Let’s face it. It’s possible for a tenant to be a great find for you in the beginning. It’s also entirely possible for that same tenant to overstay his welcome. Maybe he’s been late with the rent – consistently – for a while, or maybe they don’t keep a very clean house. Either way, it’s time to get rid of them.

A funny thing happens, though – and this can happen to rental homes anywhere, not just in Phoenix – the guy actually refuses to leave.

Wow. Isn’t that an awkward situation. Ultimately, it’s not something that you want. So let’s examine this situation in full.

Before any of this has to happen, it’s good to start with a tour of the rental home. Maybe the tenant’s just in a bad way because of some things they never reported to you. It’d be a heck of a fix, but it could put the tenant in a better mood, and maybe even smooth things over. This goes hand in hand with the advice that you don’t tell them you aren’t renewing their lease. Instead, bring it up in conversation. Try to get a feel for their plans: whether they’ll be sticking around or if they’re looking to change.

Now, let’s say the nice stuff doesn’t work. You have a rental home in Phoenix that isn’t collecting rent. In that case, you have to tell them. It’s better to do so verbally, because it’s less formal, more personable, and gives you both a chance to get on the same side. You also want to send something to them in writing. Try giving them two months notice as well to make it easier. If the tenant doesn’t respond to any of this – not to calls or to personal meetings – then you may have a problem.

In which case, it makes sense to prepare for the worst. But don’t do so from the start.

Many investors, in looking at short term strategy, tend to think that short sales are a great jumping-off point for getting into the market. Not so. Here are five tips regarding homes for rent in Phoenix.

Short Sales Fall Apart

Over 90% of the offers that are made are not accepted. Of the few that are, they mostly fall apart at the last minute.

Don’t Get Too Attached

If you invest in multiple properties, that means each property is taking some of your resources. They will be tied up there for the next while. Make sure it’s where you want to be.

Due Diligence

Short sales are different from regular sales, so you’re going to need an agent who understands how different banks work with them.

Cash Offers

Banks see short sales as negative assets. They want to get away from these assets ASAP. Making a cash offer boosts the chances that they’ll give it to you.

Be Ready to Pay Closing Costs

The banks don’t want to pay them, and sellers will refuse to pay. Someone will have to pick up the slack. Be ready for it to be you.

So, we’re going to get a little bit more technical for this entry. This is going to be for the investors – people keep Phoenix home rentals in the city. We’re going to talk about one of the certainties of life: taxes and the IRS.

We can hear your groaning from over here. Yes, we know. Tax season doesn’t start until next year. But if you’re an investor, you know that it’s never too early to get your records straightened and prepared for your tax returns. Organized records are going to be important for you, to remind you of important transactions and to keep you apprised of any audits or notices from the IRS.

One vital thing for you to do as an investor is to keep all of your paperwork in an easily accessible place. Obviously, the IRS doesn’t care whether you do this or not, but it’s going to make things easier for you if you do it this way. This would include information on your Phoenix home rentals and any receipts and records you might have on it.

There are also some records you’re going to want to keep handy for a while. Three years would be the right amount of time:

• Credit Card Transactions
• Bills/Invoices
• Receipts
• Mileage Logs
• Canceled Checks

Now, as an investor, you will from time to time sell one of your properties. Not your problem anymore, right? Well, not quite. The IRS will still want some records from you. There are obviously more than these, but some good ones to keep would include:

• Records of the purchase of the home.
• Improvements done on the home.
• Rental property records.
• Real estate closing statements.

You’ll want to hold on to these for about three years or so after the transaction is complete. And yes, we know, it’s tedious and boring talk. But what’s not tedious or boring is getting an awesome tax return, so.

Phoenix is one of the best cities in the country for property management. There’s a lot of different reasons for it, but we can give you just a few.

Homeowners Struggle with Financing

Around here, the requirements for lending have become much more stringent. It means that things are harder now for first-time homeowners to get the financing they need for a new home. Even with the assistance programs in place, it’s difficult for them to get past the initial stages of writing the loan.

There’s another part to that as well – obviously, there are cheap properties to be had in Phoenix. But they don’t stay on the market very long, which means that the more expensive offerings are the ones that are left.

Contrast that with the fact that rental rates have stayed relatively flat. There are tons of good properties to manage in Phoenix, and people can take advantage of them if they wish to rent.

Home Replacement

As sad as it is that a lot of people lost their homes to foreclosure, it does present an opportunity for them and for us. People move into a house for a lot of different reasons, whether it’s for their kids and their schools, or to be near their friends, or other reasons. It’s also observable fact that most people don’t want to downgrade their living situation – they don’t want to move to a lower-class neighborhood, or lose out on the chance to send their kids to their chosen school. So, their next best option is to rent.

Thousands Relocate to Phoenix

Phoenix property management is great because there are a ton of people coming here every month. Either they’re looking for jobs, or they’re looking to flee from the cold weather. Either way, they need a place to stay, and with rent being relatively affordable around here, it just makes sense for them to do so.

There’s no reason not to take advantage of that.

During our time in Phoenix property management, we’ve made the following conclusion:  landlords are people too. And they want people to live in their houses. Sometimes that means they won’t tell you, the tenant, everything that you need to know.

We won’t tell you to never trust the landlord or anything like that. But there are some things you need to know that the landlord’s never really going to just come out and say.

The Building is in Foreclosure

Yep. This is something that landlords don’t tell renters sometimes. In fact, renters accounted for 40% of the families facing eviction in 2009, and it’s something the landlord almost never tells them – they hear it from the bank instead. Fortunately, there are laws in place that give you 90 days to move out as opposed to the old 30 days.

Complain More

No, really. The landlords don’t often know that anything is happening unless you tell them. They can fix it – but they can’t fix it until they know what’s going on.

There’s More Than Rent to Talk About

In Phoenix property management, it’s really unusual to see the rent get lowered. But if you’re a good tenant, it’s possible to find landlords who will lower the security deposit, or even throw in an upgrade without raising the rent. Don’t hesitate to ask.

Your Neighbor Is Not My Problem

Sometimes, you get bad neighbors. That’s how it works, and even as Phoenix property managers we can’t protect everyone. Unfortunately, your landlord is pretty powerless to act in the event that there isn’t a specific violation of the lease. The most effective thing here is to deal with your neighbors directly, and if that doesn’t work to file a report with the police.

You May Have More Rights

This is definitely something to check on, especially if you’re moving in from out of state. Tenant’s rights vary from state to state, and you may have some cards to play that the landlord does not.

Finding good tenants isn’t just the art of making sure that bad tenants stay away. If you’re involved in Phoenix property management, you know that. It’s not enough to just make sure that one subset of people stays away. You also have to arrange the circumstances such that good people want to come nearer.

There’s all kinds of little ways to do that. There’s a million different tiny things to be done, but making sure that the right people come is a matter of knowing statistics and figuring out how to take advantage of them.

Just to give you an example: three quarters of people looking to rent a home happen to own a pet. If, in the course of managing your Phoenix property, you decided to not allow pets, that’s going to be an impediment to good tenants.

GoRenter is the kind of company that understands this. We can help you get good tenants.

Remodeling projects don’t necessarily seem like they’re the most important thing in the world, do they? Granted, if you have a rental home in Arizona, and you made it out of a formerly defunct property, it’s not like you had the most choice in the matter.

Still, when you consider the idea of remodeling the house, it doesn’t seem like it’s the biggest thing to worry about. You won’t be living there. Your tenants will. Frankly, they should be grateful that they’re getting a roof over their heads at all, and they want nice things in the home? Just who do they think they are?

We would say, however, that there’s more to the story than that. To begin with, just as a matter of decency, you’d have to be involved in some maintenance and repairs on your rental home in Arizona. That’s to keep the tenants there and paying, as long as we’re being honest about it.

The thing of it is, those things – repairs and maintenance, and even the occasional small remodeling job – are going to cost in terms of time or in terms of money. What’s the pay-off to you, as the home owner, as the investor of these things?

Well, the truth is, renters look for the same things that you do as a homeowner. They look for nice counters, neutral paint, newer appliances, and clean carpet. For Arizona rental homes, these are nice touches that you can do to really attract the tenants.

And don’t forget the outside! It can be anything from planting a tree to replacing a garage door to pretty the place up. Anything that you can do to make the place a little more like home. Because at the end of the day, that’s what your tenants are looking for – a home.

The seasons, they are a-changing. Fall is rolling in, and winter sounds like it won’t be too far behind.

These periods of seasonal change are marked by all kinds of different things. Different foods, different clothing, different things to do, different sports, that kind of thing.

It’s not as if this doesn’t apply to your houses as well. If you’ve got homes for rent up in Phoenix, you’ve got some maintenance stuff to do. Winter in Arizona may be mild compared to the rest of the country, but there are some things you have to do regardless of whether you’re down in Phoenix, or up in Tucson.

For starters, you’re going to want to get the furnace turned on in the homes you’ve got for rent in Phoenix. We’re not saying you have to start heating the house immediately. But you definitely want to be sure it’s working. And you want to be sure that it’ll run itself correctly as well.

For that matter, make sure that you’ve also changed the filters on it as well. Unchanged filters affect the air quality of the home and they make for an unenjoyable living experience. If you like, you could leave a couple filters with your tenants, so that they can change the filters themselves during the cold months.

Make sure that none of the homes you’re renting out in Phoenix have any outside water running. Make sure the spigots have drained, and then shut off the water flowing to them. Otherwise you’ll damage the pipes running to them.

Also, let’s face it. You’re not going to be mowing your lawn in the winter. It’s a good time to add some fuel stabilizers to the tank, and to run other maintenance steps on it like sharpening blades and changing out parts.

There’s a lot to consider here. But for the moment, you can take your time. Winter’s not here quite yet.

If you’re putting a home up for rent in Phoenix, we can understand the desire to save yourself some money. After all, you’ve spent so much just getting the thing fixed up and ready to go. You want to see it start to turn some of that money back your way.

It makes total sense. After all, money is tight everywhere. The idea of bleeding it out for no purpose is a little scary.

We’re going to give you a strange thought, though: hiring a property management company, like GoRenter, can actually save you money.

Strange, right? After all, we cost money. How can spending money end up saving you money?

Well, in the case of your Phoenix rental home, we help you save because we’re generally less expensive than the alternatives.

For starters, we know where and how to advertise in an effective way, so that we spend less money overall and get tenants into the houses to put money back in your pocket. We understand, of course: obviously a classified ad and some ‘For Rent’ signs are cheaper, but you’ll have them for longer, and they’ll take more money from you overall.

As for repairs and maintenance, we deal with contractors on a daily basis. We’re not saying we can always get cheaper repairs, but we can do it sometimes. That’s definitely cheaper than calling out a repairman to the home you have up for rent in Phoenix.

If you happen to live far away from Phoenix and need your rental home looked after, we represent a cheaper option as well. After all, you have to consider the cost to yourself in terms of gas and time getting here and back to where you live. We can look after the property for you and let you know if anything pertinent happens.

People who get involved in property management come at it from all different angles. Some are homeowners in the area who simply have an extra house somewhere. Some are fixing up new homes for this very purpose, for the first time. Some are experienced in Arizona property management, and they already have our help.

On the other hand, it’s entirely possible for people to have properties around here and live out of state. And that changes the game somewhat, because it’s not just Arizona property you’re worrying about. You may have properties in other states, with other companies, and they’ll all be different from us.

Now, we only operate in Arizona. We’re not here to say that other companies are bad if they’re out of state – because we manage property here in Arizona. That said, there are a couple points we feel we need to make.

For starters, we can help you with the state laws. There are 48 different state laws for you to consider if you don’t go to Alaska or Hawaii. Painted in broad strokes, they’re all pretty similar. But there are a lot of fine details that differentiate us all from each other. What we can do is help you to understand the differences as they apply to your property here, so that you don’t have any nasty surprises waiting for you.

On top of that, our experience in Arizona property management lets us help you create the perfect lease for your house. We all hope that complications won’t arise, but with tenants getting involved it’s definitely a possibility. We can help you by setting the terms in such a way that they can’t take advantage of you or us.

Let us help you make the most of the opportunity you have here in Arizona.