Interesting thread. I haven’t been a landlord in 20 years for all the reasons HLS cited here (had a total of 5 rental units in the past – not all at the same time). And I’m too old and tired now to put up with tenant shenanigans.
I would think the “professional deadbeat tenant” would have gone “mainstream” by now.
My last kid who just graduated from HS had MORE than a handful of classmates (numerous?) whose parents fell into that category. A couple of the “deadbeat tenant” parents were actually RE licensees (albeit not working in the biz). Some parents will do absolutely anything to remain in a particular school attendance area after getting foreclosed upon or forced into short-selling their family’s home.
It seems the deadbeat-renter-stunt-of-choice around here was to rent ONLY from “owners” hoping to list or listing their homes as short sales. They paid well under market rent from an “owner” who wasn’t paying the mortgage, with the understanding that the property would be showed with an advance appt … with the message on the pfl, “`Contingent.’ Showing by appt only. Needs TLC …Do Not Disturb Tenant.”
LOL, all these “deadbeat tenants” had to do was make sure the house was a disaster and there were odors in it during showings to ensure it would never sell for anything the lender(s) would accept. The best case scenario for some of these lucky deadbeat tenants was to have the house they were renting foreclosed upon and get to squat for awhile (most likely already began squatting during the deadbeat seller’s “ownership”) and then either make a deal with the REO lender for continuing occupancy under the property’s present condition (which these tenants had full control over, lol) OR get thousands from the REO lender or FNMA for “relocation expenses” after only leaving the home “broom swept” and their mountains of trash at the curb. Most Big Banks back then just let these “deadbeat (holdover) tenants” stay for years so as not to have the home unoccupied and thus have the City down their throats for broken windows, 4′ high weeds and green/black pools while they decided which homes on which tracts to market first.
My last kid was only 7-8 yrs old when the millenium boom went into in full swing (2004) and has seen some of their longtime classmates move up to 12 times since third grade (often in the middle of the school year), all the while continually attending the same HS or feeder schools into that HS. Today’s average value of the homes my kid’s classmates’ parents rented over the years (ALL SFRs) is $550K to $900K.
It’s unbelievable but true. When a family who bought during a house during the millenium boom that they could never afford under a normal lending environment ends up losing that property, it is very, very difficult for them to “adjust” their lifestyles downward. Some of these local families still have one or more kids in the pipeline (to finish HS) while the short sale deadbeat “owners” are becoming scarcer to take advantage of. But many (most) certainly had a good run of being able to rent upscale and even luxury homes for a fraction of rental cost and ALSO had their fair share of being able to squat for months at a time without even one single eviction blemish on their record.
Oh YEAH. Parent rental applicants with school-age children who have never left the area but have no legitimate rental references (or give friends/relatives names as “fake” references), may have dubious income sources which are unverifiable and have one or more former SS/FC’s on their record which happened YEARS AGO … BIG RED FLAG, folks. SFR owners beware, they’re out there … I imagine still in droves due to much tighter lending stds … still preferring “upscale” areas with good schools and looking for SUCKER owners … preferably those who are upside down or who plan to leave the county/state and attempt to manage the property themselves. Just a FYI.
