FWIW, (am not a lawyer, don’t give legal advice, different areas attract different tenant types), consider this recent SFR tenant story in a “good rental area of the City”:
1. Personal tenant screening is important. Really important.
2. Property management companies get paid once they put a tenant in your rental.
3. IF you absolutely believe that you must use a PM company to screen your tenant pool, be sure to take the time to personally repeat the exact same screening that you just paid your PM to do.
4. In this pro-tenant state, professional tenants are on speed-dial to the tenants’ rights centers and know how to abuse the gray areas of CA tenant/landlord law and break legitimate lease agreements.
5. Don’t do a 12-month lease in California; it’s security for the bad tenant you’re eventually going to get one day…
6. Do a month-to-month lease: it’s security for you…what tenant wants to move after a month?
7. If you can’t stomach the insecurity of a monthly lease, do a 3-month trial period, then go month-to-month.
8. A tenant can sign/initial, line-by-line, a CAR lease agreement and then break it the next day without repercussion.
9. As long as a tenant pays their rent on time and isn’t doing any known criminally illegal act on your property, a judge may not care that a tenant is breaking ANY other tenet of your lease.
10. Consider joining San Diego County Apartment Owner’s Association and take advantage of their free/low-cost legal presentations. You just may learn the same thing attending those seminars that the excellent but expensive SD landlord lawyer(s) will tell you…
