Tenant Stubbed Toe .. Potential Legal Liability?
Last year we had a guy install tile in the dining room and hallway on the first floor of one of our units. The tile is in the room that you enter when you enter from outside. It was 16"x16" tile installed on the diagonal. This guy has been installing tile for over 20 years.
The tenant claims he stubbed his toe the other night on the floor and his toenail fell off. Evidently he told our on-site maintenance guy he laughed at him. Now the guy is calling us complaining about the floor.
Do we have potential legal liability for a stubbed toe from a tile floor that is even?
We have never had that happen. But we take pictures with every re-rent. With the digital age it is pretty easy to do.
Not sure I really understand your question. You need a bank account for your business that operates your rental property or properties. You can use a mailbox as your business address and have your tenants mail payments there. Then you get them and deposit into your business checking account.
Just a suggestion, you might want to use your home address instead of a po box which saves you from having to drive to the po every day to check mail.
Also some banks are offering a home check processing system that allows you to scan checks at home. With this any check you scan up until 7pm will count as deposited that day. Keeps you from trying to make a bank deposit by 1pm for deposit to count as being deposited today.
I would not feel comfortable giving my bank account information to my tenants. Too many opportunities for identify theft, why make it easy for the theives?
If you want your tenants to direct deposit to a bank account, consider having your bank set up a "lock box" account for you to use.
As an alternative, ask your tenants to authorize automatic drafting each month for their rents. Your bank can probably facilitate this for you. Your account information may be a little more secure this way.
I also have my tenants pay their rent by deositing the rent in to my bank. It work well for both of us. I also does this with my handyman business because some of my customer live out of town. I do long distance landlording and the bank get the rent to me faster. I keep a low balance to prevent any large hit on my account.
With one month left on the lease that is a really tricky situation. Do you charge first AND last months rent?
I use an online service that will allow me to pull a credit report and eviction report on a tenant any time of the day and only costs $14.95 which is covered by my $20 application fee. Judgments, unless they are very recent, show up on their credit report so I have a red flag before renting to the tenants.
In my state the county where my property is located and the adjoining counties have all their court records online. If I get an application I search all of these websites to see if they have any type of court records against them which can include eviction, divorce, dui, arrest warrants etc. This take about 10 minutes to search the websites of 4 counties. If my potential tenants are local they would have previously rented from one of these counties. information will show up on the courthouse website before appearing in a credit report.