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Got a new tenant for Condo #1

April 11th, 2007 by Kenric

My net tenant is moving in June 1st and my old tenant moves out May 31st.  This condo has been rented for every single day I’ve owned it.  I got this condo rented using my optimacondos.com website that I posted about earlier.  I really don’t understand why more people haven’t used my free site because it gets decent traffic and draws only a very targeted audience.  The only people coming to my site are people who want to rent an optima condo.

The rents for this condo has increased every year.  I first rented it out for $1225.  Last year, I thought I got a great deal when I was asking $1595 and got $1700.  This year I was able to get $1750 for it.  I’m glad that all the landlords in this building have realized that the new HOA rules and high taxes warrant huge rent increases.  A 2 bedroom unit used to rent for $1800 and now they are asking $2600.

I had to incur a few new costs this year.  First, the HOA passed a few new rules last year that I talked about in my post HOA trying to limit investors in my condo building.  The HOA is charging a $250 moving in fee for any new person moving in.  I’m eating this cost.  I’m not sure if the other investors are charging this to their new tenants or not.

My second cost is to pay a realtor for finding me this tenant.  Now about this, I was sort of torn between paying her and not paying her.  Here’s what happened. ”Mary” found my condo on my website two weeks ago and called me directly.  She saw the place and then I didn’t hear from her again.  Last week, I get a call from a realtor saying that her client really likes my place and asks if I work with realtors.  I ask what her fee is, she says it’s 1/2 month’s rent, which is $875.  I tell her that I will pay her $400 and she agrees.  Well, it turns out that her client is “Mary.” 

So the dilemma is, do I owe her $400?   I had already agreed to pay her, but it turns out that I’ve been in contact with her client prior.  I don’t think I’m obligated to pay her.  However, the question is, would Mary have called me to rent my place if this realtor didn’t call me?  She hadn’t contacted me back.  What do you all think? 

I’ve decided to pay her because:

1. I told her I would
2. I don’t know 100% if I would have gotten my tenant without her
3. It’s only $400
4. She did the background check and credit report already so I didn’t have to pay for that

I haven’t received so many calls from realtors on this condo and their first question is “Do you work with realtors?”  I’ll always said “yes” but I wonder how they’d react if I said “no.”  It’s a lesson learned though, in the future, I’m only going to pay $200 and stipulate that if they reveal a client that I’ve had prior contact with that I’m not paying anything.

I also just received a 2008 tax adjustment for this condo.  It’s going up.  I’m going to fight this one, because the value of the condo has gone down since 2006.  I think that $4500 for a $250k condo is just crazy.  Maybe I’ve been living in Arizona too long.

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