Got FREE Rent!

[addisonsmom]

We moved into a rental house in November, following our CH 13 filing in August. We surrendered our home. We did a lot of work on the house, painted cabinets, every room, etc. I thought I was to start paying rent today, and the landowner informed me that we didn't have to pay until at least JULY for all the work we did!

This news made my day and Valentine's Day!

[keepsmiling]

Isn't that a wonderful surprise!!! You must have done a great job!

[free2breathe]

That is fantastic! Too bad everyone can't find such a great landlord to jump into the fresh start. Congrats

[addisonsmom]

It is an older home in the country. The rent is super cheap too - ONLY $375 for a 3 BR house. All other houses like this one is in the $750 - $1000 range. We lucked out on this one. It belongs to some family friends. They bought up all the farm land around it and the house was with it. So they just want someone to live in it to keep it up.

[goodyphilips]

I think you are very fortunate and you have a very nice land owner.

[debtprison]

It's good to see that there are good people out there who offer a fair deal. Unfortunately it's rather the exception these days. One thing I notice about rentals is that even the worst ones tend to be around $600. Paying just a few hundred dollars more can mean a huge jump in quality. Like going from roaches and mold to a respectable place. It seems then that the really bad ones are overpriced and just taking advantage of people who don't have a lot of money and must live somewhere.

[vicmost]

Congrats!
Count your blessings and remember to pass them on when you can!

[fatal1124]

That was such a blessing

[Snax]

Some landlords are truly appreciative of good tenants. Others simply can't put 2 and 2 together.

Before we gave up our duplex, tenants who made regular on-time payments and stayed for a whole year always got a rent holiday in December. We've also offered similar improvement credit to tenants who took it upon themselves to spruce things up. That and keeping our rents just slightly lower than the rest of the nearly identical neighboring properties had kept occupancy at well over 90% annually while other landlords that kept trying to squeeze out higher and higher rents faced vacancy rates of 25% or more. It's pretty simple math that made sense and worked for us, leaving us with positive cash flow and money ahead of our competitors.