Here's the deal with being a landlord, if a tenant decides not to pay you are screwed!!!
So here's the scenerio. you have a unit and you are renting it out for $1500/mo. Great! life is so good right? WRONG!!!!! You have mortgage payments that are say $600/mo right? seems good.
so you get $900/mo free and clear, right? NO! you have prop taxes say $400/mo. ok so now you are
down to $500/mo free and clear, NO! you have maybe water to pay for, and that unit runs about $60/mo, and you pay for garbage which is $30/mo, and you have the generosity to have a gardner,
who charges you $100/mo, but you have respect for your place and the tenants and you want the place to look nice so you have that as a nice perq. so now you are clearing $310/mo. hmmm seems
ok. Well then you get a call for the stove it is failing. you call and have a repairmen come out, fixes it for $250. Then the fridge fails and same thing. $250. they seem to know that you won't pay $350 cause you might as well get a new one at that price, and that you need to fix it but don't want to pay for a new one, so they charge you that $250 amount or around there no matter what the problem is. So you were going to make $3720 on the year but now you have had a few costs and it's now down to $3220. Great! still going strong. then you get a call, the wiring blew out my tv the tenant claims. So you go and you check it out you do your best to troubleshoot what happened, and you can't figure it out so you call an electrician, all the while the tenant is saying he wants a new tv cause your electrical blew out his tv. So the electrician comes spends about 2 hours diagnosing the deal and then tells you that it was an overload on the cirquit and the tenant has too many things plugged into one line and it blew a wire in the attic and almost started a fire, he wants $1000 for his work. yep that has happened to me. So now you are down to $2720 profit for the year. But then your tenant makes you do alot of paperwork as he never quite pays the $1500, sometimes it's $1350, or next time it's $1435, then next time it's $1522, then next one is $1234, then $1567, Then on and on, you have to keep track and send notes to them showing what they owe every month and what the back rent is and when will they catch up etc. Because you won't evict unless they are not paying anything. Then they start paying less, some story about their father died and they had to pay for the funeral and fly everyone out from florida and they had to pay for all the flights so he can't pay this month but he will catch up next month for sure cause they are all going to pay him back, and next month he will get caught up. then next month comes and there is no check, now you are out $3000 and some change for all the other little short payments. Yes this shit happens all the time. Now you are at about -$500 for the unit on the year. But now you have to evict.
So you go ahead and pay the lawyer to start the eviction and he charges $1300 for the service. add that to your growing losses, now you are -$1800 on the unit for the year. the judge says ok yeah you win but the tenant is a poor tenant and there are free services provided by the state for folks and they want to go to trial, your lawyer tells you that it will be cheaper to settle because if we go to trial it could cost $10,000 dollars. So we then settle and they ask for one year of free rent to get their life together, I say no fuckin way, one month anyways it gets negotiated to 3 months and I don't get any rent for three more months because thats cheaper than the potential costs a trial could be. So at the end of three months you are out $4500 more plus the mortgage of $600/mo and whatever else the costs are, so you now are down to -$6300 on the unit for this year. and so finally the assfuck is out after robbing you, well, you're still not done, now you have to go in and fix the place back up again, paint, cleaning, maybe broken windows, maybe new carpet, anyways lets say you spend a minimum of $3000 on it to get it rent ready again, you are now out nearly $10,000 on the year. YES this happens all the fuckin time!!!!!!!!! Tenants don't give a shit what they cost you, they break stuff like blinds and ruin carpets and whatnot not realizing or caring how much that will cost you, they all think that landlords are filthy rich and have all the money in the world, well we don't we are often barely surviving because assfucks don't pay the rent, and I am in constant battle with tenants to get the fuckin rents paid, and that is hopefully enough to get them to pay, if they don't then you have the great "fuck the landlords" court system to fall back on. Landlords are sitting ducks and it needs to change. the laws need to change it is not ok that tenants get to rob for months and just walk away scott free. and all this would not be so bad in a growing economy, but in a recession where all your equity is collapsing and the rents become crucial in your economic survival, it is just all wrong. As soon as I get the economy back I am selling everything.
so ya want to be a landlord, you need your head examined.
