I listed my condo on Facebook mp and Zillow about a week ago, and honestly, the experience has been ridiculously exhausting. 90% of people won't respond soon as I tell them I ask all applicants background screening and credit check.

People ghost after scheduling a tour, ask for big discounts right away, or don't even read the decriptions. and there was an applicant I actually liked kept telling me they were interested but needed "a few more days." When the deadline came, they asked for more time again. This happened multiple times over a week, while I was turning other people away.

Geez, this is insane. I am just sick of people asking for preposterous bargains.

TLDR: I think my tenant’s “service animal” is a pet, and my property manager doesn’t want to deal with it.

I house hack a duplex (live in one side, rent the other). I handed my unit over to a property management company last month because I’m just traveling way too much for work right now to be a diligent landlord. They found a tenant pretty quick, and they moved in on the 15th of September. I noticed the lease had a signed pet addendum but with no pet deposit or pet rent. Emailed my contact at the rental company and they inform me “the tenant has a service animal, and they provided paperwork, so we legally can’t charge pet rent or a deposit”.

I think ok fine, if it’s a legit service animal, fair enough. I get home a couple weeks later from a work trip and meet the tenant for the first time. I’m no expert, but after only a couple days, it’s pretty apparent to me this dog is a pet. It wears no vest, it barks all the time, it has no recall, and it almost seems a little reactive.

So I emailed my property manager to send me the paperwork the tenant provided for the service animal, crickets so far. My suspicion is they have an ESA cert from one of those bogus “ESA certified” websites.

-Where do I look to see if Indiana recognizes the dime a dozen “ESA certificate”? I know a lot of states have cracked down on the ESA stuff and have narrowed the lawful exceptions to certified service animals only.

-Is my property manager required to show me the paperwork? Do they have to produce it for me if i request it?

I just purchased a property to renovate and rent, the tenant who was in there requested to keep a few things stored in the shed and I told him I would give him to the end of October to clear it out and now I can’t get ahold of him. If the end of the month comes and he hasn’t cleared it out what am I required to do (or not do) with it?

My past tenants broke rules detailed in the lease such as no smoking, no pets, no washing machine, and have exceeded limit on number of occupants. Looking for a fresh start with a new tenant. My lawyer suggested house rules instead of a lease but I’m leery of those since it seems less legally binding to me.

I made a big mistake. I am convinced my tenants are identity thieves who are fraudulently occupying my home for the last month. It’s a month to month lease. I tried to vet applicants using Zillow but clearly failed. These tenants appeared to have perfect credit history, solid income and paystubs, clean background check.
However, now that I am digging through the documents they shared with me on there, I am now embarrassed to admit that they are adulterated. I realized that I should check them after my tenant shared a screenshot of attempting to Zelle me the rent for October yesterday. It was a fake image indicating that I will get paid next Friday. I know these people are trying to buy time. This is the 4th excuse I have gotten. I am just scared for my safety. I don’t know what these people are capable of as I have no idea what their background really is.

I am issuing a notice to pay or quit but need any other advice I can get. Driving by my property I have seen no activity there except the lights seem to be on at night. They claimed to have children but I never met these children or have seen them be driven to school. I have involved the police but they haven’t done much. They did confirm that the identities they provided are not found in their system and their DL are fake.

I really need advice. Should I try to enter the property? I don’t know who’s in there…one of the biggest questions I have also is can I get by with hiring a normal eviction processing company to save some $$ or should I only go for an attorney who would charge thousands more?

Me and my wife just bought a triplex in February this year. We just finished renovating the unit we will be living in and are currently in the process of moving. I have done almost all the work myself and will continue that way.

We just had our month to month tenant give their notice (which was expected around this time) and that unit is pretty clean and manageable. However our "suppose to be long-term tenant" broke their lease early and they've been living in the unit for 20+ years. The property was built in 1984 and has a lot of orginal things like doors, cabinets, windows, trim, shelving...ect.

What are some of reddits tips to help me navigate this unexpected stressful time to turn over these units fast, effectively, but also freshen them up to appeal to new tenants without going broke. Keep in mind most of the work will be done by me and my wife

How common are government-mandated rental inspections? On paper it sounds like a pro-tenant program, but it's clearly an unconstitutional search of the tenant's home.

It is a long story, but I will keep it detailed yet brief. We bought a house in California during the pandemic with a 3% down payment, which was all we could afford. At the time, we understood little about favorable deals, brokers, or inspections. We purchased the home to live in first, then moved and arranged for a tenant. The issue arose because we selected a buyer agent simply because she seemed pleasant. When we submitted offers, she advised us on pricing and other details. She recommended waiving the inspection contingency to boost our chances of acceptance, noting that several offers had already been declined. We followed her guidance, removed the contingency, and moved forward with an older, remodeled property. Immediately after the purchase, we encountered major repairs that have caused significant strain. I felt pressured to act and was not warned about the inspection. A few years have passed, and new repairs have just emerged. Currently, we have a tenant whom we must displace because of this. Has anyone been in a similar situation? Can we sue the agent now, or is it too late for damages?

Hello, I'm a landlord in Texas, currently living in another country.

The tenant has moved in the first of this month (October) and keeps giving me the runaround. (Paycheck wasn't issued right, will have the money by Wednesday)

Wednesday passed last week. This is the date he wanted to pay, and I allowed him to pay that day. He hasn't paid.

This is my first time doing an eviction, I wish I didn't have to. But he's not paying rent.

My house is a VA home loan mortgage, and I was planning on sending the "Pay or vacate" this weekend, being that Friday 5pm is the deadline for rent.

Any advice and help is very much appreciated.

I'm a disabled veteran out of work ( I don't want your pity) and I just can't afford to not have him pay rent, so I have to go forward with this.

Thanks for any help/ advice guys.

First of all I am a live in landlord who rents out a couple rooms in my home in Colorado.

I have a tenant who consistently violates the guest policy for her boyfriend (more than 3 consecutive nights per week and no more than 7 nights in 30 days) and this morning I received the usps informed mail email showing mail addressed to the boyfriend who isn’t on the lease.

I have already had to issue and cure or quit for rent later than 10 days (the second month into the lease) and I am trying not to be overbearing by issuing ANOTHER cure or quit for this new violation.

I have been lax on the amount of time he’s been here, but the mail coming to him feels like something that should be addressed. Should I address it and if so, how?

My lawyer said two weeks ago that the marshall ordered the Warrant of eviction and it takes about two weeks to go through unless the tenant shows Order to Show Cause. Lawyer is on vacation rn so I'm wondering how can i check the status of that and if i have to be present during the eviction process

I'm about to rent out my former home for the first time. We bought a new primary residence this fall, so I won't be living there.

- Property: One 3BR condo on the North Shore of Massachusetts, in an association of about 40 units where only a few are rented. It's a 1970s building, but I already have the lead certificate.

- Numbers: Market rent is about $3,500/mo. My total carrying cost is roughly $3,000–3,500/mo, which includes a temporary HOA special assessment. I'm close to break-even, with a thin buffer for vacancy or repairs.

- Reserves: Moderate. We just put a lot of cash into the new purchase, so a 2–3 month vacancy or a payment gap would hurt but wouldn't sink us.

- Constraints: MA bans source-of-income discrimination, so I can't turn down vouchers. Condo bylaws also apply.

For those who've had Section 8 tenants in MA, what were the real surprises? With a thin cash buffer, I'm trying to work out:

1. How long did it take from approval to the first rent payment, and how long did the unit sit empty during inspection and paperwork?

2. How reliable is the housing authority's payment, and what happens if the tenant's share goes unpaid?

3. If it goes badly, what do evictions realistically cost in time and money?

4. How many months of rent would you keep in reserve?

Would you do it again, or hold out for a market-rate tenant?

I'm a landlord with a Deerfield Beach, Florida Section 8 tenant and could use some advice.

On July 31, as requested, I submitted a new signed lease renewal requesting a rent increase from $2,300 to $2,400 effective October 1, 2026. On August 3, I received confirmation that the documents were received and under review.

On July 30, I received a notice stating the HAP payment would be $1,790 and the tenant portion would be $510. However, in October I only received $1,480 from Section 8, while the tenant continued paying the same $510 tenant portion, resulting in a $310 shortfall.

I never received any updated HAP notice explaining the $310 reduction, nor did I receive any approval, denial, or other determination regarding the lease renewal and requested rent increase.

Since August, I've sent multiple emails, made numerous phone calls, and left voicemails, but I have not received a decision on the rent increase or even a response to my inquiries.

I've now emailed the matter to who I believe is the HCV Director and have still not received a response.

For those with Section 8 experience, what would you do next? I've exhausted emails, phone calls, and voicemails and have now emailed the matter to who I believe is the HCV Director. Has anyone dealt with a similar situation where the Housing Authority stopped responding altogether?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

Well, this is my fourth property, but first eviction. You can read the events leading up to it in an earlier post. The court order has been signed, and we need to wait out the stay period until papers are handed to the sheriff.

Honestly, I'm not ok. I didn't want any of this. They're not bad people, and I honestly don't know if they're even processing what's in progress. But, they've been completely unresponsive, as if they're in denial of the whole situation. Nonpayment papers were served, court date was held, judgment was handed down.

What happens to them? Where do they go? What about their belongings? "Anything I can do to help them" is the voice in the back of my mind. It's not sitting well with me.

Thanks for letting me vent.

We are listing our first rental. I had planned to use Zillow for background and credit checks. I’ve read that some people have had issues and things have been left off the reports.

So, what’s everyone using??

I wanted to know if anyone has ever been in a similar situation.

I want to be clear that this wasn’t by choice. We purchased a home in 2023, thinking we’d be there for quite a long time, but unexpected circumstances with my job and our family, that all happened at once, forced us back to our home city rather quickly.

Our homeownership situation isn’t really set up to be landlord friendly. This is our first and only home, and we took an FHA loan at only 3.5% down payment. Therefore, the market rent price is exactly even with what our mortgage payment is. No room for profit.

We rented it out to somebody in the meantime, since it would not only sell for a huge loss, but it would sit forever. For context, it’s in one of those new build cookie cutter communities. I’ve seen people try to sell already and they can’t, because builders are still putting up homes and offering way better incentives for brand new builds.

My plan is to be able to keep the home for a while until we could sell it to break even or make a tiny profit. In the meantime though, I’m renting just to literally keep the house. No profit at all, and some months I’m even coming out of pocket for maintenance.

I know it’s a stupid situation, but I wanted to know if anyone else has been in this boat before. It’s frustrating.

Due to family health issues, we may need to leave the “Family Home” for 2-4 years. We plan to return and do not want to sell. We don’t really need to make a profit, but want to cover mortgage, taxes, insurance, property manager, landscaping upkeep, potential repairs, etc. because affording two residences, for that amount of time, is not going to work.

- Is this a feasible idea?
- Is pricing “as simple as”: mortgage + insurance + 1/12 taxes + 1/12 estimated annual repairs + PM fees + “cushion”?
- What’s a typical PM cost?
- How to estimate upkeep/repairs? Literally, the only maintenance we’ve paid for is driveway resurfacing and the deductible on a hail-damaged roof.
- How much of a “cushion” would be reasonable?
- How does rental income affect your social security payments/income taxes?

I just did some searching for comparable rental homes in the area and it was a Three Bears situation. One only made sense if the owners only had to pay insurance and taxes (no mortgage) and did any upkeep/maintenance themselves. The middle one was OK (about double our mortgage), but a bit tighter on my rough estimates than I’d like. And the third was priced at a “You don’t really want to rent this, do you?” price.

Have someone that may be interested in renting our property.

The prospective tenant is a family that has a restaurant.

The restaurant is fairly new, opened 6 months ago.

My first time being a landlord and just want to make sure I am not missing anything. Will have to verify income, credit score etc but they check all the boxes in the prescreening.

So now the plumber came back and decided it was actually something right behind the… top of the shower that was pulled too hard. He said it wasn’t the tub diverter at all. What’s funny and ridiculous is that she now immediately decided - and I do immediately decided, said don’t try to say you didn’t (not rudely but just like she was certain it’s what happened)- that I must have pulled that little wire too hard “by accident.” I’m confident I didn’t touch the wire. I’ll take a picture of it so you can see. So apparently now he’s saying it wasn’t the tub diverter at all even though that was her initial claim. This further reinforces that my assertion that anything that breaks or isn’t right, she just decides I did it. She believed the tub diverter was broken, I must have broken it. Now the thing behind the shower head is supposedly what was actually broken after 2 months, I must have somehow touched it even though I… don’t have a reason to?

I rent a small unit on my property in Long Beach, CA to a tenant with a housing voucher through the local Housing Authority (HA). The lease limits guests to 7 nights per month.

Background: We've had ongoing lease issues with this new tenant, who just moved in about 4 months ago. When we went over the lease, I specifically asked if she had any questions for each line I wrote, and also about overnight guests. She said no and understood everything. However, shortly after signing, she asked about having someone stay with her long-term (and other things if she could be allowed to do despite the lease saying otherwise, like no smoking - but this post isn’t about that).

She said she has a disability and needs her boyfriend to stay and take care of her. I said that as long as the HA approved it, I could allow a temporary stay. She then said she gets hospitalized often and would need her boyfriend to stay to care for her kids while she's in the hospital, and for a month or more until she feels better after she's released. I said that in those cases we'd need to discuss it with the HA. She wasn't happy with that answer. Honestly, it caught me off guard that this came up only after the lease was signed. I was upset.

Later, during a medical emergency, her boyfriend asked if he could stay in the unit to help with her two kids while she was hospitalized. I allowed it that one time and told him she needs to ask me directly for things like this. I also texted her that requests need to come from her, not him. He ended up staying for a couple of weeks.

Now: She recently had another hospital stay and is back home. Her boyfriend messaged me that there may be nights she needs him to stay over, because her kids had to care for her last time. He says he'll follow the rules.
I don't want to be insensitive. She's clearly going through a hard time, and I'd consider a real caregiver need. But I also don't want "caregiver" to become a way around the guest rules.

My plan: Reply to him kindly that the guest rules still apply, and that she can send me a request if she needs more. Message her directly that she can request a caregiver, that a long-term live-in aide needs HA approval, and that the guest rules apply until then. Contact the HA about their live-in aide process.

Questions: Is this the right way to handle a possible reasonable accommodation request? Has anyone had a boyfriend or partner approved as a live-in aide in a voucher unit? How do I stay fair without losing control of who lives there? Anything I should avoid saying or doing?
Thanks for any advice.

Unfortunately, one of our favorite tenant passed in the unit tonight. The coroner has removed the body and the family has been notified. The tenant’s passing has come as a shock to us and the family. We want to be considerate of the family since this is such a shock but also we have a business to run.

Any tips on how best to handle it?

Edit: For those calling me heartless because I said I have a business to run, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Yes, I run a business, but that doesn’t mean I’m not human or lack compassion. I clearly stated how upsetting this loss has been.
I’m simply trying to navigate a situation we’ve never dealt with before while being respectful of the family (including giving them the time they need to remove their loved one’s belongings) and protecting my business interests. I’m in California, where landlord-tenant laws can be particularly complicated, and I want to make sure I’m not overlooking anything.
Again, thank you to those who understood my question and offered constructive advice rather than passing judgment.

A few weeks into a new tenancy the tenant reported the kitchen sink garbage disposal was not working.

I checked it, manually turned it with the tool, removed the scraps in the unit, including a small bit of plastic and it ran.

A few weeks later another report of not working. Couldn’t manually turn it. It was > 5 years old so I replaced with a new one. That was June 27.

Today, < 3.5 months later, report of not working.

This to me seems to be clear misuse. As such I feel they should deal with fixing. Do folks agree and if so how might you word it?

Or some other approach?

I need you guys' advice. I have a tenant that is 2 months late on rent. I have tried contacting them but couldnt reach. I have hired a private investigator to serve the eviction notice and was unsuccessful. I also tried to serve the notice personally, but could not catch the tenant. Im not sure if the tenant is still living in the place. How can I get a hold of the tenant? Can I post the notice outside the door? Im desperate guys.

Long term landlord here, experienced, but this one is new to me... I've got a duplex with an upstairs and a downstairs. Downstairs are long-term tenants and I like them, but after one day in the place the new tenants are already backing out. Downstairs aren't partying nor have loud pets or anything like that, but they have a nonverbal autistic child that shrieks... often. I wasn't told that explicitly but I suspect that was an issue.

Any ideas how to proceed?

I’m helping my cousin lease out one of the nine units in her complex on Apartments.com. Because of the size of the property, Apartments.com requires her to sign up for the Silver plan, which costs $200 per month with a three-month commitment. She decided not to proceed because the cost is too high for her current situation.
She ended up listing the unit on Zillow and has received some promising leads. However, I’ve come across quite a few negative reviews about Zillow’s screening process, so I suggested using Apartments.com solely for tenant screening.
The issue is that she couldn’t select the property address to send an application invitation. I’m not sure if this is just a technical glitch or if Apartments.com requires landlords to list their properties on the platform before they can use its background and tenant screening services. Does anyone know if that’s the case? Thank you 😊