Three New Tenants

The rental market definitely seems to be picking up. Over the past 2 days, I have picked up three new tenants, one of which moved in today. At this point, I am completely out of single-family houses and 3-4 bedroom apartments. One of the new buildings that we just took over contains one 3-bedroom apartment and one 4-bedroom apartment, both of which need a cosmetic rehab before they can be rented. I estimate that it will take me about 2 weeks each to complete the rehabs. I will probably start these rehabs on Friday.

I met another sad example of our future generation today. This was a young single girl with a baby. She came to look at one of our 2 bedroom apartments. After she looked at the apartment, she said she needed it "right away". Right Away - those two little words set off alarm bells for me. In my experience, when a tenant needs an apartment right away, what they are really saying is that they are being evicted. As soon as she said "right away", I knew that I was wasting my time showing this girl my apartment. I immediately explained our screening criteria to her, which includes the fact that we will not accept a tenant that has had any drug charges within the past 5 years. BINGO! She admitted that she had a conviction for drug possession! With that, our discussion was over and I showed her the door.

The score for the past two days: three new tenants and one rejected druggie. Excellent!