I can’t remember, but I might have posted here already that all of my NOO local insurance carriers have recently dropped animal liability.
However, I’ve found out from my agent that I can get the dog-owning tenant to buy a renter’s insurance policy and have me listed as co-insured. The renter’s insurance policy will cover animal liability up to 300K and then the normal umbrella would kick in. This would be in the event that someone decided to sue me based on their dog’s biting someone, etc.
My questions:
–has anyone had luck requiring low income tenants to purchase renter’s insurance? It should only be about $20 or $30 a month extra, but I’m wondering if they’ll balk at that.
–how did you ensure that they kept paying the premiums?
–if I own the property in an LLC, should I try to get both myself and the LLC listed as co-insureds?
Thanks!
Good luck getting them to get insurance. My guess is that most low income tenants don’t even have car insurance. There are TONS of cars on the road here w/ no insurance. I tell all of our tenants at the lease signing that our insurance only covers the structure and that if they want their belongings covered - they have to buy renter’s insurance. There’s also a clause in our lease stating this. I would be surprised if any of our renters had their own renter’s insurance. Just remember their priorities are cable, high speed internet, and cell phones. They won’t go without those things.
That’s what I’m afraid of. One alternative would be to make the rent about $20 below the market rate to make it easier on them, but I hate to do that.
Anyone still had luck getting people with a “no pets” policy on low income rentals?
Most of our tenants don’t have pets. I forbid dogs/cats indoors because I don’t want to deal with it. A couple tenants have tried “dog-sitting” for their family members’ pit bulls. That didn’t last long.
If you make the rent cheaper, they’ll find somewhere else to spend that money.
I’d look at the $20 cheaper as a way to cut down vacancy rather than them having extra money for ins.
I’m a bit wary of the renters insurance idea, I’m only going to do it as a last resort.
My tenants are moving into the house next week. They did a lot of heming and hawing about how they don’t have much money right now. Then I found out today they’re having Direct TV installed on their move in day. :rolleyes Amazing how people can find the money for things like that when they need to.
TENANTS LIE!!!
Never forget that. They also do stupid stuff. You have to be willing to put up with a certain level of BS and frustration or you won’t make it. Yesterday I found the FOURTH Pit Bull on one of our properties during the last year. No, not at the same property. I’m saying I’ve had four different tenants bring them on different properties even though they’re prohibited and specifically listed by breed in the lease as being prohibited.
People will give you every excuse in the book about why they’re late, but they’ll pay their cable and cell phone bills on time. The roof over their head isn’t that important.
I don’t negotiate rent/deposits period. I set it at what I know I can get. If someone gives excuses, there are plenty of other people who want into our properties.
Congrats on getting it rented! Hopefully they’ll be good tenants.
Thanks Justin, and thanks for all the advice along the way. We’ll see how it goes. I think they may have more money than they let on, or else they’re just not good at prioritizing things…
I was concerned because the water and electric companies might have charged them a deposit of around $500 total if they had bad credit (I didn’t do a credit check on these tenants), and I know the tenants would have balked at paying that deposit and claimed they didn’t have the money (which could be true since $500 is a lot for something like that). But as it turns out they were only charged a small start up fee for the water.
Did they remove the pit bulls voluntarily or did you have to call some animal shelter to get rid of them?
It never came to that. The dogs were removed voluntarily. This latest one is supposed to be gone by Wed so I’ll double check. I usually get the excuse of the tenants are dog sitting. Of course it’s never “their” dog. Doesn’t matter to me.
My experience with Water Depts is that they normally charge around a $50 deposit. Sometimes that’s regardless of credit, but they’ll charge it if you haven’t had an acct with them for over a year at another place.
The electric deposit can get kinda high depending on credit. I frankly don’t care if they have to wait a little bit to get the electric on or if it gets shut off during their tenancy. I just make sure they know that I’ll be taking the service out of our business name when they take over the property. If I’m feeling especially generous, I’ll tell them I’ll put in an order to take the electric out of our business name a couple days after the lease signing. That gives them a couple days to change it over and have no interruption in service. The way things go here, I have all the utilities on in case I need them for a sect 8 inspection.