I would love nothing more than for everyone to be respectful and do the right thing.
But it's LaLaLand stuff.
I always start off that way with everyone I come into contact with, but sadly; there are lot of people on the earth that are not the same and will happily excrete on you if given the opportunity.
In the end, when you've been stomped on enough times, you become quite hard as Kathryn no doubt has..
Very well said BayView,
We had to learn very quickly especially when our first purchase (other than the first property we bought for our daughter to rent) was an 11 unit apartment building ..with a bad reputaion for drugs/violence/police called constantly...
We cleaned the building out of inherited tenants quickly by raising the rent.
When we realised that tenants had more rights than us we tried many things.
First we gave incentives of a month free rent if they paid their rent on time and didn't do any damage for 12 months. None of them received free rent.
We accepted "hard luck story" tenants and accepted a woman from a women's shelter...she was one of our worse tenants.Permitted people on welfare..only to find out when they trash the place you can't get any restitution except for the 1/2 months bond they provided.
Increased our rents so Welfare tenants cannot qualify.
Changed our leases from monthly to Fixed term Leases.(different here, as they automatically terminate, unless we give permission for tenant to stay)
We start everyone off with a 3 month FTL. If we get to the point we feel comfortable with a tenant we will allow them to choose whether to continue with a FTL or go month to month lease.
We planted flower beds along front of building...but then had to erect signs because the tenants thought it was ok to walk on them !!!
Tenants that are usually good and pay on time, don't tend to stay because they can qualify and buy a house.
There are tenants who complain about everything.
There are others who don't bother to tell you when there is a problem.
We do start every tenant with respect, and try to resolve any issue with politeness. Maybe they bring their baggage of past LL behavior with them, and expect us not to maintain our properties..not sure.
We want our reputaion to be "if you do wrong by us, we will go after you"
I just love the tenants reaction when Rob wears our company logo shirt when signing new tenants. On the upper left front chest has our company name, and on the right sleeve says "Evil Landlord".
He always makes a joke about it, but still gets the message across.
Whenever he knocks on the door of a tenants unit, he always identifies himself as "evil landlord". They open the door with a smile..usually.
He has even served tenants with eviction notices, and always tells them if they catch up, it will be cancelled...and the tenant is smiling when he leaves.
So no, you cannot get a tenant an inch.