Landlord Shmandlord

I saw this link earlier today for apartment hunting tools intended for tenants.

http://mashable.com/2008/07/23/apartment-hunting-tools/ 

As a landlord, it would be very helpful to take advantage of these.  If anybody has any experience with any of the links, from a Landlord’s perspective, please share your thoughts in the comments (also, include your location).

Two of my tenants are moving out at the end of this month, so last week I started advertising in the our local circulation, which I talked about here. So as the calls started coming in and I was doing my initial screen, I realized that I had spoke with this one woman multiple times before. It seems like each time I try to rent an apartment she calls.

She doesn’t sound like a real estate agent or someone in the industry, trying to get dirt on new rental listings. She didn’t ask many questions about the property at all. I get the impression that she is genuinely looking to rent, and I suppose always is.

Anyway, she’s going to drive by the place and visually assesses whether or not she is interested, and if so call me back. I’ll let you know if she does.

I have a question out there for Shmandlord readers: Are there certain types of business that you won’t do with family members because of the potential conflicts of interest? For example, if your relative was a mortgage broker, real estate agent, or a lawyer, would you use them? If you do, are you able to keep it objective and non-personal? If you don’t, why don’t you?

For certain types of transactions, dealing with family is fine. For example, if your brother has access to wholesale prices on goods that you want to buy, not much can go wrong. Other jobs seem more conducive to problems, like what if your cousin is a mortgage broker, would you go with him? What happens if you find better rates after he’s quoted you?

Does it depend on what the service is? What about real estate brokers? lawyers? doctors?

I’ve passed off the judgment to a Collections lawyer who is going to try to collect money from the settlement that my former tenants receive every year. We set up contingency compensation where they’ll receive one-third of what is collected. At this point, I just want to get this thing over with since it has been dragging on _way_ too long.

Check out this link to see some more great pictures of strange houses.

I hadn’t thought of this technique, but maybe I could use it if ever presented with a similar situation.

A New York landlord hired a marching band to drown out the sound of his tenants protesting asbestos contamination.

Many tenants at the midtown building, owned by Kent Swig of Swig Equities, have been driven out to make room for the construction of luxury condos at the site, the New York Post reported Monday.

The tenants remaining also have complained they have been subjected to airborne asbestos by bad renovation work.

“It’s a question of health and safety … . We have four independent tests that show asbestos,” said resident Alan Kroll, who was among about two dozen protesters outside the building Sunday.

Swig decided to drown out the protesters by hiring the Steppers Marching Band, although the move mostly just drew a curious crowd.

The Department of Environmental Protection has ordered construction halted until the asbestos is cleaned up.

Thanks mshades for the image.

Depending on what news sites you read, you may be familiar with justin.tv (justin.tv blog). Since March 19th, 2007, Justin has been wearing a camera attached to his hat 24/7, and streaming the video and accompanying audio over the internet for everybody to watch. All of this has been run out of a single two bedroom apartment in San Francisco.

Many things have happened since the camera was first turned on. A viewer prank called the police and reported a stabbing in the apartment. Shortly afterwards, the police entered the apartment with guns drawn, amusing viewers around the world who were watching it live. The next day, somebody reported a fire and six firetrucks showed up, though to the viewers’ dismay it was not aired live (techcrunch).

Other problems are occurring too. Other tenants are complaining about the traffic at all hours of the night. Tenants have also complained that they were getting filmed in common areas without their permission (SF Chronicle).

All of this has obviously upset the landlords, Trinity Management Services, who operates over 50 apartment complexes in San Francisco. After searching the apartment a few times looking for lease violations, they eventually filed for eviction against justin.tv. Not only that, but they have stopped renting other apartments to applicants for simply knowing Justin.

As a landlord, I can completely understand why Trinity would want to get rid of these guys. It seems like the case should be pretty straightforward, if they’re violating the lease, causing the other tenants to complain, and disturbing the peace: kick them out.

However, then the situation got sticky for Trinity.

With all the publicity that the justin.tv team commands, websites sprung up to try to stop the eviction. Sites like Don’t Evict Justin were put up in an attempt to bring down the management company, using all tactics possible, including digging up dirt and court documents. Worse yet, it appears that a lot of Trinity’s business comes from young entrepreneurs/professionals, which means that by fighting justin.tv they may end up alienate a significant part of their tenant base.

I find it somewhat odd that these young entrepreneurs do not empathize more with their landlords and the other tenants. They are callously disrupting the lives of the other tenants as well as impacting the business of Trinity. It is sad to see that they’re taking the all-too-common “Landlords are Evil, Screw ‘Em” stance and ignoring everybody else.

My question for the Shmandlord readers is, what should Trinity do? How could a landlord protect themselves against this (although obviously the probability that it would happen to any given landlord is virtually zero)?

I received notice that my ex-tenants, the ones against which I received the default judgment, filed an appeal. First of all, I still don’t understand how they are allowed to appeal a default judgment when they did not show up in court the first time around, but apparently they are. What exactly are they appealing?

Anyhow, in response I had to file my formal claim against them, which has already been received by the court. The thing that was interesting about this complaint is that the court would tell me absolutely _nothing_ about how to format it, about the process, or anything. To each question, they recommended I get a lawyer or go to a law library and look up the state’s civil procedure laws. While I did not pay a lawyer to help, I was able to consult with one in order to get all the paperwork together properly.
Now that I’ve filed the complaint, the defendants are most likely going to have to get themselves a lawyer in order to take it to the next level.

I am particularly curious if they had planned this from the beginning (of the small claims process). Are they aware of how much trouble it is to file the formal complaint, and if so, chose not to show up in court with the intension of appealing?

Small claims today went much smoother than I had expected.

The defendants did not show up, so a default judgment was entered for the full amount plus $165 for filing fees. The defendants have 30 days to dispute the judgment, otherwise I can begin to collect.

To be more specific, I showed up 30 minutes early. There were two cases being heard, and the other plaintiffs showed up 10 minutes after I did. A few minutes later, the court clerk stopped in to explain that one of the defendants called to say that he was going to be 10 minutes late — but the clerk didn’t know which defendant because he didn’t leave his name.

Ten minutes after the scheduled starting time, the judge came in. He was very curt, asked for my name and asked if I knew whether or not the defendants would show. I said I didn’t. He then went out to check if they had arrived, on returning stated that he was going to enter a default judgment because they failed to show. He then sarcastically said, “Good luck collecting” and that was it. I’m not sure if he made that comment because he knew the defendants from elsewhere or simply because it’s not always easy to collect.

I am fairly confident that I will be able to collect. Besides garnishing salaries, I am going to go after an insurance company that pays the girlfriend a substantial sum every year on her birthday due to an accident she had when she was very young.

Do any Shmandlord readers have tips for or stories about collecting money from a judgment?

I have all my paperwork ready to go. I’ll post when I get back home.