The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Real Estate and Landlording => Topic started by: ahawkchick on June 07, 2016, 05:32:23 PM
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We are pretty new to landlording and we have 1 property rented out since January. The tenants are great. We are going on a 3 week national park tour and I'm wondering if/what we should tell our tenants while we are gone. The property was completely renovated so, thus far, there hasn't been any issues except for a recent problem with the fridge, which we fixed as soon as the tenant told us. I don't anticipate there to be any issues, but obviously you never know. What do you all tell your tenants if you are going to be gone for a period of time?
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Give them a back up emergency number? (a friend or back up property manager).
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If I'm in the US and readily available via text/phone I don't even tell them I'll be gone. Just did this for our own 15 day national park trip in May. I do have a document that lists all of my contacts for vendors (HVAC, Plumbing ...) and I just bring along a printed copy in case I need to make arrangements. On my trip I had the AC go out and it was a quick call to my main HVAC place to get it resolved.
When I've gone out of the country I typically tell my tenants to call my daughter (one of my tenants) and make sure she has the same list of contacts. Or I just tell them to e-mail me knowing I'd be able to get e-mails via wi-fi when abroad.
One last thing - I try not to schedule vacations over month end if at all possible.
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Luckily for us I have a sibling that lives within a mile of our rental property. That wasn't always the case though. But, even when we didn't have anybody living that close, we provided our tenants with a contact just in case anything happened. It was obviously somebody we trusted and we left them about $500 to cover any expenses while we were out with the promise that we'd reimburse them for anything above and beyond that amount.
However, nothing has ever happened while we've been away but it's nice to have backup.
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Thanks for the responses! Fishingmn, I think we'll go with your approach.
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One last thing - I try not to schedule vacations over month end if at all possible.
Is this to handle non-payment situations yourself, or is there another reason?
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We have goofed a few times and planned trips at the end of the month. It is a big hassle when someone is moving out and new tenants are trying to move in. It can work, but avoiding it is definitely a good idea :)
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My landlord lives in the same building--3 units. She winters in Florida, and she always tells us whenever she leaves. She provides us with envelopes to mail the rent to her sister in law (15 miles away) and tells us that if there is an emergency to text and call and she'll be on a flight back that night. We had our dishwasher go out, had to live without it for 2 weeks. No big deal.
She also told us to hold our rent until the 15th of last month when she had to go out of town for 2 weeks unexpectedly. And then this month when WE were out of town and couldn't get her the rent, she didn't care and told us to get it to her when we got back. This was obviously after a few months of knowing each other.