Being a Landlord

Yes, it really depends on the tenants. We bought our house with the tenant living downstairs already. He did not have a lease, but being decent people, we did not want to make him move. We didn't even raise his rent. Well, he turned out to be the tenant from h**l. He was always paying his rent late, and complained that we did not give him enough heat, so he would run his oven! He also smoked, even though we asked him not to, or to smoke outside. Anyway, we told him he had to leave, and he proceeded to live there for three more months without paying rent. We finally got rid of him, without going to court. Our next tenant was a very good tenant, but he passed away. After that, we renovated the apartment and now use it for guests, and as a family room. Beware-tenants can be a hassle. It all depends on who is living there. If you don't want to be a landlord, don't buy a three family house.

Posted by: guest at January 27, 2008 7:07 PM

I would say it is a lifestyle choice. If you have extra time, don't mind fixing things, it is not that big a hassle. You have to be ready for anything that happens, have some extra money and time and energy to deal with them. But most of the time everything is very routine. You do have a responsibility for the house and certain tasks re the tenants. We never pushed for absolute top dollar in rent though we did not give the apt. away, treated our tenants with respect and they did the same to us. They were all very nice people and I would be happy to see them again and see how their lives are going.

Posted by: guest at January 27, 2008 7:36 PM

Do the math out -- if you buy this place, you are investing your capital at 2% AND working for minimum wage for your tenants.

Probably not worth your time or effort.

Posted by: guest at January 27, 2008 11:03 PM

Having 3 rentals is a HUGE responsibility. Also owning a 4 family is a whole different ball game, tax wise and other ways as well.

Posted by: guest at January 28, 2008 12:12 PM

11:03
Would you care to show your math on how you come to, "investing your capital at 2%?"

Posted by: guest at January 28, 2008 12:16 PM

I don't know specifics, but the higher the number of units you have, the more you are taxed. Check Property Shark--browse houses that are configured differently and you'll see the that more units, the higher tax.

Posted by: guest at January 28, 2008 7:15 PM

We are resident landlords in a 4 unit brownstone on Clermont Ave in Ft. Green. We live in the owners duplex on the ground/parlor floor -- tenants on the top 3 floors (each are separate apts). Overall the experience has been fine. We are lucky that our tenants have been great (knocking on wood here) and we haven't had any major issues. The types of issues we've had are more related to owning an old building e.g., water leaking in from the outside into tenant bathrooms -- thus we are lucky that we had responsible tenants who let us know when there were issues so we could resolve them quickly. Both my husband and I work more or less full time and dealing with building issues doesn't take a huge amount of time on our part. I do work at home 2 days a week, which helps.

The key is to get people who appreciate the building and it history. Everyone in our building really loves it and take care of their places.

I was very apprehensive about doing this at first, but on the whole it has been a good experience.

Good luck.

Posted by: guest at January 30, 2008 2:48 PM