Our lease states that the units be kept in good and sanitary condition during the term of the lease. Did a filter change & maintenance check yesterday and sheesh.... food sitting out everywhere, piles of dirty dishes in the sink, overflowing trash cans, filthy toilets.... in 3 of our units.

I sent them all (even the clean ones) a text today about how poor housekeeping issues can lead to pest control problems and asked that they step it up. I plan to go back in soon to see if the conditions are still as bad & then what? Send the specific people a formal notice?

Our other 8 people are great - always clean when I go in. One of the dirty ones is moving out in June so that takes care of that but another one of them is only 1 month in so I've got to get that one under control - 11 more months of what I saw yesterday will be a disaster. The other one is just a dude - he's been a tenant for a couple of years already. Always pays on time & his is more messy than flat out dirty and I guess I can live with that.

I'd be interested in some responses too. There should be a step during the application process whereby the landlord can check-out the applicant's car. If it's a disaster with Whataburger cups everywhere, you can bet that the rent house will be too. If it's clean, that's a good sign the house will be too!

I have always thought about a discount on the rent if you turned in receipts for atleast 2x a month house cleaning. Never tried to think through any legal issues

We had dirty tenants and never succeeded in getting them to clean up. It was awful til the day they moved.

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It was awful til the day they moved.

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That's what I'm afraid of. Ugh.

Kind of a complex subject. I normally just let them ride out the lease. Their dirty dishes and laundry on the floor are not worth losing rent or an otherwise good tenant over. In a SFR it's not as big an issue compared to a multi where they could spread roaches. Typically the roach tenants bring them with them and in a multi property, its probably in your best interest to pay for regular pest control to head that off. Obviously, the best thing to do is to try not to rent to those types of people. Its one of the reasons I got out of lower income and multifamily properties. Got tired of dealing with the nastys. What you are seeing is how these people have lived for years. You aren't going to change them with a letter. You also need to keep in mind, what falls in their right to peaceful enjoyment versus an actual lease violation. You had better have really good evidence before you end up in court over it.

Sympathize with your desires, but you're their landlord, not their mommy. Best you can do is non-renew them, imo. From a purely financial standpoint, one eviction and re-letting is going to be much more expensive than letting them stay and just holding your nose and shaking your head.

When you are a residential landlord, you have to come to terms with the fact that perpetual renters are renters for a reason. More often than not, it's because they can't ever get their life together. All men are NOT created equal, and some are predisposed to and ok with living a life that leaves you in disbelief. That's why they are renters and you are a landlord. I think there is a lot of mild mental illness involved with these folks.
IVe been on the landlord side of the world for my whole life. Eventually you just get used to walking into people's home and seeing crazy shht.

Some pretty idiot blanket statements here

Would be interested in your non-idiot observations/point of view.

TX AG 88 said:

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Would be interested in your non-idiot observations/point of view.

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+1

My dirty renters thought the house was clean. They talked at length with the pest lady and said they "cleaned" the house before she arrived to treat the roaches...again.

That may not do it either. I had a slob former roommate that would be able to produce those receipts. Problem is, he was a train wreck in between the cleanings. Truly disgusting how quickly he could muck up a clean room.

Matsui said:

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Some pretty idiot blanket statements here

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could you expand on this comment?

Thanks for talking me off the ledge. I'm new to this & I guess I'm just surprised at how someone can take a fully renovated, clean apartment and make it into a pigsty in under a month. I will dial it down on my end & just let the leases run out.

All of these are in multi family units - not low income, actually we are the highest 1/1 apartments in town - & that's what's got me concerned about the food laying around - the mountains of clothes don't bother me. We do all the right checks on people, walk them back to their car after the showing to see if it's full of crap & I even try to find them on facebook to look around in the background of photos to see if they have pets they're not claiming or piles of dirt everywhere.

And, for the record, I don't think any of the comments here are "pretty idiot blanket statements".

i think matsui was calling out the perpetual renters are renters because they can't get their lives together.

growing up in my middle class suburb 2 of my friends lived in houses their parents rented. 1 was a surgeon the other was in real estate.

instead of putting money into a down payment, they put their money into their businesses. today their families are both mulit-multi millionaires.

That would be the "not" in the "more often than not" qualifier.