When you and a tenant sign a rental agreement or lease, you both are bound to the terms of the contract. Most times, however, it will be the tenant who initiates the early termination of a lease, either intentionally or unintentionally. It is rare that a landlord or property owner breaks a lease. Of course, it does happen; it is just a very infrequent occurrence.

Most of the time, a tenant will seek an early termination to a lease or rental agreement because he needs to move to another location, for whatever reasons. Many times, the tenant needs to move away from the area for a job. Obviously, he will seek to terminate the lease before it naturally expired. We suggest that you work with the tenant to make his move as painless for you and him as possible.

Of course, if he wishes to vacate his rental unit early, you have to cover yourself. You will want to get as much notice as humanly possible so that you can seek out a new tenant to fill the vacancy as soon as possible.

You obviously want to find a new tenant as soon as possible, going through your normal tenant screening process.

The goal is to have a paying tenant in your rental unit for as much time as possible with little to no time in a vacant state. Every day you are without a paying tenant, your past tenant has to pay.

It behooves you to work with your tenant who wants to leave early.

However, things get a bit messier when your tenant ups and leaves without notice and you have to way to get in touch with him after he leaves. Things are muddled, too, when you initiate—knowingly or unknowingly—breaking a lease.

It is not uncommon to wake up one morning to find that one of your rental units had been vacated without any notice. In this case, you had better follow all the proper procedures of your state. You want to make sure that you document everything. You should try to find your ex-tenant, but you also need to find a new tenant to fill the vacancy, making you re-double your efforts.

Now, if you breach a rental agreement or lease, your tenant has a right to end the lease before its end date. He technically did not break the lease—you did.

In most jurisdictions, a tenant must give you 30 days or more notice before vacating the premises. This should give you enough time to find a new tenant. In some jurisdictions, even with 30 days notice, the former tenant owes rent all the way up until the end of the lease or agreement, provided that the rental unit has not yet been occupied.

Do not think, however, that you can bring in a new tenant and keep collecting rent from the former tenant simultaneously. You cannot do this!

As you can see, there are some nuances around breaking a lease. Most often, leases and rental agreements are broken by your tenants. Work with them and then get busy finding a new tenant.

Need a rental agreement? Use ours!

The post Landlord Guide: What Happens When a Tenant Breaks Their Lease? appeared first on FidelisAM.com.

Either party to a lease, the renter or the landlord, can initiate a renewal. Of course, after 12 months, a lease renewal is pretty automatic: It either kicks off another annual lease or it turns month to month. Generally speaking, if all went well, leases are renewed with both parties happy to extend the relationship. Occasionally, a renter may need to move to another area at the expiration of a lease or she may want to move to a place where the rent is cheaper. But for the most part, most rental agreements are renewed.

“What if I don’t want to extend or continue the lease agreement?”

However, once in a while, you may not want to continue the agreement. At the time of lease renewal, you can simply refrain from offering another one-year lease and let the lease convert to a rental agreement on a month to month basis, per the original terms of the lease.

Alternatively, if you don’t want to go down that road because you believe it would be in your best interests to have the tenant move out, you can simply refrain from offering a new lease and you do not have to have a reason. Simply do not extend the term or offer a new lease.

There are many reasons you may not want to extend a new offer. Perhaps the tenant was late on rent frequently and you just do not want to deal with that again for another 12 months. Or maybe he played his music too loud and bothered his four nearest neighbors. Losing four tenants is far worse than losing one.

It will be much easier to raise the rent to market levels with a new tenant than with an existing one, so that could play a part, too.

Of course, your tenant could turn the tables on you and tell you that he does not wish to renew. That is perfectly acceptable. He may want to move to the other side of town, or perhaps he got a new job that takes him far away. Or maybe he wants to save money on rent by moving elsewhere.

Obviously, there is a myriad of reasons for not renewing a lease, from both the landlord and consumer’s standpoints.

If both parties decide to renew, make sure that you don’t just step through the motions. Make sure that you modify the lease appropriately (with higher rent, for example); don’t just re-sign a new lease without reading it in full and understanding that some things must change before a new lease is signed.

As you can see, renewing a lease or rental agreement is a fairly straightforward process. Do not get caught up in the nuances, but certainly read your leases in full with a fine-tooth comb and know what you can and cannot do from a legal standpoint.

Need a lease agreement? Click here

The post Landlord Guide: How to Deal With Lease Agreement Renewals appeared first on FidelisAM.com.

In any event, you need to know a lot about a lot. If you’re in a position of leverage, you simply must call on employees and vendors to arrange various tasks. However, you still need to know what goes into each job so that you go into the bidding process with a firm grasp of what is required from a time and resource perspective (i.e., cost) as well as to know when you’re getting a fair or a sucker’s deal.

In that light, let’s talk about the top ten landlord tips that you need to know and understand to be the best property manager you can be.

1. Always dress professionally. You never know when somebody in a position of power will walk in your door and want to make you an offer for your business/property that you cannot refuse. Dress less than the best and your value just went down. You probably never recover that.
2. Know your tenants. Build what we call a “personal-professional” relationship. While you don’t necessarily have to attend church with them on Sundays, you should endeavor to get to know them on a more personal level than “just business.” Doing so goes a long way to building a relationship that is built on a mutual respect and loyalty that goes a long way.
3. Know your vendors. Building these relationships can not only cut down on costs but also get you faster response times. Refer your tenants and peers to good vendors. You may just get a referral fee! But more importantly, you will gain that critical awareness that shrewd companies call “top of mind.” If you are constantly giving to people, they will remember you.
4. Be consistent in your tenant rental application process and document everything! Being consistent allows you to more easily refute any charges that you were discriminatory in any way whatsoever.
5. Keep on top of maintenance. Remember, maintenance is far cheaper than repairs. It is better to keep equipment in good working order than to let it deteriorate and then have to repair or—worse yet—replace it.
6. If a tenant is late on his rent, follow the proper procedures. This means filling out a “pay or quit” notice that effectively starts the eviction process. It is easier to stop an eviction (the tenant pays) than it is to initiate it long after the offense occurs.
7. Keep a professional staff and office appearance at all times. Gossip and other idle chat have no place in a professional’s office. You are a professional.
8. Install energy-saving devices. They not only save money in direct costs, but they also show that you care about the environment. That matters nowadays.
9. Institute a safety program for your employees. Give them time to test out emergency plans. Show them the proper ways to perform their jobs, whether it involves heavy manual labor or sitting at a desk. Safety is everybody’s responsibility.
10. Have fun. All of the above does not sound like much fun. Rest assured, however, that if you do not follow the 9 points above, your job will be no fun at all!

There are countless more tips for being a successful landlord or property manager. These just happen to be extremely important!

The post Top 10 Tips to Be a Successful Landlord or Property Manager appeared first on FidelisAM.com.

In fact, it is an extremely good investment to do full tenant screening checks. For as little as fifteen to twenty dollars, you can get a tenant screening that checks for a tenant’s past evictions, as well as bankruptcies, judgments, and liens. You can also check a possible tenant’s credit history, where he’s lived in the past, as well as his criminal record.

Some tenant screenings go so far as to check against the Department of Homeland Defense’s known terrorist list.

A potential tenant’s history can tip off a few things about him. Perhaps he was evicted before. While an eviction may not necessarily disqualify a tenant from signing a rental agreement with you, it does offer some visibility into the tenant’s past that may tip off other risks that may not be entirely obvious.  Maybe he has a criminal record or is a known sexual offender.

These are all things you should know before you sign a rental agreement or lease with a potential new tenant.

A bankruptcy can signify a tenant who may indeed not be able to pay his bills, including his rent or lease payment. You are entitled to know the risks you are about to consider taking on. It is a good practice to ask potential new tenants where they have lived in the past. Finding out if the tenant has moved from place to place as leases expire is something you ought to know.

Now, some of these screens you can do for yourself. However, the vast majority of tenant screenings are able to be done faster, cheaper, and more thoroughly by an outside service.

Such services have specialized tools that they can use to perform these checks expeditiously. In fact, if you had to go down to the local courthouse to check on a person’s background, one screen might cost you $12 and 2 hours of your time.

A tenant screening service could possibly do the work in half the time and cost!

Of course, credit checks are so ubiquitous and easy to perform that you simply have to place an order with a credit reporting agency to find—within minutes—whether your potential tenant has a good credit history.

Again, if a tenant’s credit score is low, that does not necessarily rule him out as one of your soon-to-be tenants. It simply gives you the information you need to know in order to make a sound, risk-based and risk-mitigated decision. If all else is equal between two tenants, yet one potential new resident has a FICO of 700 while the other has one near 600, then you have the information you need to make a choice.

Tenant screening checks are of the utmost importance. Knowing the background of the person to which you may be renting is simple, fast, and quite inexpensive nowadays.

The post Do I Need to Conduct a Background Check On My Potential Tenant? If So, How? appeared first on FidelisAM.com.