Be a treehugger, don’t use a Tenancy Agreement, or any other paper-consuming document.
There’s no room for empathy- you don’t want to hear excuses. You’re running a business, not a charity shop.
If you’re a s***-f** and ignored point #1, then redeem yourself by putting the following into your tenancy agreement:
1.1: I don’t want to hear excuses. You will not give me any. Ever.
1.2: I am running a business, not a charity shop.
Reserve your precious energy; don’t waste your time making quarterly inspections. All problems can be settled after your tenant has moved out with…
the security deposit
and a
baseball bat.
There should never be any immediate rush into making repairs. You’re already giving your tenant a place to stay. If you give them too much they’ll eventually expect you to lick the gum off their shoes. As long as you, the landlord, have hot food and water, nothing else really matters.
How often do properties actually burn down or randomly topple over? Building insurance is pointless. Kind of like that guy from Wham. Not George Michael, the other one that did nothing. What’s his name?
When a tenant calls, it’s NEVER good news. Ignore the RING-RING, RING-RING.
If rent is 24 hours late, hand out both Section 8 and Section 21 like candy. Most tenants are clueless, they’ll be scared and most likely cough up the doe.
Reference checks are as reliable as a chocolate teapot.
Giving tenancy to someone with a bigger physical presence than yourself is suicide. I only recruit scrawny nerds or elderly women so I can lay the smack down if they cross the line. Physical violence and threatening antics are always reliable tools if you want to walk down the road to victory.
Don’t be afraid to throw your weight around. You’re THE LANDLORD- overshadow your tenant with your menacing authority.
Replacing the locks is like having an (offensive)- the best form of pest control.
If you like chavs and want to support their cause, then declare your earnings to the snake-oil taxman. Otherwise, be a man and keep the moolah tucked under your mattress.
Don’t bother using a Tenancy Deposit Protection Scheme. Use the money on a long deserved holiday, or something as worthwhile, like a wicked Pioneer basebox for the boot of your car.
At the end of a tenancy, pick up on every motherblanking glitch like a hawk so you can hold back some, if not all, of the deposit. If you look hard enough, you’ll find enough damages.
Don’t be scared to dish out Notice Of Rent Increase Forms, especially to long term tenants that are reliable and in their ultimate comfort zone. They’ll most likely pay the new shiney rate since they’re nicely settled in.
Following on from point 15, capitalizing on profit should be the bread and butter aim for all landlords.
ALWAYS assume the tenant is completely oblivious to their rights- because that’s usually the case, and you’ll consequently save a bundle of cash. With that in mind, forget Gas Safety Certificates, Energy Performance Certificates, and the alike.
DSS tenants are the holy grail of tenants. Embrace them…(deleted because may be offensive)
You’re paying the mortgage; you’re keeping the rain off your tenant’s head, never forget that. You owe them nothing.
The property your tenant is in is YOURS, not theirs. You can enter and leave it as you please.
Start a blog and start complaining about your tenants for fun.
Just figured I’d bring some humor to this dead forum
I thought it was really funny too. Just had a bunch going on here lately. Took this week off work for a working vacation to finish up so many projects.
Here are some actual quotes from tenants or prospective tenants:
“I never said I was a rich man.”
The back story for this one is the guy put $5000 per month as his income on the application, when I asked for verification, he gave me bank statements going back four months, which demonstrated an income closer to $1000 per month.
“I don’t know how to water the yard”
The gardener ran over a sprinkler with the lawn mower, someone turned off the underground landscaping water supply, the gardener told the tenant that the electronic watering system was broken, by the time I was told about any of this 4 weeks had gone by in the middle of August and five 60-year-old Modesto Ash trees were in shock and ultimately died.
“The yard is infested with ants.”
Around here, Argentine Ants live everywhere (they are harmless). To say the yard is infested with ants is really like saying the sky is infested with birds or the road is infested with cars.
“If things getting dirty does not constitute ‘normal wear and tear’ I don’t know what does”
Here is a tenant trying to get every dime of his cleaning and security deposit back after leaving me with 2 weeks worth of work, and after I have spent all the time and energy to itemize what was an extremely generous cleaning and security deposit statement.
On our repair list this week: MISSING PISTOL LEFT BEHIND UNDER MATTRESS.
We had a nurse from Alabama check into one of our studio houses. A large lady, she was also very frightened of being out West and especially of our bugs. (Don’t they have bugs in Alabama?)
She called me, shrieking, at 7 AM because she had come home from work, pulled back the covers on her bed, and found a vinegaroon. A vinegaroon is a LARGE scary-looking bug, sort of a cross between a lobster and a scorpion. It has big claws in front, antennae, and long legs. A beneficial outdoors critter that eats cockroaches for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It emits a vinegar odor as its defense. When you first see one, your heart rate goes to 200, it is that big of a bug.
We had to move that nurse into another unit. To calm her down.
Now she has called to say that she left her LOADED 38 CALIBER PISTOL under the mattress in the old unit.
Which the new tenant has been sleeping on for several weeks.