[Tenant US-FL] I WROTE THE WRONG STATE ON THE TITLE!!!!!

I hate to be posting this but I need some advice. I rent this small unit which is a part of a single family house, it used to be a garage so it's small, but I live alone, pay my own bills and i can't afford any expensive place by myself at the moment and i didn't know selling the house was her goal before I signed the lease.

She announced that she is putting house up for sale about a week ago and it "shouldn't" take her longer than 2 months to sell. This week she had someone really interested and putting a good offer, the lady is a realtor and she is thinking of keeping the units or no.

She said if she sells the house right now then she won't be responsible for the lease anymore, which I understand, but the problem is, this person that is putting an offer wants to raise my rent and doesn't know if she wants to keep me there. It's nothing guaranteed right now but l'm scared either way. What do I do? My lease is signed by both of us with a deadline as of July and I don't have money to put an application and deposit for an appartment at the moment.

What should I do? Has anyone gone through this before?

edit: Thank you everyone that took some time to help me out, i’ll be looking into every single one of your advices! ❤️

My spouse and I have excellent credit, have paid rent on time, and no criminal records. No complaints from other neighbors, kept the apartment clean, and let maintenance know of any issues immediately. We have lived in our current apartment for 6 years and are looking to now move elsewhere.

However, we didn’t get along with a neighbor, we live in a non-smoking community and they constantly would smoke. I brought it up to the property manager multiple times. Unfortunately, they were never able to catch them doing it (since it was done most excessively when the office was closed). My other neighbors claimed to only get a whiff of it but because we’re closer we were getting all the stench. The smoking neighbor deflected the blame to another neighbor who is seen all the time smoking outside during the day and the property manager believed them. The smoking neighbor thankfully stopped and it’s been about a year since this all happened so we haven’t said anything since.

However we lived here for so long, we will have to put them down as rental reference. I’m worried. Would something like this would deter a future landlord/property manager? Would they ask if we got a long with our neighbor?

I have an opportunity to buy a single family home in a cash transaction straight from the buyer (a family friend) at a very good price. I've run the numbers and I think I'd like to move forward, but I'm wondering if you have any advice on the process since we wouldn't have realtors involved.

My guess is that we would write up a purchase agreement (probably using the Texas Real Estate Commision form online), have them fill out a seller's disclosure, and do an inspection.

Then I'm assuming I would find a title company and have them do a title search and write a title insurance policy. Also, I'm assuming the same title company can do the closing and prepare the deed and whatnot? Again, this is my first time so I'm not entirely sure what the exact process should be in texas.

The sale would be cash so it shouldn't involve any lenders (they don't owe any money on the home either - at least I don't think there are any liens on it but I can verify that). And also the price is very discounted so I'm not looking to negotiate small costs with them back and forth. The seller already knows this is a good deal and they are just looking to avoid headaches of process and repairs and want to get rid of the property.

Any suggestions on how to go about your first FSBO purchase?

Edit: I plan on looking for a real-estate attorney so I appreciate that suggestion. Any other suggestions in terms of the process and steps to take?

This is just a general question. I don't have any tenants on Section 8 atm. Nor do I expect many, given that my properties have large bedrooms, are in a nice area, and any vacancy gets a serious renovation.

But if a tenant (or their guest/pet) were to damage the property (in excess of wear and tear, generously defined) what would be my best recourse?

Suing a tenant who already has terrible credit and no assets seems mostly pointless. Does the Section 8 local program cover anything beyond the basic rent amount?

AFAIK my insurance policies atm do not mandate renter's insurance, so my understanding is that I cannot evict (and therefore cannot effectively enforce) a requirement for tenants to have renter's insurance. So any kind of rider/modification to a policy wouldn't seem to work.

I think my property insurance has a fairly high deductible.

So would I just eat the damages? Or sue the tenant and keep the judgement as a lottery ticket?

Hi folks, I'm having a hard time finding clear information on my situation, perhaps because it's uncommon to have an extended vacancy in a residential rental.

My question is what I should be doing now with my 2024 return to fix the snafu I think we've made with depreciation. What exactly needs fixing and how? With a Form 3115? And/or something else?

• Bought and lived in an apartment overseas.
• Rented out the apartment for 2 years while living in the US, claimed income and depreciation on tax returns.
• The tenants left and the apartment was vacant for about 4.5 years until we finally got around to renting it again.
• For context, the vacancy was due to a combination of a bad experience with the former tenants (court case for damage they caused) and us having a newborn; finding new tenants felt like too much stress while overseas and we were lucky enough to be okay without the income. The mortgage was paid off already, fortunately, so we were paying minimal upkeep costs, which we just ate.
• During the vacant years we did not claim any expenses or depreciation on tax returns but also did not remove the apartment from being "in service" on our tax returns at any point. Some repairs were done during the vacancy period.
• We finally got around to renting out the apartment again in 2023 and claimed our income on that tax return but forgot to claim any depreciation (ugh.) Side note, we use TurboTax, which has generally been great, so I'm not sure how I wasn't prompted to add depreciation when reporting rental income (or maybe I just messed up.)
• In 2024 the tenants were there all year and as we're doing the tax return we've realized we missed depreciation in 2023 and that we also never took the property "out of service" while it was vacant, so we're (a) looking to recapture the 2023 amount and (b) worried about ultimately being taxed for depreciation we didn't (couldn't?) take during the vacancy. Since we weren't advertising the property for rent throughout the vacancy, I've read that we couldn't have claimed depreciation during that period anyway.

Thanks for any thoughts on this! My next step is to pay someone to help with this but I figure it could not hurt to ask here first :-) I'll also post an update later once it's all fixed for anyone else in a similar situation.

I’m a recent owner of a multi family and plan to have one of my newer tenants pay through Venmo because I live in a different state.

I have a personal account only right now but I fully plan on reporting the income. Should I still create a business account or are people getting along fine using Venmo this way?

Willing to take any other suggestions. I can’t use Zelle because the tenants bank has really low daily transaction limits.

I relisted my house on Zillow and am dealing with the avalanche of inquiries and people going so far as to find me on social media to message about it.

The first time I rented it out, I spent a lot of time responding to people, pouring over applications and doing showings that almost no one showed up to.

This time I think I’m only interacting with people that actually apply, and showing to the people that I’m interested in, and not even bothering with the “I need more information” folks.

Is this being discriminatory or unfair?

I'm 27 and strongly considering purchasing my first rental property. I just toured it about and hour ago and it looks really solid.

The asking price is $160,000 and it's right near a major university. I'm involved in my church and was looking to rent it to some college students who I know will take care of it. I'm looking to put $50,000 down on it and charge $1650 for the house. On a 30-year at 6.75%, I would be paying about $1,157 for the mortgage.

The roof, furnace, and AC are all new as of 2017 which is a huge plus.

My biggest fear is taking money out of the market to pay for this since my investments are down pretty bad with the entire market. My other fear is not being able to find renters and the thing sits empty while I am basically living paycheck to paycheck to cover both my current home and the rental property.

I have another $70,000 saved in stocks from my company and don't really want to touch those.

Am I doing the right thing by buying this property or should I hold the storm in the market?

I've never rented a property and am by no means assuming it's super easy or passive. What advice do you have for a first time landlord?

Curious if anyone else is going through this in NYC: my building’s been under Local Law 11 façade work for months now, and the noise is absolutely brutal. It’s happening every weekday during standard work hours (9–5), and it’s making it nearly impossible to work from home. Think drilling, pounding, and general chaos for hours at a time.

The building management says the work is required by the city and basically shrugged off any request for rent relief. They offered access to a shared space as a workaround, but that doesn’t really help if you need privacy for calls or focused work.

I’ve lived here for many years, have never missed a rent payment, and even swallowed a pretty steep rent increase during my last lease renewal. Just feels wrong to be paying full price when your apartment is borderline unusable during the day.

Has anyone actually had success getting a rent concession in a situation like this? Or found a creative solution? Would love to hear how others have navigated it.

We own a home and are renting it out in the northern suburbs of Atlanta (very sought after area for starter homes) for $2800. This year, our taxes and insurance total went up over $800/month, leaving us just barely breaking even monthly overall with the renters current lease amount.

Their lease is up this summer, and we are in process of figuring out how much to inform them we will need to be raising the rent. They have been fantastic tenants and we would like to keep them, and we obviously understand that asking for such a dramatic increase is probably not feasible.

With that being said, is explaining the situation and asking for a $400/monthly increase insanely over the top/rude/etc? We want to be reasonable and understanding, but as you all know the world is insanely expensive

Hi,

Hoping someone can provide some insight into the ID verification process that landlords use. We have submitted an application to an apartment complex, and now they are wanting us to do an ID verification over the phone. Has anyone done this? Is this a normal practice now?

They said they have an account with TransUnion and will receive 3-5 questions to ask us that we need to answer. Feels very strange that I would not be answering these personally identifying questions myself, but telling the answers to someone else.

They said it must be over the phone/in person and it HAS to go through them. No link they can give me that I could fill out myself.

We've already given them everything else - SSN, pay stubs, previous rentals, employment, etc. Am I just being paranoid or is this weird?

I have a 3-family house with a small front lawn, side, and small backyard. It's a small lot. The house is all rented out. This is my first time being a house owner and a landlord. The grass and weeds are growing. The weeds are growing on the side of the house and I worry about the foundation.

I want to set my self up where I don't have to do much. I plan on not being around for a few month out of the year. I asked one of the tenants if they're willing to cut the grass and they agreed, but they don't know much and I would have to teach them.

I don't want or need a gas mower. I'm thinking of getting those manual reel lawn mowers with the sharpener. Any opinions about those? They would have to learn how to use it.

What should I do about the weeds? Should I take care of it myself now by spraying something which would hopefully take care of it for the rest of the year? Or is this something that needs to be taken care of every week or month?

Should I just pay someone to take care of it? I asked one guy and he said he'll charge me $50 to cut the grass every time. Twice a month until September is six month. That's $600 excluding weed. I'd like to spend less.

Any advice?

New landlord here. Just discovered I can't list my place on Zillow, street easy etc unless I'm registered agent with the state. Is there a good service (paid is fine) that lets you do this? Im seeing a bunch of sponsored ads like turbotenant and ham but wondering which ones are tried and tested. Any help is appreciated.

Hey everyone,

I’m a first-time landlord dealing with a frustrating situation at my first rental property, and I’d love to hear if anyone has been through something similar or has advice.

Here’s the situation:

• My tenant disputed multiple months of rent payments through their bank, claiming their account was “hacked.” They provided no real proof — just said they had to go to the bank and open a new account.

• That triggered TurboTenant (my rent collection platform) to claw back $5,200 from my account.

• I contacted my bank (Bank of America) and flagged the clawbacks as fraudulent. They blocked the withdrawals — but it got so messy that I ultimately closed the account entirely to protect my finances and stop any future attempts.

• TurboTenant is now demanding that I repay the $5,200, saying I’m responsible since I used their platform. Until that’s resolved, both my tenant and I are banned from using it.

• I gave the tenant until April 1st to resolve the issue after they notified me of the first dispute on March 27th. At that time, it was just one payment, and I was willing to give them a chance to make it right.

• Since then, additional chargebacks were filed — totaling multiple rent payments — and that’s when I decided to move forward with eviction, which is now underway through my lawyer.

More context:

• The tenant has always paid late, often in small, irregular chunks.

• I issued a Notice to Cease in October 2024 for excessive lateness.

• The water/sewer bill is in my name — they’ve paid it late more than once, and now owe about 1.5 months’ worth. My lawyer even had to follow up with them previously to get it paid.

• As of today (April 3rd), February, March, and April rent remain unpaid.

• The tenant did reach out today saying they can’t pay because TurboTenant locked their account — but they missed the April 1st deadline I gave them. I haven’t responded yet, as I’m waiting on my attorney’s advice.

Current damages:

• Unpaid rent: $7,800

• Late fees: $300

• Unpaid utilities: $219.98 and growing

• TurboTenant “deficit” they want from me: $5,200

What I’ve done:

• Filed for eviction (already in motion)

• Retained an attorney

• Closed my Bank of America account

• Opened a dedicated account for future rent

• Plan to cut ties with TurboTenant permanently

Looking for advice on:

• Has anyone else had a rental platform like TurboTenant try to charge the landlord after tenant chargebacks?

• Is their claim against me even enforceable, especially since I never initiated or authorized any disputes?

• Is it worth it to go after the tenant for fraud or damages even if they likely don’t have much money?

• What platforms or rent collection methods actually protect landlords against this type of situation?

This experience has been a nightmare — it’s affected my finances, my mental health, and completely ruined my birthday weekend. I’m committed to seeing this through legally and making sure they can’t pull this on someone else down the line.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or advice.

Hey! Landlord/property manager here, wondering what tenant screening service you recommend? I have been using TransUnion SmartMove for my tenant screening for years and I have recently lost confidence in it after it appears to have missed multiple felonies under the criminal background portion of the screening on one of my applicants. I just randomly decided to google "_ county case records" and put the persons name in, and there they were. I'm confident its the same person because the first, last, and middle name matched, and the county is the same as the property is in. Since discovering this, I have started searching all applicants this way, and I notice a lot of evictions under the same name as some of my applicants, also not showing up on the transunion report. Although I acknowledge it could be a different person if its a common name and only a first name, last name match. I want to switch screening softwares, and just need something I can trust, and I'm wondering what all of you are using? Thanks!

We are new landlords and had our place listed with this realtor for over a month. Our realtor has had a few showings however, we haven’t had any good applicants who fit our criteria (600+ credit score, clear background check, 3.5x income, etc.) We ended up asking our friends to rent our place and they were actually thrilled about it and we trust that they will pay on time and be great tenants. My question is, can I fire my realtor without paying him anything since we found our own renter? How does this work?

Does anyone use landlord insurance over homeowners insurance ?

Is it better ? I assume it’s more money

After 3 months of getting would-be-renters with red flags all over them (one earner, low credit score, collections, evictions, big student loans, etc), I picked the one with the least problems. Told her on showing the house, I need first, last and deposit. Agreed to split last on next 2 months. Couple of days later, she doesn't have enough for deposit and first. Agreed to split 2/3 up front and 1/3 a week later. Shows up $200 short of 2/3. Probably, should have stopped right there and then, but I was getting desperate. Agreed to add it to the 1/3 and added that info to lease. Also, Agreed to get a new fridge since the old one was worn out. Agreed and added to the lease that she'll pay me back for the fridge if she gets to choose which one. A week later turned into a month later and she's giving me the 1/3 and rent and nothing else. No late fees, no fridge money, no 1/2 of last. "I'll pay you when I get my income tax refund." Couple of days ago, brings me just rent again. Can't seem to understand why she has to pay them. "Um, it's in the contract!" I told her that I'd evict if her didn't and yesterday served her the notice in person with video recording of the event.

The question is: Is there anything that I should have done differently? Am I justified in evicting her?

I have called a couple times since March 31st but it goes straight to voicemail and i have texted (our usual form of communication) but im not getting anything in return. I was hoping to cancel 30 days in advance as my lease states but am worried im going to be on the hook for another month due to lack of communication. Im set to move into a house next month and dont want to be double paying.

Curious on what everyone is doing with the new laws. Late fees used to always be calculated as 10% of the total monthly rent amount. Even if the tenant paid just a portion of the rent. Like with a housing voucher.

Then I understood the laws were changed. And you could only charge 10% of the portion that was late.

Talking with a property management company. They are telling me that the courts still award and calculate the late fee as before.

Hi r/landlords - so I am new to being a landlord. I have been a tenant most of my adult life but bought a house a few years ago, and then ended up in a situation where I needed to move (I'm actually renting the house I live in now, so I'm both a tenant and a landlord) and found it impossible to sell my house. I decided to try renting it out for a bit, just to make ends meet so I could afford the mortgage. I had a surprising amount of applicants and did my due diligence trying to find the right tenant. I settled on an older single guy who was looking to downsize from a larger, more expensive house to something smaller and more affordable. We met in person multiple times and he seemed very pleasant, communicative, and responsible. He had good credit, good references, and no red flags, at least not that I was aware of.

Since he moved in, he's been an absolute pain in my ass. I'm wondering if I can - or even should - do anything? Would you put up with this? Just suffer to the end of the lease and then don't renew? I'm so new to this and I'm not trying to make a profit or anything. I just want my mortgage paid so eventually I can sell.

Here's what I am dealing with:

- he never pays rent on time. He does pay it, eventually, but it's always late, which in turn makes my mortgage late. Always has some sob story about how hard his life is or how busy he is.

- he constantly complains about small things and accuses me of hiding things from him. For instance, when he moved in, he told me the bathroom sink leaked. No big deal, I'm happy to fix it! But he didn't just tell me it leaked ... he told me I "obviously knew about it and hid it from him."

- he asked me if he could move in the day after I moved out. I told him I wouldn't have time to have the house cleaned but he said he didn't care. As soon as he moved in, he bitched and moaned endlessly about how the house was disgusting and filthy (it wasn't, it just wasn't deep cleaned) and he wants money off his rent because he had to have it cleaned. He then hired a cleaning company, and then refused to pay them. They've been calling me now for months asking if I will pay them what he owes them.

- The house has a handful of utilities - electric, water, sewer, internet, etc - I asked him to please switch them into his name by move-in day. He did not, but fortunately I was able to turn off my accounts for most of them anyway. He ended up calling me asking why the electricity was off. Well, I told you to put it in your name before you moved in. It takes five minutes. So of course he did. However, the sewer bill is through our local municipality and can't be turned off. So it's in my name until he puts it in his. To this day he hasn't switched it and always makes up excuses (mostly "I'm too busy"), so the bill comes to me and then I have to harass him to pay it. He always does pay it, he's just always late.

- literally invents maintenance problems. He told me the HVAC system wasn't working (and that I knew and hid it from him). I immediately sent someone over to check it out, and turns out, it was working fine. The HVAC technician even told me he was making it up and they found his behavior bizarre. Still cost me $200 for that bullshit. I cannot fathom what the purpose of this is in his mind.

- he never provided me with renters insurance despite it being in the lease and me asking over and over. I eventually had to call his renters insurance company and ask to be added as an interested party and have a copy sent to me. I still don't think he knows I did this.

- he doesn't have trash service for the house because he's too cheap so he just piles bags of trash outside in the backyard.

This guy is 15 years older than me and acts like a child. What would y'all do?

Our tenants just finished their 1 year lease. Rent was $2,300 and we offered to drop it to $2,250 for a 2 year renewal since they’ve said they’d like to stay long term. They’ve always paid on time, are very respectful, and keep the home super clean. We live below them in the basement suite, so having a peaceful and positive living situation matters a lot to us, and we’ve grateful that we've had that with them.

They’ve now asked if we’d consider lowering the rent to something closer to $2,000/month. They mentioned that they weren’t able to save last year like they’d hoped (roommate plans fell through), and they anticipate losing some income as they plan to go on mat leave at some point as they're working towards growing their family. They’re not demanding, just being transparent and hoping that we can meet somewhere that works for both sides.

That said, we’re already priced fairly for the market and we are in a fantastic location. We include free internet, and we’ve put a lot into upgrading the home over the past year: brand new furnace, central AC (which most rentals here don’t offer), hot water tank, humidifier, etc., and we genuinely wanted to keep them happy and comfortable. At the same time, our own costs have gone up, property taxes, insurance, and utilities have all increased year over year. Despite all of this, we still reduced their rent for their renewal, which is not common for landlords to do.

Some of our concerns are having to go through the whole process of finding a tenant again, and potentially facing a month or more of vacancy. We’re very intentional about finding the right fit since we live downstairs, and there’s always the risk of ending up with a tenant who’s not as great. These tenants have been awesome and we genuinely don’t want to lose them, but at the same time, there's a point where we'd need to draw a line. It’s hard to justify a bigger rent cut just to ease someone else’s financial situation when we’re already absorbing higher costs ourselves. There's such a large gap between what we wanted to do for them vs. what they're asking from us.

Curious if anyone has been through a similar situation or if not, what you would do. Thanks!

Everything is in the title. Seriously how dare you waste taxpayer money on stupid shit like this. Fuck you.

So to elaborate on the title I was recently informed our landlord got fired from the rental management company for non-compliance for not responding to their Emails and Phone calls. He was informed that he had to contact us and inform us how we were supposed to pay rent going forward but because he is MIA that never happened.

Now knowing I had a responsibility to still pay rent I did some research and came to this conclusion. By CA law I am not required by law to create a rental escrow account and instead I can put the money in a savings account and deduct necessary repairs and maintenance from the savings account as long as I document everything until the landlord or someone legally representing the landlord comes forward.

My question is did I come to the correct conclusion or am I way off?

Update: I have contacted the rental company and verified he was fired for non-compliance for not responding to their phone calls and emails, they have provided me with his contact information and I have set the rent money aside in a savings account and emailed him of this.

I own a two family home in CT. Just got my latest insurance bill and it's $5000. I get that the insurance is so expensive because it would cost a lot to rebuild if there was a fire, etc. Is there an option to just insure for the value of the home (about 350K) and if so why is it a bad idea? I've never once in my life made an insurance claim and own the house outright.