I finally got the non-paying tenants out of one of my houses.  I poorly managed this one and let the tenants slide way to long.  I should have had the eviction papers on them by the 15th of march.  Instead I listed to their excuses.  First time landlord mistake that I have been warned about 100 times.  I guess I just had to learn the hard way.

Apparently the tenants decided it was my fault they didn’t pay and left a few surprises for me when I went back into the house the following day.  Two 3 inch diameter holes in the wall, an unplugged fridge with food still inside, trash in every room, stains on the carpet, a hole in one of the doors, and stains on the walls.  Not bad for only three months.  Actually, I feel I got off rather lucky.  They could have done far more damage and it is the smallest of my three units.  Less work to fix up.

This week, I am patching the walls, repainting, having the carpets steamed, having the place cleaned out and generally getting it ready for new tenants.  I have 3-4 prospective tenants waiting to rent this place.  I am thinking about raising the rent to $1000 a month.  Up $50 from previous rent.  We’ll see how that pans out.   I would normally just repaint the patch on the wall, but unfortunately I couldn’t match the paint exactly.  I will repaint the entire wall in each of the bedrooms and the bathroom.  Since the paint color is very close, I should be able to get away with one coat.

The cost of my poor management and bad tenants will be as follows.

~$1400 for 6 weeks missed rent.

~$400-$600 repairs (Paint, patch kits, new door, cleaning, steamed carpets)

Total of around ~$2000 dollars for one bad tenant and I got off light.

While this house is still in Denver, it takes me an hour 1 way to get to it.  I will be putting a property management firm in place once I get new tenants.  The ~$100/month will be more then worth it.  I figure my inaction on getting these tenants out in early cost me nearly $1000. Plus, the hours I wasted this month running back and forth could have been put to far better use working on my other plans.  Its time to put the management into more capable hands.

My other two rentals are much closer, less then 10 minutes away.  I have good tenants in both, so I see no need to go that route there just yet.Plus I can use those two properties as a carrot to dangle in front of the management firm.  This allows me to find a good company before putting all my eggs in one basket.