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*Never be a landlord without the cash flow and/or skillset to manage maintenance and repairs!
*Never be a landlord without the ability to treat people respectfully, if you have lots of conflicts in other areas, you will have conflicts with tenants.
*Never be a landlord if you are gullible by nature. Every landlord is eventually contacted by people within his/her personal network that need a favor. It pulls at one's heartstrings but this is a business, not a charity.
*Never be a landlord if you have a tendancy to overreact or you are not able to reasonably understand other people's perspectives. You need to be able to discern between what is a safety/health or property impact issue vs. what displeases you.
*Never be a landlord without the cash flow and/or skillset to manage maintenance and repairs!
*Never be a landlord without the ability to treat people respectfully, if you have lots of conflicts in other areas, you will have conflicts with tenants.
*Never be a landlord if you are gullible by nature. Every landlord is eventually contacted by people within his/her personal network that need a favor. It pulls at one's heartstrings but this is a business, not a charity.
*Never be a landlord if you have a tendancy to overreact or you are not able to reasonably understand other people's perspectives. You need to be able to discern between what is a safety/health or property impact issue vs. what displeases you.
Oh, all the responses are so true.
I am a resident apt mgr, and an acquaintance recently asked me if I had any available rentals, because she wanted to move. She has bedbugs and her landlord wants her to get rid of her mattress and boxspring, but she doesn't want to have to buy a new one. So, would I let her move into my building? Fortunately, I didn't have a vacancy anyway (that day lol!), so I didn't have to get into it with her.
*Never be a landlord without the cash flow and/or skillset to manage maintenance and repairs!
*Never be a landlord without the ability to treat people respectfully, if you have lots of conflicts in other areas, you will have conflicts with tenants.
*Never be a landlord if you are gullible by nature. Every landlord is eventually contacted by people within his/her personal network that need a favor. It pulls at one's heartstrings but this is a business, not a charity.
*Never be a landlord if you have a tendancy to overreact or you are not able to reasonably understand other people's perspectives. You need to be able to discern between what is a safety/health or property impact issue vs. what displeases you.
Wow, scary, you pretty much described my mom (who is a landlord)!
She has the skill set to manage maintenance and repairs but it's irrelevant when her primary rental property is three hours away and she is now 70 years old.
She is a control freak AND gullible/a softie both, bad combination. A few years ago she let my brother's "baby mama" move in to a property because my niece was still a minor and that's her grandchild and all... ended up with them not paying the already dirt-cheap rent plus running up utility bills and multiple other problems, all kinds of hard feelings.
She has said flat out that she'd never rent to ME (too "messy" for her tastes) and I have said flat out that I'd never rent from someone like her!
I think the biggest problem for some (like her) is renting a property that you are sentimental about. My mother rents out my childhood home, which I have not lived in for 28 years, because she always hoped to come back and live in it in old age OR pass on to me and my brother with the hopes that one of us would live in it with our families. Of course I have tons of fond memories of that house but I would never ever choose to live in that town again and neither would my brother. Long ago it became apparent that neither situation would be likely but she still holds on to it for all the wrong reasons. She has an impossible time being objective when it comes to renting it out. If she wanted to get into the rental business she should have, IMO, sold that house long ago and re-invested the money into actual rental properties that she had no emotional attachments to.
So yeah, I'd definitely add to the list "someone who cannot detach from any sentimentality about the property in question"...
Last edited by Sally_Sparrow; 05-21-2013 at 03:07 PM..
So yeah, I'd definitely add to the list "someone who cannot detach from any sentimentality about the property in question"...
Oh, so true. This isn’t my personal story, but a good friend of mine rented a small house several years back. The owner was a first-time landlord, and it was the first house that he had ever owned. He got married and moved into his new wife’s house. He couldn’t sell his house for what he needed due to the economy, so he rented it to my friend. The rent was good for the location and all would’ve been well except he was so nosy about the house.
The new wife’s house was nearby(ish), and periodically he’d come into the neighborhood to say “hi” to his old neighbors, but would wind up knocking on the door to “see if anything was needed” at the house. He never came in without an invitation, but it was so strange. It said in my friend’s lease that she was allowed to paint as long as she painted it back upon move-out, so she painted her kitchen a vibrant blue. The next time the landlord was there for a repair, he kept staring at the blue and making small comments about it like he just couldn’t let it go. There were tons of other examples – the state of the yard is another (yardwork was her responsibility, and she kept it up well, but he evidently kept it constantly at the yard equivalent of a buzz cut and just couldn’t let it go).
In the end, my friend only stayed until her lease was up – it’s a shame, because it was a good house in a great location, but the landlord’s inability to detach from the property did not make for relaxing living.
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