The Landlord Protection Agency  
Main Menu, Landlord Protection Agency homepage Membership With The Landlord Protection Agency Free Landlord Services Member Services  

Enlisted in Reserves, now how can I proceed - Landlord Forum thread 361006

Enlisted in Reserves, now how can I proceed by Tom on December 12, 2020 @22:02

                              
I have one of my 19 units that I am using as a semi – charity case. I am allowing this family to live in a nice house in return for them paying the (mortgage plus taxes plus insurance plus local rental license fees). So I am not making a dollar on this rental. Before you chastise me for that, that’s not the issue here. I am OK helping out a person in need, but now I want your advice on a situation that has come up. This is a mom and five kids, and she’s had a ‘tough go of it’ for the last five years, hence us helping out by keeping her rent as affordable as possible in the school district where the kids have been doing well.
Things are going along fine, rents paid on time and house is kept nice, and now six months on, we get a call to have a meeting where she tells us that she is going into the Army Reserves and has to go away for five months. So she plans to have a rotating cast of people coming into our house to oversee the children, and ostensibly to take care of the place. We don’t know all of these people... as a matter of fact, she doesn’t even know who’s going to be there at any given time... It’s going to be whoever can fill in. Mostly her mom and her brothers and sisters-in-law, but also stepsisters and their significant others. We do know a couple of the closer relatives, and they are not people that we would have rented to, due to some personal issues/habits we know they have.
Our lease specifies that our tenant is not to have other people moving into the place at any time during the term of this lease without written consent of the owners. That’s us. And we were never asked about this. Our lease also specifies that there is no subletting of the unit, or assigning of responsibility to anyone else. The reason We don’t want that kind of thing happening, is because we want to know who is in control of our asset, and have trust in that person. We rented the place to her, not all these other people. Also, obviously these other people are not familiar with the place, so if something goes wrong we don’t know how they will handle it. Now, the kids (ages 10-15) will be there and they do know a lot about the house. But does that make it OK for her to entrust our house to a bunch of other people who we don’t know?
We want to work with this lady, but it’s really hard when she did not ask us about this at all, and just dropped it on us after she had already signed up with the government, and now we have to deal with her responsibilities to them for the next six years. Which I guess means that there will be different people in our house ‘one weekend a month and two weeks a year,’ just like the commercials say… We are not real thrilled with this idea,
Now, don’t get me wrong – we are very patriotic people and we definitely appreciate the service that our military does. Heck, I cry when they’re playing the national anthem before a baseball game. I love America, am proud to live here, and proud to try to do right by people in my business, but does that patriotic feeling mean I have to bend over when the tenant decides she wants more benefits for her kids?
When I expressed concern about the situation, a recruiting officer for the reserves tried to threaten me with SCRA laws, although in my research I can’t find anything that deals with anything other than termination, and we’re not trying to do that.
All I want to know is how to write this kind of stuff into a lease addendum for the first five months away, and then how do I write a new lease that includes the ‘one weekend a month and two weeks a year?’ I know she won’t be able to have the same person helping out every time she’s away, so writing in a clause to address this will be hard
And we don’t have a rental escalation clause in our lease, because we were trying to keep it at just the expenses. But if she’s making an extra $300 a month, now she can afford to pay more rent, right? Or should I not feel that way, because it’s military service? Either way, money is money and she’s not as poor as she was. Why should I give her this nice house at $400 below market rate, when she now has income that would at least let me put a teeny bit in my pocket… I’m thinking of asking for an increase of $40 a month. If she complains about that, I will just say how much we have stretched our normal procedures to accommodate her and say that this is the least she could do to help us out, after all we are already doing for her. Right?
I will look forward to your opinions, I’m sure they will be on both sides of the issues
[ Reply ] [ Return to forum ]

Re: Enlisted in Reserves, now how can I proceed by Garry on December 13, 2020 @23:02 [ Reply ]
Could use some more info-----when did the lease start, and when does it end? How much is she paying you for rent? If you say you are $400 under market rent, why do you want to increase the rent by only $40? For the next 5 months, WHO is going to pay you the rent, and WHEN?

My opinion : You need to quit being a charity or a non-profit, and take your LANDLORD title back. When the lease ends, you should raise the rent by $100, and allow the lease to become a M2M. You do NOT need to change your lease except for the rent amount, and making it a M2M. It's her choice as to who stays with her kids, but SHE will still be the person responsible for the rent, utilities, and upkeep on your rental. That said, you will still need to get names, addresses, phone numbers of anyone staying there.
Re: Enlisted in Reserves, now how can I proceed by Robert on December 15, 2020 @17:59 [ Reply ]
Sounds like a good enough tenant that pays what you are asking. I would ask for a list of all those that will be there taking care of the kids and do background checks on all of them. Raise the rent if you want, it's your property.

My best tenants always get a discount, but I also raise their rent every year, just not as much as a new lease.
Re: Enlisted in Reserves, now how can I proceed by Brendan on December 22, 2020 @21:40 [ Reply ]
She sends you one rent check from her. She can do the work of collecting rents from A to Z tenants; that's not your job. Get tough.

Check-Out
Log in

Look-up
Associations
Attorneys
Businesses
Rentals Available
Rentals Wanted
Realty Brokers
Landlord Articles
Tips & Advice
Tenant Histories

Other Areas
Q&A Forum
Free Forms
Essential Forms
Landlord Tenant Law
Join Now
Credit Reports
About Us
Site Help



Contact The LPA

© 2000-2023 The Landlord Protection Agency, Inc.

If you enjoy The LPA, Please
like us on Facebook The LPA on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter The LPA on Twitter
+1 us on Google