One of the biggest mistakes in judgement is pulling your ads too early. So many times, we see properties with vacant units, and zero advertisements in the local market, and we ask ourselves what the owner is thinking. Barring unique circumstances, there is exactly one way to maximize the return on your property, and that’s […]
It’s always the right time to advertise — but only August is the best time! There are a lot of theories bandied back and forth about when the best time to try to advertise your rental is. Our thoughts are the August is the month for rental properties, because it’s the month for motivated people […]
The low-down on getting the down-low. Sometimes, you’re just not sure about a tenant. Maybe everything seems OK on paper, but you have an intuition that says there’s something untoward beneath the surface. Maybe you’ve got an ex-felon with no credit who claims to make $65,000/year mowing lawns, but he has honest eyes and a […]
Otherwise excellent people sometimes have amazing difficulties dealing with money. In Part I, we pointed out the most basic tenant-screening questions that we hope landlords everywhere are using to keep the worst of the riff-raff out of their properties — but we stopped short of talking about financial questions, because they’re a bit more complex […]
It’s not always easy to tell which tenants are going to be a hassle. We’ve all had problem tenants before — people who decided that they could use the walls of their rental for throwing-knife practice, people who routinely revved up their un-muffled motorbikes at 3am, and so on. The only thing you can do […]
Should You Have a Combination Smoke & Carbon Monoxide Detector? When you think about emergencies that can happen in your home, it can be all too easy to worry about raging flames without considering other, less obvious dangers. Carbon monoxide is among the most fatal of these less-apparent concerns. Carbon monoxide is odorless and colorless, […]
Will more cities start requiring them? The smoke caused by house fires can be detected in numerous ways without a smoke detector; heat, smell, sight, sound and even taste. We can detect smoke in our homes with all our five senses. CO or Carbon Monoxide on the other hand is colorless, odorless and tasteless. It […]
Many landlords worry over scaring away tenants resulting in longer vacancies if they require renter’s insurance – but not requiring it could cost even more. The initial reaction of many landlords to the subject of renter’s insurance is, “my property is insured, so why should I care?” On the surface this response seems obvious and […]
The 2nd round of the Oakland County (MI) tax foreclosure auction was just held and the county treasurer’s office is calling it a success. Due to a scheduling conflict, it was held at Ultimate Soccer Arenas – which turned out to be a much better venue for a public auction than the county auditorium where […]
You can pay a little now, or a lot later… We just took over the management of a tenant occupied property, where the property owner had been a “Do-It-Yourself” (DIY) landlord for many years. We were told the property was in fine condition. Fortunately, we send out a survey to tenants when we take over […]