Metropolitan Updates

A holdover usually occurs when the renter has given a notice to vacate and then stays. As a landlord, you may already have a new renter ready to move but now can’t because of the holder. You will end up evicting the holdover but should ask for damages to cover temporary housing for the new tenant as well as storage cost for their items. The issue is whether or not the resident’s failure to move is willful and not in good faith. You need to take appropriate action to regain possession of your rental, plus rent owed, court costs, and attorney’s fees.

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Every few years, private organizations receive federal subsidies to monitor fair housing compliance and engage testing. One group in particular, from time to time, files standard form, non-specific complaints against housing providers claiming discrimination. State and local agencies should reject them as being too vague to respond to. However, since the agencies received federal money for each filed complaint, they have incentive to accept them. The private agency filling them insists on payment for its efforts. Since most housing providers will give in and pay a few hundred dollars to make the complaint go away, the agency has an incentive to keep filing them. This is an abuse landlords have been living with for years and probably will have to continue living with.

~Thanks to Andy M. Hull, Attorney-at-Law

It looks like a great buy; affordable with curb appeal. However, you may want to re-think. Close to 128,000 ARM loans have yet to reset and recast in Arizona, with the mortgage holder now having to start paying the actual mortgage and deferred interest. Banks are holding approximately 45,000 homes off the market so as not to completely devastate prices. The foreclosure rate has accelerated in more centrally located, often pricier neighborhoods while slowing down a bit in newer, more remote communities where the foreclosure floodgate burst in late 2007.

What to look for now?

The volatility of today’s real estate market can provide many gems for investors IF they can be flexible in their strategies. Consider why you want to invest; do you want a great return on your investment or are you looking to purchase some newly affordable “prestige properties”? Being too rigid in the locations you’re reconnoitering can mean missing out. You purchase an investment to make money… otherwise you would have bought a boat. Think about your needs. Are you willing to have your investment sit empty rather than lower your rental price? With a slight adjustment and a realstic vision you can have a steady stream of revenue.