My Christmas Gift to my Ex-Tenants
Posted on December 4th, 2007 by Purva Brown
Now, I’m not a mean landlord. My tenants can give testimony to that. But the last time, we had two different rentals that were vacant at a most inopportune time because we had to evict both tenants for non-payment of rent. Just how do you manage to rent a place in the middle of summer, sign a lease for a year and then skip out on it just as the days are getting colder and the holidays are approaching?!?
So online I went, researching “report tenants to credit bureaus” (good ole Google!) and came across this site of the Landlord Protection Agency.
And today, I’m reporting them all to collections.
I’m sure they’re having a very merry Christmas with my money!
There are a number of credit reporting services that also will report to the credit bureaus for you. Some credit reporting services also have “deadbeat” databases, where landlords can list what tenants were non-paying.
Now, I know you’re not mean… but, if tenants skip out without paying rent there is one last laugh you can always have. I’m not an attorney, so you need to check on the legality of this but I have heard that you can send the tenant an IRS Form 1099 for the amount of uncollected back rent. This would require your ex-tenant to pay taxes on uncollected rent.
Was the tenant on public assistance? I also had heard, although once again you’d need to check with an attorney, that since the IRS may include this as income– that 1099 might just push then tenant into a situation where they now had too much income to qualify for as much public assistance.
If this is true, the deadbeat tenant may want to “make a deal” and pay you the rent owed just to keep their public assistance status.
Unfortunately, most gurus when touting the benefits of owning rental properties tend to gloss over the part about deadbeat tenants!
Steve Boorstein
Landlord Business Insider blog at http://howtobuyrentalproperty.blogspot.com
www.managrentalproperty.com
www.howtobuyrentalproperty.com
Steve,
Thanks for the advice. I did go ahead and report them to credit-reporting bureaus. It’s true - buying rental property and managing rental property are two different things!