can also try to insist that she not invite others to the house, for reasons explained just below.

In the future, when a tenant announces a long absence and the plan for a regular house sitter or pet sitter, consider it to be a request that the tenant sublet the rental for the length of the vacation. A subtenant is someone who steps into the shoes of the main tenant for a period of time, bound to the same terms and conditions of the tenant's lease. Crucially, a subtenant requires the consent of the landlord. This will give you an opportunity to insist on meeting the proposed subtenant and going over the rules, including parking and noise.

As for inviting more friends, you can also attempt to stop this. Although it would be unreasonable to say "No visitors" to someone who is planning on living there, it's not unreasonable to say so for someone who is stopping by to check on the cats. Making this rule after the fact, however, is going to be difficult, because you may hear a protest along the lines of, "If I'm stepping into the shoes of the tenant, and she can have visitors, why can't I?" You have a rejoinder if these meetups are themselves creating a disturbance.

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Article from tenant verification

Beware of tenant repair duties in lease

Posted 05/04/2012 by Janet Portman

Q: The lease for our single-family house specifies that we will do "routine maintenance." The landlord claims that this includes fixing the roof and doing exterior painting. We had no idea that he saw it this way; we were thinking drain repair and so on. When we refused to re-roof the garage, he told us he'd sue us for the water damage that will result from a leaky roof. Can he? --Mark and Linda

A: Your question illustrates the dangers of handing over maintenance duties to tenants without a clear understanding of what those duties involve. Fortunately, the problem is relatively rare, because most states do not allow landlords to contract away their duty to maintain a fit and habitable rental. Of those that do, the statutes limit the practice to single-family homes, and typically require that the duties be spelled out in writing and that the arrangement be a fair bargain (in other words, the tenant must be paid for the labor or get a good deal on rent).

The landlord must treat the arrangement separately from his other duties as a landlord. This means, for example, that if the landlord is unhappy about the job the tenant is doing, he cannot retaliate by shutting off the water.

Even in states that allow landlords to delegate legally required upkeep, few do so. Most owners are not willing to entrust the integrity of their property to tenants who may not know much about property maintenance, and have less incentive to do things right than if they owned the property themselves.

Let's assume for now that your state allows the landlord to pass along the obligation to maintain the property, and you decline to re-roof the garage. If your landlord sues you for the resulting water damage, the burden will be on him to convince the judge or jury that you broke the maintenance agreement. And he could have a hard time doing so: The agreement, which the landlord wrote, is so vague as to be meaningless. A judge may well conclude that the landlord had a chance to write it correctly, failed to do so, and cannot now complain about the consequences.

Your landlord will be similarly out of luck if he tries to get his insurance company to cover the damage. Property damage policies cover damage that results from a sudden event, such as water that pours in after a tree has fallen on the roof. Deferred maintenance that causes water damage over time won't be covered.

Before it comes to that, get together with your landlord and revisit the delegation issue. Although the lease was signed some time ago, there's no reason why the two of you can't amend it now and fix it. Make sure that if you want to take on minor repairs only, their precise nature and extent is described thoroughly in the lease, and that you are fairly compensated for your efforts.

Q: I've always told my tenants that their rent check must be postmarked by the first of the month (rent is due the first). I've just hired a property manager, who says I should instead require receipt of the rent on the first. What do you think? --Peter A.

A: I'm with your property manager. "Due on the first of the month" means in your hand, or in your bank account if there's an electronic transfer of funds. If tenants are mailing a check, it's up to them to mail it in time to be received by the first.

Here's the practical problem with your approach: Not only will you receive the rent a number of days after it's due, but you also will have given your tenants an unintended grace period when it comes to failure to pay the rent.

Suppose, for example, that a tenant insists that she mailed the check on the first, and that date happens to have fallen on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. Because Monday is a federal holiday, the earliest the check will arrive is the following Tuesday, a full three days after the first. In fact, if she missed the last pick-up on Saturday, it will not have been processed until Tuesday ... and you can't expect to get it until Wednesday or even Thursday. So you wait until Thursday or even Friday, and don't give her a three-day notice to pay or quit until Friday or Saturday. She's managed to not pay rent for an entire week, and has another three days to come up with the rent -- 10 days after it was due.

But suppose she moves out instead? You have to take those 10 days' worth of rent from her security deposit. That leaves the balance to cover damage beyond ordinary wear and tear. If the cost to repair damage exceeds the balance of the deposit, you'll have to either sue for the remainder or swallow the loss.

Had you insisted on actually receiving rent on the first, you could have served your notice on the second, and the tenant would have had to pay by the end of the day on the fourth. If she moved out instead, you'd take only four days' worth of rent from the deposit, leaving more to cover damage.

Of course, the delay caused by your approach will delay any eviction proceedings too, which you'll need to begin if the tenant neither pays nor moves out. It's far better to file an eviction lawsuit early on, when the unpaid rent is lower, because that rent will also come out of the security deposit, leaving less to cover damage.

I hope all of this convinces you to write your future leases to require that you receive the rent by the first of the month. Putting the risk of mail delays on the tenant is the only sensible way to go.

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Article by Tenant Verification