Many rental agents are worried about Owner Pays listings, because the owners are not paying, or paying so late that they wreck a person's income flow. If a rental firm rents an apartment for a landlord, and if the landlord pays it sometime in the next 3 or 6 months, the firm will survive, but the agent who did all the work will starve to death by the time he or she receives a share of the fee!Now rental agents are beginning to agitate for a rental industry Sit-Down. They want the same standard that applies to Sales to apply to Rentals - everything to be settled at the Lease Signing.
I don't know about you, but to me this is a no-brainer. Settle it when everyone is at the table, and the money is changing hands. If the owner is worried that the weak new tenant won't last a few months because they are so underfunded, they should not be renting to them. And why can't the landlord build into the lease a clause that re-imburses him/her for the rental Commission if the tenant leaves early? There could be a formula: divide the rental fee by the number of months in the lease period, and the landlord gets to keep an amortized portion of the security deposit if the tenant leaves early. That's fair to the landlord, the tenant, and the rental agent.
What do you think?
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
Did you ever break out in a sweat because you realized you did a real hatchet job last year calculating the legal rent for an apartment? And you did such a bad job, it occurs to you that there must be many others that are wrong too!
So I'm sitting with a new guy in the office one day, trying to show him how the Rent Guidelines Board annual rent increase work, when I start discovering all these mistakes. Trying to reassure myself, I start drawing circles that represent previous years, and I'm showing him how the RGB year starts October 1 and not on January 1, and everything gets confused because of that. Then suddenly, the solution to all the confusion hits me like a eureeka moment! It's a chart that makes it impossible to get it wrong, unless you're a certified idiot. If you email me at comprop4@gmail.com I'll send it to you. I can't find any way to attach the chart to this dumb blog. Sorry about that.
Mike G, The RE Gofer
So I'm sitting with a new guy in the office one day, trying to show him how the Rent Guidelines Board annual rent increase work, when I start discovering all these mistakes. Trying to reassure myself, I start drawing circles that represent previous years, and I'm showing him how the RGB year starts October 1 and not on January 1, and everything gets confused because of that. Then suddenly, the solution to all the confusion hits me like a eureeka moment! It's a chart that makes it impossible to get it wrong, unless you're a certified idiot. If you email me at comprop4@gmail.com I'll send it to you. I can't find any way to attach the chart to this dumb blog. Sorry about that.
Mike G, The RE Gofer
What I hate about real estate
Do you know what I hate about real estate? I hate those crazy tenants who think the landlord is the devil incarnate. You can take them to court and spend $40,000, and still they remain in their miserable little apartments demanding that it be renovated like new. They yell at me in the hallway with veins popping our of their heads. Then they write letters to the city and tell the gullible bureaucrats that I am evil incarnate, and the city sends inspectors who write up violations just to shut the tenant up. And there is no peace from this stupidity. It is ongoing, forever and ever and ever. I hate that.
Then there are the New York City sanitation ispectors. Boy, there's a bunch of losers. They have nothing better to do than go around twice a week giving out $130 violations because they saw a plastic cup in a paper-only garbage bag. Or because they saw a pizza box with pizza still in it in the paper only trash bag. How am I suppossed to know? What am I? All knowing? I didn't put it there. People walking by on the street throw their trash in our containers. Why do I get fined?
Or how about those supers who do nothing and never stop asking for more money. Don't they have any common sense? Do a good job, and I'll galdly give you more money. But instead, they sabotage the place and want hundreds of dollars to fix what they broke intentially, and if I want to get an outside contractor to fix it, I have to spend twice as much as the dumb super, who I know sabotaged it in the first place. This activity peaks just before Christmas, because that's when the super wants more money. Merry Christmas, everyone!
Then you have your dumb tenants who call the office for anything super trivial they can think of today. It's too cold in here. It's too hot in here. I hear noises from upstairs. Someone wedged open the front door to move out and all the robbers and rapists now have direct access to the building. The workmen are tracking dirt up and down the stairs. My faucet is running and I can't stop it. I saw a mouse. I had a bad childhood. I was never loved, and I'm calling you so you will prove that you still love and appreciate me. Right.
Well, that's the life of the real estate gofer. I'm a gofer because even though I own the place, I have to do everyone's bidding. The city department of buildings tells me what I have to do. The court tells me what I have to do. The super tells me what I have to do. The neighbors, the sanitation people, the plumber, the boiler repair man, the electrician, the roofer, the front door buzzer people. Everyone tells me what I have to do. I act like I have a plan of my own, but really I know I will do what they say, because life is too miserable if I ignore them. I even have to smile and talk nice with the tenants, because to antagonize them is to invite tons of trouble that I really can't face. So really, I have no life. I am a slave to the needs of my properties.
Then there are the New York City sanitation ispectors. Boy, there's a bunch of losers. They have nothing better to do than go around twice a week giving out $130 violations because they saw a plastic cup in a paper-only garbage bag. Or because they saw a pizza box with pizza still in it in the paper only trash bag. How am I suppossed to know? What am I? All knowing? I didn't put it there. People walking by on the street throw their trash in our containers. Why do I get fined?
Or how about those supers who do nothing and never stop asking for more money. Don't they have any common sense? Do a good job, and I'll galdly give you more money. But instead, they sabotage the place and want hundreds of dollars to fix what they broke intentially, and if I want to get an outside contractor to fix it, I have to spend twice as much as the dumb super, who I know sabotaged it in the first place. This activity peaks just before Christmas, because that's when the super wants more money. Merry Christmas, everyone!
Then you have your dumb tenants who call the office for anything super trivial they can think of today. It's too cold in here. It's too hot in here. I hear noises from upstairs. Someone wedged open the front door to move out and all the robbers and rapists now have direct access to the building. The workmen are tracking dirt up and down the stairs. My faucet is running and I can't stop it. I saw a mouse. I had a bad childhood. I was never loved, and I'm calling you so you will prove that you still love and appreciate me. Right.
Well, that's the life of the real estate gofer. I'm a gofer because even though I own the place, I have to do everyone's bidding. The city department of buildings tells me what I have to do. The court tells me what I have to do. The super tells me what I have to do. The neighbors, the sanitation people, the plumber, the boiler repair man, the electrician, the roofer, the front door buzzer people. Everyone tells me what I have to do. I act like I have a plan of my own, but really I know I will do what they say, because life is too miserable if I ignore them. I even have to smile and talk nice with the tenants, because to antagonize them is to invite tons of trouble that I really can't face. So really, I have no life. I am a slave to the needs of my properties.
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