My future plans are to purchase a 3-4 unit apartment building under my companies’ name. I plan to live in one and rent out the other, so basically be a live in landlord. Now I was told to escape lawsuits you should not tell tenants that you own the property what is the best way to do this if you live in the apartment, or if a tenants ask to speak to the owner.
Don’t worry about “escaping” lawsuits, but rather try to protect yourself the best you can against having a judgement against you. Carry plenty of liability insurance. Keep things neat and in good repair. Treat residents fairly. Follow Federal Fair Housing guidelines. Tell the residents you are the “property manager.” You are and that’s one of your jobs. They don’t need to know the rest. If someone wants to find out you own the property badly enough, they will. Most of the time the resident issues will be able to be handled at the property manager level. If they think they need something from the owner, you could always tell them you’ll have to “consult” the owner and get back to them. Owners have property managers and don’t directly deal with residents. Just tell the residents about consulting the owner and then get back to them later about the issue. If you purchase the building under a company name, that company owns the building. You may be a manager of the LLC, but it’s not a lie to tell the residents that “XYZ, LLC” owns the building.
Great advice.
Being a live-in landlord will definitely help you stay on top of property management, but you may find it to have some disadvantages too. Noisy tenants, constant repair requests from tenants who see you every day, or people reluctant to live next to the landlord/property manager.
Good luck,
Brian
Hi,
I have a personal experience about living next to my tenant. Me and my wife bought a duplex 5 years ago, we live on one side and rent the other side out. We have had 2 tenants, the first one stayed 3 and the second is 2+ years. They know we own, we have no issue whatsoever.
The keys are:
- Buy the property in a nice part of town where jobs and good schools are and buy at discount.
- Clean the place inside and out, if necessary, new paint and carpet will help.
- Screen your potential tenants thouroughly, I can’t stress this enough, if you don’t do this, it will cost you big time.
- Lay a very strong ground rule in writing. Be detailed on what is expected of you and your tenants.
- Treat tenants with respect.
The above rules help us and we have no regret at all. Tenants will treat you and your property the way you allow them to.
By the way, we are currently building a SFH for our family and we already have potential tenants, we are screening them right now.
I hope this helps.