Customer Reviews

What Every Landlord Needs to Know: Time and Money-Saving Solutions to Your Most Annoying Problems

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The title is a little misleading here. If this book contains "solutions", then your most annoying problems are: discrimination, credit reports, and investing in real estate.

If you haven't read anything about being a landlord before, and you happen upon this book, you will probably learn something useful. I don't know, maybe when this book was published the information was new and interesting, but now a lot of it seems irrelevant or obvious.

I'll sum this book up for you.
1. Professional and educated people are good to rent to. Don't rent to people who use drugs.
2. Don't rent to "deadbeats" or animal-care people, or friends, or relatives, or friends of relatives.
3. There are anti-discrimination laws. Don't discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, or national origin when you select tenants.
4. Do NOT ask for sex in exchange for rent. Ever.
5. You can refuse rental applications on the basis of: drugs/crime, credit report findings, bad recommendation from past landlord, hearing they damaged other property, too many occupants, pets, "health factors" (like smoking), false application info.
6. You need an attorney.
7. If your tenant dies, call the police and cooperate with them. If heirs take a long time to move stuff out, charge them rent.
8. Stay as far away from anything governmental as you can.
9. Use a rental application.
10. This author recommends writing your own lease. [BAD IDEA.] But, the section about understanding the lease is ok.
11. Use credit reports when selecting tenants.
12. Use credit reports when selecting tenants. He suggests joining credit bureaus. In modern times you can buy credit reports online. Just do that, or let a company do credit reports for you. It's easy now.)
13. You can do repairs yourself to save money. Watch out for lead and mold!
14. Do your homework when you buy properties. Figure out what needs to be done. Have a home inspection done.
15. Real Estate is becoming socialist.
16. Get insurance.
17. You can charge people late fees and/or evict them.
18. Give a move out notice and inspect the property.
19. Feel motivated!
20. Book includes a few simple (kind of outdated) forms.

I guess I would recommend this book to someone BEFORE they rented out their house. I don't think these "solutions" will save you time or money...but they will help you get a general idea of what to expect when you rent out your home.

A more thorough, better-updated book is called "Landlording."

The author is kind of fun to read anyway. As you read you feel like he's siting across the table from you at a diner, talking about his experiences.