I have a good tenant who wants to change the living room carpet with hardwood floor. he has agreed to pay for the costs but I told him that he wouldn’t recover any costs associated with the renovation even if the risk was terminated today.
Has anyone faced this situation before and if so, could you please provide some advice. Thans in advance!
JUST SAY NO! The tenant can say ANYTHING but doesn’t mean it. You said that you will not reimburse him for the hardwood floor - he heard you WILL reimburse him for the floor. You said that he can not take the floor with him when he moves - he heard you say that he CAN take the wood floor when he moves. You said that the job MUST be done to a professional standard - he heard that he can do it himself. You said that you are not responsible for any injuries - he heard you say that if he gets hurt doing the job that he is free to sue you into oblivion.
JUST SAY NO!
Mike
Thanks for the feedback. This guy has been good and pays his rent on time. He just signed 1-year lease and seems to be responsible. He s also handy with doing construction works. What I intend doing is to get a written binding agreement from a lawyer and get him sign it disclaiming ownership of any of the upgrades. By signing the papers, I think I have a cover to mitigate the risks.
Thanks again.
Contrary to what propertymanager says not all tenants are spawns of satan. There is a human element to being a landlord and sometimes a little bit of humility doesn’t hurt.
I am starting to notice a pattern with regards to propertymanager’s and fdjake’s comments and from them I surmise that the world is coming to an end, every tenant is out to get you, there are no favorable loan terms, and no deal will never, ever result in a positive cash flow. Let him put down the floors, big deal! You say the guy is a good tenant, so why would you want to do anything but reciprecate the feelings and keep him occupying your space.
Jbaldwin,
No, Fdjake and I just have more experience than you. That’s the reason that we understand the reality of the rental business and you are still coming to grips with it. Certainly not all tenants come directly from Satan. However, you don’t know which ones are going to cause problems and my experience is that allowing tenants to do work can be a big mistake. There are legal implications; laws regarding employment; laws regarding withholding; laws regarding worker’s comp; minimum wage laws; the truth that tenants often do substandard work, etc. In other words, there are real world issues that can come up if the tenant gets mad at you at a later date or gets hurt. You can ignore these implications if you want to (just as you ignored the real world operating expenses and claimed that your maintenance expense was only $2 per unit per month), but that doesn’t hold up over time in the real world.
Likewise, I certainly have not claimed that every deal is negative cash flow. That’s ridiculous. Every one of my properties generates positive cash flow and many other forum members also have properties that generate positive cash flow. RookieNYC has done a couple of deals that are absolutely EXCELLENT. However, I’m not going to pretend that bad deals are good deals just to be “positive”.
Good Luck,
Mike
Hey, Mike… your tenants get their hearing checked at the same place mine do.
I had 3 different callers this week say, “The ad says no smoking. Both me and my husband smoke. Is that a problem?”
Wow. You know what? I think I have learned more from Mike and Pete than anybody else on this site. Are they harsh? YES! Do they come across as Aholes sometimes?? Hell yes! Not everything they have said has been right, but you know what? I think they are where we all want to be. They aren’t going to give us butterfly and gumdrop answers because that isn’t reality. I understand being offended by some of their posts but come on, this is life. I thank them both for the reality and the balls to post what they do.
This is a bad idea.
True, maybe they will do the job and do it right and not cause any hassles when they move out.
The trouble is I have seen so many times where the landlord has let a tenant do some of their own work and regretted it. In fact, I’m not sure I can count the times I bought a rehab and I had to tear out tenant “improvements” because they were such shoddy and ugly work - even when the people doing them were supposed to be carpenters or handymen or…
You may do it five times and it could work out but it only takes once for it to turn sour to cost you weeks, or months and thousands of dollars. But in reality I’d say 3 out of 4 times I have seen tenants do “improvements” which have turned out badly.
Have a lawyer to a fancy legal document if you like. I wouldn’t do it. They signed a 1-year lease with the carpetted floors. Let them enjoy what they contracted for.
Obaco,
Yes I recently ran into a similar situation as you have here.
A property I own did not have a storm door on the front and the tenant wanted me to buy the door and he would install it. For many of the reasons mentioned already I did not want the tenant to do the work. Yes he is a great tenant, but what if.
I told him that I wanted to keep him happy and IF he really wanted a storm door, I would pick out a high quality door, and get a licensed contractor and I would pay half of it. The tenant decided he did not really want the door.
Since the floors will increase the value of your property and keep the tenant happy why not have the floors installed for him and see if the tenant will pay half, and also have him sign an addendum to the fact that the floors stay with the house etc.
My take on this is to always take care of your tenants as you say this is a good tenant and as Property Manager has showed us all in his post a Good Tenant is hard to find and worth keeping.
Let us know how it unfolds please. :cool