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We have a rental house that will be available July 1. We've already have 6 people interested in renting it without advertising it. First one read lease agreement and said that it was not accecptable. He won't paid asking rent amount, no deposit, and expects us to pay utilties. I said next, and called next person on the list.

sounds like a good move, but make shure you make your rent high enough to keep out the riff-raff

Guess he was expecting lower standards which is not what you want.

Guess he was expecting lower standards which is not what you want.

The guys name wasn`t Jimmy McMillan was it(...rents to d@mn high, guy)....lol

The guy wasn't from the West coast was he? Reason I asked is that we ran into the same thing when trying to rent out my wife's old house, first by ourselves and then through a property manager. Most ran when told there was gonna be a credit check done, but some hung on past that long enough to complain about the rent (already $100 less than the actual mortgage payment thanks to the economy), and to tell us that we should pay the utilities also. Funny thing the ones that had those demands always seemed to be movin here to the East coast from the West coast. Don't know what your past experience is in renting on your own but for the small percentage per month it costs us to let the property managment firm handle everything for us it's well worth it. Especially when they are willing to call me to do any needed repairs instead of calling their own guys and charging us an arm and a leg.

Some renters dont have a clue. They think that you are there to serve them a home and you lose money. (what a combination)

I had an old boss that rented to inner city people. He lost 1 month of rent every year to all the BS. He had 4 homes and he would have to sand the floors/paint the walls/clean it up. Just to get a decent person in a home, and that was 10 years ago. He sold all 4 homes years ago just to cash out and be done with it all.

Be sure to check references and credit checks. I have heard of some horror stories.

Best part of it is, the second person to look at it was signing the lease and writing a security deposit check when the first guy came back and tried to chase us off his property. Had to make a phone call to the county sheriff. Deputy came out and explained it to him. He told the deputy to take a flying leap. He got a ride in the police car.

My experience with renters has been an absolute headache and then another headache. Ask for references.
Good luck.

a friend from church told a bunch of us when they buy a farm they either tear or burn the house or sell it if it good enugh to live in.
he said getting rid of the house saved lots of head aches.
most people would get behind on rent or wreck the place or both.
Cat D7, gas and box of matches solved lots of problems

For years I had two rent houses in the inner city. Nice houses; I had lived in one myself. I had scraped and painted both, inside and out. Was fortunate to have ‘good’ renters first few years, but my luck finally changed. As the houses got scruffier they became harder to rent to ‘good’ renters.
The better of the houses was a really attractive craftsman-style bungalow; oak floors, large nine-light windows, glass door knobs, stainless built-in range and oven, two baths, etc. When it became empty I went back in and really spruced it up. Woman answered my ad, said she wanted to rent the house for “Mama” , a retired school teacher.
Next month when I went to collect the rent from “Mama”, I discovered she was sharing the house with the daughter, two adult men (brothers, I think), and three small boys under age 10. She paid the rent on time, though the checks occasionally bounced but over time I noticed she never asked me to fix anything.
When I finally had to kick this mob out (another story there) nobody on this board can imagine what this house looked like on the inside. For one thing, they left behind all of their worthless junk, clothes and “furniture”. I filled 25 big black garbage bags with just the loose trash left on the floor. Broken windows and doors; the oak floors had deep gouges over nearly every square inch. A layer of grime on everything.
Turned out that they had not had gas or electricity for four or five months. They were cooking in the dining room on a charcoal grill, charring a large circle in the oak floor. Every drain in the house was stopped up. Stunk to high heaven. I do not know how in the hell they managed to all live together in that filth.
The story does have a happy ending: out of the blue one day a realtor called and asked me how much I wanted for my property---key word “wanted”. I told her. There’s a six-story hotel sitting there now.

My wife and I have five rental homes. I got two when my Grand father died and she had three left to her from her first husband.
When I first took the ones Grand Dad had over I wanted to burn them ten times over. The problem was that he had tried to go cheap. He had let the houses get out dated and they looked neglected. His solution was just to lower the rent. Well then you just had low life wanting to live in them. Good people want a good home.

So I remodeled all of them over a three year period. Then I tripled the rent we had been charging. I also demanded two months rent amount as deposit and the current month"s rent in advance. So they basically had to have three months rent to get in the house. ( that is the common amount around here now) I found that 90% of my rental problems went away. You are dealing with a better type of person. I have two people that are just getting by on income, they are upper poor or lower middle class people, BUT they know how to save their money. They are always early on the rent. Good people but just poor.

I have a written lease. I also have in that lease the right to inspect the homes with twenty-four hour notice. If you do not have that in the lease the tenant can keep you from even looking at your own property. If the rent is more than 10 days late then the renter gets the first and only warning. If it happens again I evict them, no exceptions. I evicted a nephew. So I mean it.

On the other hand I respond immediately to any problems with the houses. I make it right. I had a furnance go out this last winter on Christmas Day. It smoked a printed circut board no repairing it, had to have a new part. No one had one on hand. No problem to the renter. I told her she had two choices: 1) Pack up herself and her two kids and come to my house. We had three extra bedrooms after all of the kids where gone. 2) Pick a hotel out and I would go pay for rooms for her and the kids. They came and stayed with us. I have rented rooms twice in the twenty years we have rented. I had both of those renters until they both went into nursing homes.

I took real estate classes in the late 1980s. I sold real estate for a while as a second income. One thing that stuck with me was a coarse taught by a retired federal DA. This man was as dark as night. He told us that you CAN discriminate based on color. AS LONG as the color was GREEN!!!! What he was telling us was that you need to make sure those you are dealing with have the funds to afford what you are selling/renting. It makes life easier on you both.