I know what you’re going to say…stay away from it unless you want to deal with lawsuits, drug dealers, whinos, prostitutes, and not have any sleep. I’ve been reading up on this and found that some section 8 properties work out for certain investors. You must be skilled at managing this type of property to succeed. I’ve also read many landlords get in to section 8 properties and don’t know how to manage it. As a result, they beg other investors to take over at a big discount.
So if you have any experience (good or bad) with section 8 housing, please share it. Thanks.
I have not found any difference in the quality of tenants between Section 8 and Non-section 8 tenants. I have a lot of section 8 tenants and am constantly looking for others, but they behave almost exactly like non-section 8 tenants. All of the problems and issues are the same. If section 8 will pay enough to make renting your unit profitable, then go for it. If you can get more money from a non-section 8 tenant, then by all means do so. .It is imperative that you do a thorough screening of all tenants; that you have a tight lease for all tenants; and that you rapidly evict all deadbeats.
Hi,
We inherited a sec 8 tenant when we bought our building 10 years ago.
I don’t like section 8. Not the renters but section 8. We had a nice lady in the unit who finally moved out after we gave her a notice to move. She was there a total of 18 years. Section 8 would NOT approve a rent increase. Even after the rent increase her rent would have still been a couple hundred low for the area!
Get this. Section 8 wanted ME to contact other apartment owners and ask what they are renting units for and then to PROVE to them this was so. I have this building and one the next block over and JUST rented a like unit for $200 more per month.
Also, sec 8 does annual inspection. One time they made it OUR responsibility to dust the window ceils, replace window screens that the tenants cut and if the sink wasn’t repaired they would withhold the rent! How stupid is that? This tenant moved in when the unit was newly built so any damage was her or her families fault. They also wanted us to paint the unit every couple years which we refused to do. We told the tenant if she wanted to say, she had to paint-she did.
We would not rent to sec 8 again because of all their bs. I know they have eased up a little but when they tell me I can’t raise my rent, they were so out of here
The good point to sec 8. you get most of your rent on time
It sounds like you had a bad experience with a local HUD office that was running amok. Your experience is not representative of the typical HUD office. Section 8’s mandate is to provide clean, safe housing to low income families. The actions of your local HUD office were ridiculous and not typical of the program. I agree with you, I wouldn’t rent to section 8 tenants if my local hud office acted like yours did!
It actually go a little better the last couple years. What did it for us is they WOULDN’T let us raise the rent. No one wil tell ME how to run my building.
The rent raise was necessary to help with our expenses. We had the property painted the previous year and other rising cost such as insurance, lic fee, water, mortgage, and so on, continue to rise.