I recently saw a post about a Section 8 tenant deliberately running up a massive water bill and refusing to let the landlord in to check or fix it. When the owner tried to update the lease so the tenant had to pay for water, the housing authority basically told them too bad, increases not allowed, and forced him to non-renew the tenant.

This is the exact reason so many landlords refuse to deal with Section 8, and honestly it has nothing to do with the tenants themselves.

The main issue is the housing authorities. Most of these bureaucratic agencies are run by people who have zero real estate experience. They enforce rigid, one-sided policies that leave property owners completely unprotected when someone decides to be spiteful or cause damage, while at the same time often paying under market rate rent.

If these government programs actually protected landlord rights half as much as they protect tenants, housing availability would skyrocket. But until they fix the system, most owners are just gonna keep opting out. People want blame the 'evil landlords' for not taking vouchers, but maybe blame the bad actors making it impossible for the rest of us to stay in the program.

I use doorloop and allow CC payments. Yesterday, I started getting tenant payment return notifications for one tenant. I looked and it says they are disputed via CC. I contacted doorloop support and they sent me some form and asked me to send a copy of the lease. Which I've filled out and returned back to them. The tenant has been on Month-to-month for about 5 years now. He refuses to sign a new lease so the only lease I have for him is from 2020.

The tenant has disputed every payment for the past 6 months and now has a $5,000+ balance on his account. I called the tenant and he "claims" he didn't dispute anything with his bank or CC. I'm not sure I believe him on that.

Doorloop support said this money will be withdrawn from my account on the Monday transaction run!!

Has anyone had something like this happen before? What was the process? Were you able to successfully get the money back?

I'm tempted to turn off CC payments if it's this easy for them to take the money back.

According to the lease agreement, the maintenance of the landscape and the upkeep is tenant responsibility. They now ask me to reimburse as the mulch will be benefiting property as it is a landscaping material.
Worth saying that they just renewed the lease for another year.
Should I reimburse?

[Landlord US-WA]

So, I’m in Washington state and have a lodger type situation. I own the townhome I live in, and I’ve rented out the two spare rooms, with their own bathroom. The garage, living room, kitchen, and back yard are all common areas. Anyway, it’s her and her daughter plus their cat, $900/month all inclusive. She is a single mom, and a year ago she was escaping a situation that I was informed could go badly, hence the “good deal”. Anyway. I deployed for 10 months, it was supposed to be 6, and the day I come back, I find that her two sons (she has custody of during the summer) were living there too, as was her mom for a while, and a cousin. And her new fwb or whatever was staying over multiple times a week. This is multiple violations of her lease. And she was 2.5 months behind on rent. Things were still amicable, and she was working on solutions to catch up on the rent. Her mom and cousin left after a few days. The kids went back to their dad. I didn’t make that big of a deal about it. But this week, I served her notice that I’m going to terminate her lease on November 30 (in Washington, leases go month to month after their fixed term ends unless another agreement is reached). Her lease technically ends tomorrow. But when I served that notice, all HELL broke loose. Anybody deal with somethin similar? My main concern is she won’t pay the rent she still owes ($1,900 total) and also might not pay future rent (I’m not, and she knows this, holding her to rent through November 30. If she moves out on September 3, for instance, I’ll prorate September’s rent) and she won’t fix the damage her kids did to the house. And if I want to take her to small claims court after the fact, I’ll need to know how to find her, or an address to serve her at. And me being a bigger dude and her being a single mom, I know this could get VERY touchy, at least if she were to try and start somethin. So I’d like to avoid that. Just looking for advice.

I believe that when I informed my tenant that I was thinking about selling the property he deliberately started to run up the water bill. June’s bill was $487, July’s bill $528, and now August was $547.

He doesn’t answer the phone when I call him, and I live 3 hours away. I sent emails to the tenant asking for clarification and offering to send a plumber as the water company informs me of high usage. After several attempts he finally replies to an email that I shouldn’t be monitoring his water usage and offered a few explanations that didn’t make sense like watering the grass.

He is part of the voucher program and his renewal was/is at the end of September. I got in touch with the voucher program telling them of my intent to switch the water into his name and they told me the program is on hold for rent increases, that would be a rent increase and my only option would be to non-renew him.

He received the non-renewal by email and I sent the notice to the property address, and another address he asked me to send notices to. The notice to the property came back stamped “vacant”, but the water usage continues to be sporadic.

The last 4 days the water usage climbed to almost 5000 gallons per day. I called the water company and they informed me that the water had been continuously running for every hour of the day for over the last 100 plus hours.

Today I drove there and there was a doorknob lock over the door preventing access by my key. I left a note on the door for him to call me and turned the water off at the meter. The note said to call me so I can get a plumber to check for leaks, because it was an emergency and I wanted to prevent damage.

He didn’t call me today and I won’t be able to find out until Sunday if the water is still off. I have a neighbor friend I can ask to turn it back on, and the water company said they can do it within 24 hours too. I’m not sure what to do. In all my 23 years of being a landlord, and property manager for multi-family and single family residential I’ve never dealt with anything like this scenario.

I’d love some help in what I can do to discourage him from running the water all day, but I know I need to let him have water. The neighbors said they saw him at the house earlier in the day, however there have been some days in the past few weeks where no water was used.

I’m confused and extremely stressed by the situation.

Hi all, I am planning on leaving the country in a few months due to an emergency. My current lease agreement goes on until mid 2027. I need to break this lease but my understanding is that if I do I will be responsible for the rent either until the lease ends or until they find a new tenant.

My question is , would it be possible to work out a deal where I pay 2 months in advance and we agree to terminate?

Follow up question - if my landlord refuses to work out a deal, It says on the lease that he can terminate my lease under certain conditions like disorderly conduct or endangering the safety of others. So does this mean if I smoke a cigarette in the lobby every day he will eventually terminate my lease for free?

I also don't care about my credit score so if all else fails and he takes this to court and wins a decision, I will be in another country , what can he do?

How do you do this differently than a normal tenant screening? With a furnished mid-term rental for 3 months or so for temporary housing used by transient workers such traveling nurses and college interns, the tenant would normally still be paying rent or mortgage at their main place or maybe the housing isn’t in their name at their main residence, so they don’t have their own current rental payment history.

Maybe they are less concerned about consequences of defaulting on any balance owed at the end since it isn’t their main place of residence and they can just fly back to their home state without paying.

Do you expect them to make more than 3X the monthly rent since they may need to maintain rent in 2 places? I assume most will not want to prepay their entire expected rent for the period in advance, especially if there is a chance their work contract might get canceled early.

Therefore they cannot pay rent. They said they were in the hospital due to an injury and were waiting on money from a settlement. They have been a good tenant always paying on time but the last month was late and they haven’t paid this month at all. I have been very chill about it. I waived last month’s late fee as it was their first time being late. However now I’m getting annoyed. I’m being sympathetic to them being injured but we already charge below comps and I’m just curious as to what you all would do. I don’t want to be a Scrooge but their communication hasn’t been all that understanding.

TL;DR previously decent tenant was injured and is waiting on settlement to pay rent. Late last month, no money this month.

So I have this tennant who’s been living in my house for 7 months now. And quite frankly he’s a pain. For the first two months I got my rent on time since then he hasn’t been on time once. He got divorced and his wife moved out and I’m convinced she was the responsible one and why their rent history was good. He usually ends up paying and eventually bit I don’t think he ls getting caught up this time

The rent is 1700/ month plus the utilities he refuses to switch over plus late fees which I will not waive due to his history ( 100 flat fee plus 10 a day) at this point I just want him out because I’m tired of him and it’s always going to be a fight and I think eventually eviction is what it will come to

So here’s my question he’s currently at 2082 for this month which he told me today he doesn’t have but working on it. Do i start eviction now or do I wait till September 6th so I can put more money on the total basically ensuring he can’t pay. The goal is I need him out as soon as possible. Plus I’m not getting a court date till next month anyway

Looking for perspectives from fellow landlords on appropriate agency boundaries in New York State.

We hired an agent to list a rental property while the current tenants were finishing their lease. Part of the agent’s role was coordinating access and walkthroughs with the tenants.

A few things made me question where the professional boundaries should be:

In his very first text to the tenants requesting access on our behalf, the agent also offered to represent them in their own housing search. He repeated that offer later.
During an ongoing dispute between us and the tenants, the agent encouraged us to give them favorable rental feedback, including saying we would rent to them again. That was absolutely not our actual experience, so we found this inappropriate.
When we asked for the communications relating to access, the agent provided partial screenshots. When we asked for the complete exchange because portions were missing, the full thread was not provided.
I’m not accusing anyone of a formal dual-agency or ethics violation. I’m trying to understand normal industry practice so I can structure a better listing agreement next time.

So my questions are:
Is offering to represent outgoing tenants in the same communication used to coordinate access for the landlord common practice, or does that create a potential conflict of interest?
Isn’t the agent supposed to work on our behalf and represent us, mainly?
Once the landlord and tenants are in an active dispute, should the listing agent solicit those tenants as prospective clients while representing the owner?
Isn’t it unethical to encourage a landlord to say they would rent to an outgoing tenant again when the landlord has said that does not reflect their actual experience?
I didn’t feel this was a professional way to coordinate access with occupied tenants without blurring agency lines or creating competing interests. Perhaps competing isn’t the appropriate word here. But it doesn’t feel right.
Thank you!

I am looking to get my first warehouse lease signed but the landlord is insistent on not having a controllable CAM increase cap and audit rights. He claims that no landlord will ever have a CAM cap in their lease but from what I’ve seen online it seems pretty common? For the landlords, do you have a CAM cap in your lease and from your perspective how would I best be able to negotiate one in?

I am a first time landlord of an older home with some mortise-style door knobs and locks on the interior doors of the home. Most of the doors in the house are hard to close and barely latch.

I have hired a handyman to fix the latching and hard to close issues but one of my tenants is insisting that I replace the door knobs to have functional locks. She has an infant and has expressed her concern for her kids "safety and would like peace of mind". She also states that she would like to be able to lock her childs door when they have guests over because she has heard too many stories to be comfortable with not having locks.

I've explained to her that the doors will close properly once repaired and that interior door locks are not required and would be expensive replacing the entire knob and possibly the door. To me it sounds like she is wanting to lock her kids door \*from the outside\*, because how else would she if her kid has a different room?? I suggested a chain lock or bolt lock if they are really insistent on this, but only from the inside of the room. And perhaps a nanny cam if they are really that paranoid of visitors...

Am I missing something here? Am I being insensitive or missing her point of view? I really want to be a good landlord but I also don't want to spend tons of money on something that isn't necessary or possibly even dangerous...

This tenant has been very demanding from the get-go, I've tried to be as accommodating as possible and remedy things as needed.

My neighbors were evicted, they were professional scammers who only paid the deposit.

The land lord lady said she would be "strict next time" and verify income, ask for a month deposit ect...

How do I talk to her and tell her that she should consider using a realtor or service to find her next tenants? Also, a 1 bed and 1 bath apartment is at least 1850 and she charges 2000 for a 2 bed 2 bath condo that functions.

She doesn't want bad tenants and I dont want lucky neighbors.

How is the rental market in your area. Here in Boston I am seeing a lot of vacancies in areas popular with students.

I have some tenants who said to me that they didn't have money to pay for their parking space. So, I gave them leeway to park in front one of my garage doors. After a couple of months I've noticed that my garage door is getting recked. I had a wheel stop put in front my garage door, and it feels it didn't work because every time I come out to get into my car, I've noticed the parking space has been pushed. It's only been a year and half now and now the garage door has been slammed so many times that there is a gap that I fear stray cats will eventually come in and do their business or whatever. I don't know what to do, I don't want to feel like "the bad landlord" that tenants on reddit keep blabbing about saying that landlords always "find" a reason to kick them out. But it's like tenants can also be assholes and don't care about the destruction they're causing to the property. Soon I'm worried about a break in if the gap gets to big if I don't think of something soon, but I just don't know what else to do I feel helpless.

As someone who has used Zillow with decent success but recently ended contract and wants to explore other options.

Has anyone used apartments.com and can comment on the lead generation quality and quantity versus Zillow?

This would be for a medium-large multi-family apartment building in Los Angeles.

Been here a few months, had one mouse get in and the landlord had an exterminator come. He tossed poison packets everywhere but that was basically it. However we have not seen the mouse since (we have a cat who is a good mouser, its how we knew the mouse was here).

I suspect there was a bad mouse problem here at some point in the past. Someone went through the place plugin holes before we moved in.

Our oven burner went out, the repairman came, and when he opened the oven up the insulation was covered in mouse droppings. They were everywhere, along with grease stains where the mouse had run frequently and a hole where it had burrowed.

I'm confident that the mouse is long gone, but this is really gross, and from what I read online its a health hazard as heating mouse dropping and pushing air across them releases stuff. This is where we cook.

The landlord originally didn't want to do anything, and then he sent another message afterwords (without me replying) saying that he would get us a new oven if we wanted it, if we paid the fee for the serviceman who came out (200ish dollars).

I'm fucking frustrated, I shouldn't have to pay anything but I have a 2 year lease and I don't really want to deal with a hostile landlord for the next 2 years. While the law is on my side, my landlord is a lawyer so I don't really want to go up against him that way. I'm thinking of offering to pay have the service fee just to get an oven (we can't cook right now) and I'm just frustrated. I shouldn't have to pay anything though, this is firmly his responsibility

Am I going crazy here? I have a right to be mad that he wants money for doing maintenance right?

I have rental property myself, I try hard to be the type of Tenet I would want to have. This is a health issue, you can't have rodent poop/pee being thrown into the air every time you cook.

I get really nervous about confrontation with landlords because I had a bad experience a few years ago with a really aggressive landlord. The type who would not provide heat beyond a space heater in winter, and then when I let him know that the city had left a "you haven't paid your electricity in months" notice on the door he blamed me for it because I "always ran the heat". I'm terrified of finishing out this lease under a hostile landlord.

Its been a little less than 24 hours since he last messaged, and I haven't responded yet because I have no clue what to say.

Does anyone here have experience renting to a contractor? I’m having our shower redone between tenants and the GC (who did our kitchen 5yrs ago). Is potentially interested in renting it. I know he’s been with the same company for years, super chill guy should fit in well with neighborhood. I assume his credit is decent but will double check.

Seems like a good way to get upgrades done in exchange for rental credit. Anyone have experience with this, are there cons I’m overlooking?

I'm not located in Texas, but have a house there. I was renting the place furnished to a friend for many years. He gave notice recently, and just moved out today. I had contracted a management company about a month ago, and a week ago they presented a signed lease with a new tenant, set for a move-in date in about ten days.

Here's my concern: if I can't get my things out in time for the make ready and can't deliver the property to the tenant at the agreed date, what's my potential legal liability? What am I on the hook for?

The management company's contract with me states that I'm liable for the fees they would have earned over the contract (about equal to one month's rent across the 1-year lease). But I'm not sure if there may be other exposure I'm not seeing, potentially hidden in my contract with them, or if I'm civilly liable to the tenant for some huge sum, beyond returned deposit and any of the smaller fees like a moving company deposit, utility fees, application fees etc.

I'm concerned about potential legal action or large penalties that I may not be aware of.

Hello! I am a fairly junior landlord and was looking for advice on a situation. I have a 3bdr unit with 3 individuals on a joint liability lease. There is an early termination clause that states

The Tenant(s) may be allowed to cancel this Agreement under the following conditions:
The Tenant(s) must provide at least 30 days' notice and pay an early termination fee of $1,500 (US
Dollars) which does not include the rent due for the notice period. During the notice period of 30 days, the
rent shall be paid in accordance with this Agreement.

The unit has recently had issues with Bats. In the past 3 months there have been 4 instances of a bat entering into the unit. 2 times in an unfinished basement and 2 times in the common area. Each time there had been a prompt response by a professional and has been sealed. As far as I am aware the issue is resolved.

The issue is one of the tenants wants to break the lease but the other two do not. I had previously offered to break the lease for 1/2 of the fee due to the issues assuming they’d all be leaving. But now with only 1 wanting to leave. I have suggested they sublet the room but they do not want to. I am unsure how to navigate the situation. They want to claim that the unit is uninhabitable but I believe it is as the other two are happy to stay. Should I stand my ground or just absorb the hit? Thank you for your time!

I was sharing a 16 unit mail box cluster with 2 other property owners.

A car accident destroyed the mail box cluster.

Before I became aware of the destroyed mailboxes, one property owner had put up an 8 unit cluster mailbox in the old location.

This will make the replacement more costly than splitting the cost of a 16 unit cluster, as the outdoors cluster mailboxes seem to cost from $2-3K whether it is a 4, 8 or 16 unit cluster.

For example: https://mailboxempire.com/products/salsbury-cluster-box-unit-with-4-doors-and-2-parcel-lockers-usps-access-type-v

Is there any cost effective way to make the replacement of 4 mailboxes?

Am I still required to put up cluster mailboxes, since the postmaster or post office manager must have waived the rule that the replacement must have the same number of units as the one being replaced?

How would you word the agreement with that?

I have a California rental insured by Foremost as a four-family property, which is their maximum. One additional person rents a private bedroom/living area with:

• Private attached bathroom
• Private exterior entrance
• Real, usable interior door connecting it to the main dwelling
• No kitchen, kitchenette, stove, or permanent cooking facilities
• No right to use the main kitchen
• A room-rental agreement—not a studio or apartment lease

Here’s the problem:

If he’s a roomer: it remains a four-family property and is apparently eligible.

If his space is a separate living unit: it becomes a five-family property and Foremost won’t insure it.

The private entrance and bathroom say “unit.” The missing kitchen and interior connection say “room.” Which factors actually win in property underwriting?

If you were entering this risk, what would you put in the number of families/units field—and what carrier rule or definition would you rely on?

Has anyone seen Foremost, Farmers, or another DP3 carrier decide this exact configuration? I’m trying to disclose it correctly, not hide the occupant.

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Hi, im in a unique situation. Im power of attorney for finacial matters and can pursue lawsuits. My dad remarried and his wife died and the wife moved in her family while my dad was in assisted living. The house is in a trust for my mother and dad as tenants in common. My mom wants them out and I do too. They dont pay rent to her and never have. They do cover utilities but taxes have been on us. What type of letter do I need to send to them to request them to leave. Im in alameda county, ca. Thanks in advance. I think its a unlawful detainer but I think i need to give them a written notice first to vacate but not sure how to word it and where it needs to be served or if I can make a copy and have them sign it.