I have a house in Toronto with 2 apartments. I live in the basement apartment and rent out the upstairs 2-bedroom unit for 1570/month + 50% of the electricity bill. So tenants pay approximately 1620.00/month.
In my neighbourhood 2 bedrooms are currently listed for anywhere between 1650-2500ish. I had intentionally priced it a bit under market when I rented it last May, and housing prices have increased a lot since then. Toronto has about a 1% rental vacancy rate.
In Toronto we have an Act that legally guides rental increases. They can be done after a 1 year lease is up, and the city sets the percentage. This year landlords can raise the rent by 1.5% with 90 days notice to tenants. So I could legally raise it $23.00/mnth.
I am unsure whether I should bother raising the rent by $20.00 per month. On the one hand, they are relatively good tenants - the best I have had in terms of how they take care of the property.
On the other hand, I find them quite disrespectful and entitled and take a lot of liberties around the property. For instance parking in my spot without asking even though they don't have parking included, planting stuff every where on the property, telling me I shouldn't paint the exterior of the house because they like how it currently looks, asking me to replace the floors even though they are in decent shape, bugging me to use my shed to store stuff in in even though I said "no" once. A couple months ago they took apart a whole electrical socket without telling me/asking and I had to get an electrician in to fix it - both me and the electrician gave them a stern talking to after that!!!!
I also let them use my internet for no charge for 6 months (even though I was very clear from the beginning it wasn't included in rent), but when I asked them to get their own internet they put up a big stink about that.... And they are ALWAYS home during the day when electricity is at its most expensive.
But I haven't had any issues with them paying rent on time.
In my situation what would you do? Raise the rent or leave it as is? How would you frame the rental raise if you went in that direction?
It makes it a bit more challenging because I live below them, and I also let them come into my basement unit to do their laundry weekly (this is a privilege in their lease).
Ultimately I guess I don't really care if they left over me raising the rent. It wouldn't be difficult to find new tenants, but there is a big risk in finding tenants who take good care of the property and pay rent on time.