Diane G Real Estate

As a tenant, you need to protect yourself. One of the first things to do is familiarize yourself with rental laws in your particular area; be informed about what your rights are as a tenant, what your landlord is responsible for, and your landlord’s rights as well.

While this is often easier said than done, you do not have to be intimidated by your landlord. In essence, he or she is your employee — you pay them. If you are not breaking the clauses in the lease or abusing the property, if you are holding up your end of the agreement between the two of you.

Take pictures of everything wrong with the space when you move in. Check the heat, check the water pressure, check the water temperatures, and keep a written account of every time you talk to your landlord about these things. Always try to talk with a witness present. If you feel your needs are not being met, do not be afraid to call your local codes inspector to have someone come out and take a look.

When you first move into a new apartment or rental home, you have a lot of work ahead of you. Moving in your own things is, of course, one of the most important, but you also have to make note of any repairs the real estate agent or landlord alerted you to when you signed the lease, and you have to begin noting anything else that might be wrong.

Now, I will be completely honest with you. Depending on your personality, it can feel kind of awkward to tell your landlord about things that may not be working — and depending on what kind of landlord you have, the whole process can be either easy or difficult.

Say you are renting an apartment in an actual home, for instance. If you have a problem with hot water or water pressure, your landlord may say hey, sorry, it would be too costly to fix this, you’ll just have to make do.

What do you do in that case? Any tips or suggestions?

Now that we have talked a little bit about how you should leave your house – let’s go ahead and talk about in detail what you should be doing when all of your furniture is out of the house and you are left with an empty shell of a house.  Firstly, you want to make sure that you paint anything that you changed.

Usually, white is a good color as the new tenants will be able to paint over it.  This is just if you painted anything while you were in your apartment – if you didn’t don’t worry about painting.  You always want to make sure that you leave the place spic and span though. 

That includes breaking out the cleaning supplies and vacuuming down the entire place.  This will leave a good impression on your landlord and you will probably get your full security deposit back!

We all move.  Whether you are moving to a brand new house or you are moving into a new apartment, you want to make sure that you leave your old apartment in good shape.  Currently, I am going through a move myself and while I am not exactly moved out yet, I intend to leave the property the way I found it.

That does include some things that you may not want to be doing.  For example, cleaning out everything and making sure that the walls are painted.  This is something that many people forget about, however you always want to make sure that you do not burn any bridges when you move.

In the next blog, we will talk about exactly what you should be cleaning out and what you can leave.

When you are showing prospective tenants around the property, make sure you do a good showing so they will really like what they see. Plus, showing them around will provide an opportunity to get to know them — trust me, they are well aware that they are leaving a first impression.

If you see tenants who are polite and respectful, who wipes off their shoes, and ask relevant questions, it says a lot about their character. The opposite is true too — rude, nitpicking tenants may not be right for you.

You also need to be sure that your application covers all the details it needs to.

You can use many things to further screen potential tenants, from credit checks to professional references to personal ones — and you should definitely take advantage of these areas.

When you are renting a home, an apartment, a duplex, et cetera, you want to find the right tenants. You want someone trustworthy, someone with whom you ideally have a good rapport, someone who will pay the rent on time, and so on.

It can be hard to find a tenant that is a perfect fit for your property and, to an extent, for you — but there are several things you can do to be discerning when you are choosing a tenant.

For one thing, you should feel perfectly without your rights to create a list of questions that are important to you.

The questions should be relevant to your property and your needs. It can involve the existence of pets, whether the tenants smoke, even why the tenants are moving.

Now that we have talked a little bit about adding in a covered porch – the next step that you should take is actually making sure that your roof hangs over a little bit.

The reason for this is actually so that way, it keeps the sun off of the windows and exteriors, which will help the house, stay extremely cool in the summer.  It also really helps to protect the siding from the weather, which means you can go twice as long between repainting.

Next, you want to make sure that you reuse and remodel.  If you are planning to really tear down your home and start over, why waste?  Why not try to salvage your home or even your first floor and build around it.

In this day and age – real estate is all about how green your home is and honestly, the greener your home is, the better chance it has to sell and that is surely what you should be concentrating on whenever you are looking to sell your place.

There are tons of little things that you can do to make your home greener and in the next few blogs, we are going to talk about some of those ways.

The first way is by adding in a porch – new covered porch shelters are actually fantastic to keep the morning rays out of your home so you do not have to kick on the AC as much in the summer time.

Now that you have figured out exactly what neighborhoods or towns you are going to be looking into, the next logical step is going to be researching them.  You want to make sure that they are safe for you and your family so go ahead and look online and make sure that these neighborhoods and towns are going to be extremely safe.

Next, you are going to have to figure out if you want to rent a place or if you are going to buy a place.  Honestly, this is going to be the biggest decision, because if you buy – you might be stuck there but if you rent, it makes it easier for you to relocate again.  After this decision is made, go ahead and contact a real estate agent.

What most people don’t realize is that real estate agents can actually help you with renting and buying, so no matter which one you want, make sure that you keep your agent informed.

To be perfectly honest, if you are relocating – it is really hard.  Not just because you have to pack up and move, but most of the time, you are going to be relocating out of state and if you are not familiar with the state that you are moving too … that can make it ten times worse!  This is why I have developed some tips and tricks for you to follow if you are trying to find the perfect place out of state.

One of the first things that you need to do is wherever your office is based out of – you want to look at the cities and towns near it.  Go ahead and compile a list of the neighborhoods and cities you might want to live in that are around your office and then start on your research.

This will narrow down exactly where you are going to be looking for, so this should logically be the very first step!