<p>^On second thoughts I may be a bit too sensitive, it is reasonable that the future tenants would want to be careful and make sure things are good working order.</p>
<p>We learned this from a property management company - All repairs under $50//$75/$100 are charged to the tenant. </p>
<p>The tenant have 2 weeks from the beginning of the lease to inform landlord of anything not in working order.</p>
<p>For the houses I manage myself, when I am there I look at it pretty carefully to look for any maintenance issues and try my best to make sure everything is in good working order. I hope the property managers does the same. I am very good with repairs, I get repairs done right away and like to put in good quality materials. The H sometimes disagrees though. My philosophy is, houses in better conditions in the same location attract better tenants. I like to keep my properties in good and clean condition and am willing to spend the money. The H is more cost conscious. </p>
<p>Well, the agent just sent us another application, a person currently renting in the same neighborhood and paying about 40% more rent than what we are asking. His occupation is listed as 'self-employed" trader, whatever that means. However he does have a long rental track record and lives in the same area, so that is a plus. In case the current applicants prove too difficult I guess we have another back up applicant. We have signed everything and turned it over to our agent with instructions that if the applicant have too many demands, run it by us first before finalizing the contract. </p>
<p>Last year, when rental conditions were much worse then this year, we had a bad experience with some applicant nickel and diming us to death. They have good solid finances -both husband and wife are medical doctors, however first they asked for a lower rent, we agreed, then they asked us to include utilities which was pretty usual for single family housing, we said no to that and moved on, then they came back and asked us to just pay for water… By that time we judged them to be difficult people and told our agent we do not want to rent to them even if we would have a vacant house. I think then our current tenant applied and we rented to them without incident. When they emailed us to inform us they don’t want to renew the lease this year they said they hired a lawn service while living there and will have the place professionally cleaned when they leave, which is very nice. I don’t know if we should give them a small gift. We did give our previous nice Japanese tenants when they left, a little crystal figurine of the town to remember their American home (our property manager suggested it).</p>
<p>Some states require water being included in the rent. In my second apartment in college, water and basic cable were included in the rent, but I paid the electricity…</p>
<p>^We pay water utilities for some properties. The key with with those applicants was that we find them too demanding, not so much the request for paying water utilities. I guess they were trying to get the best deal for themselves, however we projected that, what if they carry it through to everyday dealings with them after they moved in, like busdriver11’s tenants ? </p>
<p>We would not want that ! </p>
<p>I said to the H at that time if it happened 10 years ago we probably would have taken them as tenants despite our reservations but not now.</p>
<p>Apartment, yes, water is included in most cases, because it is not separately metered. But for Single Family house, water is normally not included, because they have to maintain the lawn and depends how many ppl living there, the water bill could vary. And, it is always separately metered.</p>
<p>In our area, I included the gardener service in the rent, I want to make sure I control the landscape to be neat and clean. I want the gardener to report to me if the lawns and shrubs are not watered properly. We do that for all our SFR rentals.</p>
<p>I don’t like this phrase, "…and point out the things that need to be fixed to me. " either. Quite presumptuous. It assumes 2 facts- that their are things that need to be fixed, and that the LL is obligated to do that. Wrong.
A LL is required to offer a habitable unit. Most good LLs will do better than that minimum standard however, depending on unit, location, rent, etc. I hope it was poor wording, they could have said they’d be there to inspect the unit. Then, after inspection, they could point out things they’d like to be fixed for them to proceed. These prospective renters are being a bit too demanding at this point for me to feel completely comfortable.</p>
<p>We too pay for the gardener. Keeps it up to our stds and gives us a report on anything weird that may be going on. When you live far away you need eyes on the ground you trust.</p>
<p>Just got the tax bills on some of my properties, the taxes went up almost 50% on average.</p>
<p>Daaaaang…</p>
<p>It’s next to impossible to challenge the valuations because there have been so few non-distressed sales of these types of properties. Anything you try to use as a comp will be ignored by the city as either “too far away” or “foreclosure/short sale”.</p>
<p>The only bright side is it means the city thinks the value of my properties went down less, or up more, than everyone else’s, on average.</p>
<p>How can property taxes go up by that much? Are values that volatile in both directions in the same city? Did city spending shoot way up? There’s a lot of noise in my town when property taxes go up more than 10% for individuals.</p>
<p>BTW, for reference, our property taxes have roughly doubled over the last 23 years which I could care less about.</p>
<p>^ Multi-family housing is very tough to value these days, because so many are in foreclosure in this area and so few sell that aren’t foreclosures or short sales.</p>
<p>Our stuff is in one of the better areas (this is Worcester), so I’m sure that adds to it.</p>
<p>Prop 2.5 prevents huge spending increases outside of an override or massive new capital spending, neither of which as happened.</p>
<p>We are mulling our options, but with one exception I don’t consider the valuations to be out of line, and the one that is high is maybe 10% over.</p>
<p>That is a HUGE increase in property taxes. We just had properties appraised and they are 33% BELOW the county’s valuation, which we told the appraiser. He recommended that we appeal when the new valuations come out in August as he is very firm about his values.</p>
<p>It’s interesting because I think the county values are more accurate as to what price the properties would sell for if we put them on the market. Who knows? Doubt that H or BIL will sell any of the properties anyway. At least they all will hopefully bring in positive cash flow and be assets that could be used as needed down the road (or at least used to borrow against).</p>
<p>My sister is having a problem right now with her landlord. She has a one-bedroom apartment where the AC isn’t working. It’s 90+ degrees outside and in the mid-upper 80s in the apartment. She was also promised by them to fix her blinds or something like that and was told they’d be put up two weeks ago I think. She continues to wait… </p>
<p>A year ago she had a hole in her roof in her living room. She had snow falling into the room and she had buckets catching the dripping water. For 6-8 weeks! </p>
<p>She can’t wait to move out of there in July…</p>
<p>Fortunately, July is just around the corner–none too soon, Hops_Scout!</p>
<p>It’s really tough when property taxes rise so suddenly, dramatically and unexpectedly. Where is the money supposed to come from. It’s especially tough when the property is owned by folks on fixed declining incomes, but these days many are having to make do with less.</p>
<p>The Senate put out their proposed budget last week I think so school budgt amounts probably are not known yet. Worcestor has had economic problems for a long, long time and someone has to pay taxes when others cannot or will not. There are other similar cities in MA but this is the first that I have heard of with this kind of increase.</p>
<p>I have to dig out last year’s bills to see exactly how the valuations changed, but like I said, they didn’t seem out of line to me. Most are for substantially less than I paid for the places.</p>
<p>We were able to get some small increases on some of our units. so that helps some. We may have to look more aggressively at raising rents.</p>
<p>It’s not the end of the world, everything cash-flows nicely even with the increased taxes.</p>
<p>I don’t understand the tax increase describe by you, nre. in one post, you said taxes increased 50%, but in the above post you said the tax rate went up 5%. What exactly is the taxes increase? I think if the tax bill increase by 50% it is outrages and it really will break the deal.</p>
<p>One is the average increase throughout the city; the other is the individual change for one or more properties. It implies drastic revaluations.</p>
<p>The rate went from $16.06 per thousand to $16.96 per thousand (-ish, I don’t have the bill in front of me). This is how much you pay per thousand dollars of valuation.</p>
<p>Then you multiply that by the valuation in thousands to get the tax amount.</p>
<p>MA re-evaluates every year, and the valuation is supposed to be 100% of market value.</p>
<p>So yes, the valuations must have jumped by a lot. It’s crazy.</p>
<p>sorry missed this. but in a down market, how can they increase the assessment so much? If the rate is from 16.06 to 16.96 and the bill is 50% over the last year, the assessment has to be a 142% increase. It won’t happen here in CA, unless you rebuild the project. How about appealing?</p>