When Your Rental Becomes a Headache
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When Your Rental Becomes a Headache
Bill Buys Houses

When Your Rental Becomes a Headache

Whether you own several properties or you’re simply renting out a home you used to live in until you’re ready to sell it, there’s always the risk of ending up with bad renters. Unfortunately, it can be hard enough to get rid of bad renters without spending a ton of cash in court, and then you have to deal with the fallout once they’re gone.

At Bill Buys Houses, we help homeowners get out from under properties that are giving them more headaches than value. In this blog post, we’re breaking down some of the biggest tenant problems we’ve heard of through the years. Give us a call to sell your property as is and be free of difficult tenants once and for all!

Protecting Your Investment

There are plenty of things you can do to try to protect your investment as a landlord. First, you can screen your tenants by verifying their income, checking their credit score, and calling references and previous landlords. You can also give them a detailed lease outlining your expectations for your property. However, screening can only get you so far, and you can’t always predict what could happen down the road. Once you’ve exhausted all of your legal options short of taking your renters to court or evicting them, it might be worth it just to move on and sell your property.

These are some of the most common difficult tenant issues we hard about from landlords:

1.    Tenants Who Don’t Pay

With many renters struggling to pay their monthly rent these days, a previously profitable rental property could become more effort than it’s worth. Whether your rental properties are your main source of income or they’re just a supplement, you depend on rent payments coming in on time every month.

It’s one thing when a tenant is occasionally late but is typically a good tenant. It’s another thing entirely when you have to chase down rent every month or they get a few months behind. Unfortunately, the eviction process can be time-consuming and difficult.

2.    Tenants Who Abuse Your Property

There is a difference between minor repairs and more significant damage. Normal wear and tear includes carpet that needs cleaning, nail holes in the walls, and minor scuffs on the walls and floors. More significant damage is another issue altogether.

There is nothing more devastating than doing your first walkthrough after your tenants move out and realizing they’ve severely damaged your property. Large stains on your carpet and floors, holes in your walls, and other serious damage can become quite costly for the landlord. Unfortunately, too often, you’re unaware of the degree of damage until they’ve moved out.

Even if your tenants did a fair job of taking care of your property and didn’t vandalize or abuse it, overlooking minor repairs can cause its own set of problems once they’re gone. Some tenants don’t want to be bothered by their landlords and might tolerate a leaky window or roof. But once they’ve left, what seemed like a minor inconvenience to the tenant may have added up to cumulative damage.

3.    Squatters or tenants who won’t leave your property.

If you’re a rental property investor, squatters can be a serious problem. Although you can eventually have them evicted from your property, you can assume they’re not abiding by the terms of your lease in other ways.

4.    Tenants who sublet without permission.

This is one of those trickier rental conundrums. As the landlord, you may not always be aware that it’s taking place until it’s been going on for a few months. To help reduce rent costs, your tenant or tenants may decide to sublet a room to their friends or perhaps even a stranger they met online. Unfortunately, the person or people they’re subletting to haven’t passed your screening process.

5.    Obnoxious tenants.

If you rent a multi-family property such as a duplex or multi-story home long enough, you will eventually run into obnoxious tenants. These tenants can end up making life miserable for your neighbors and other tenants and are difficult to deal with when you must. Perhaps they’re just plain rude, or maybe they’re prone to loud domestic conflicts or don’t respect their neighbors. Whatever their issues, these types of tenants can be especially difficult because you don’t always technically have legal grounds to ask them to leave.

6.    Tenants with too many pets.

Even if you allow your renters to pay a pet fee and have a pet or two, there’s always that renter who has a whole pride’s worth of cats or takes in every stray dog that crosses their path. Or perhaps they blatantly ignore the size restrictions in their lease.

To pet owners, the mess and chaos of a home filled with pets is worth the trouble. They may not even notice the smell that permeates everything, the pet stains in the carpet, or the scratches on the hardwood floor.

When it’s Time to Move On

When the value of renting your property becomes more of a headache than you had initially hoped, selling it can mean you have to completely repair and renovate tenant damage. Skip the hassle and expense of trying to erase years of renter damage by selling your property as-is.

If you’re tired of the hassle and to learn about how we buy houses, give us a call. We offer fast closings with guaranteed cash the moment we close on the sale. As soon as you call us, we’ll schedule a walkthrough, and most sales take about a week from start to finish. Contact us or call to request an offer at 651-270-9191.

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