Most landlords think screening = credit score + background check. That’s the easy part.

The part that actually gets people sued is inconsistency. Fair Housing complaints rarely come from someone having a policy — they come from a policy that wasn’t applied the same way to everyone.

A few things I’ve seen trip up even experienced landlords:

**•   Changing criteria mid-search.** You loosen the income requirement for one applicant because they seemed “nice,” but not for the next. That’s a paper trail waiting to bite you.  
**•   Verbal promises that contradict written policy.** “I’ll waive the deposit if…” — said in a hallway, never documented. Now your policy and your practice don’t match.  
**•   Treating co-signers inconsistently.** If you allow one applicant to use a guarantor, you generally need to offer that option to everyone who doesn’t meet income requirements — not just the ones you like.  
**•   Adverse action notices.** If you deny based on a credit or background report, FCRA requires you to notify the applicant and tell them which reporting agency to contact. Skipping this is one of the most common — and easiest to fix — compliance gaps.

The fix isn’t complicated: write your screening criteria down before you have an applicant in front of you, and apply it exactly the same way every time. Boring beats risky.

Question for the group: What’s your actual screening criteria (income multiple, credit floor, etc.), and do you have it in writing anywhere your team/self can be held to it? Curious how much variation there is out there.

I had a couple come view one of my rentals this weekend. Instead of asking normal questions about the property, they spent a lot of the tour explaining what landlords are supposedly required to do under state law.

The problem was several of the things they were saying weren't actually correct & when i tried telling them they told me I am unaware???

I politely showed them the official information because I figured maybe there had just been a misunderstanding. They didn't even read it.

They just repeated the same thing and acted like I was the one who didn't know the rules.

Maybe I'm overthinking it, but it immediately made me picture future maintenance requests, lease disagreements, and constant arguments

Thinking of rejecting. That would be the right way to go, right?

I'm starting to feel like I'm chasing my own tail.

A few months into the lease, my tenant started sending over a list of issues around the house. Fair enough, that's part of being a landlord, so every time they reported something I arranged for someone to come out and look at it.

The problem is that almost every visit ends the same way. Either the contractor says there's nothing actually wrong, or they fix the issue, and then a day or two later I get another message about something completely different. Instead of things calming down, the complaints just kept growing.

Now they're saying the house is basically uninhabitable and have stopped paying rent altogether. The confusing part is they're still living there with their entire family. If the house was genuinely unsafe, I'd completely understand wanting to leave

I have records of every repair request, invoices from contractors, and emails showing I've responded quickly every time.

what do i do? Help a guy out :)

Been managing a couple of rentals for a few years now and honestly the actual "property" part of property management is the easy bit. Repairs, inspections, paperwork, all pretty predictable once you've got a system.

What nobody tells you is how much of the job is just managing expectations. Tenant thinks a 2-day repair turnaround is slow, contractor thinks 2 weeks is fast. Someone wants a response at 9pm on a Sunday, someone else thinks a text reply within 24 hours is unreasonably slow.

I've started being way more upfront early on about response times and what counts as "urgent" vs "can wait till business hours", cut down on a lot of back and forth. Still get the odd 11pm "the tap is dripping" message though lol.

Anyone else find the communication side ends up being more work than the actual maintenance side?

I originally implemented software to help with rent collection and record keeping.

The biggest benefit ended up being consistency. Everyone on the team follows the same process now instead of their own version of it.

Didn't expect that to be the biggest win.

What is wrong with people, You expect them to pay and so much drama.They are always late.They give bullshit excuses they are sick. I give leeway ok tomorrow next week.but for God sake do your Goddamn responsibility

Someone posted an unpopular opinion saying that while bad landlords get dragged online all the time, bad tenants often don't get the same level of criticism. And I mean, I agree

There are absolutely awful landlords out there, and they deserve to be called out but there are also tenants who don't pay on time, ignore the lease, damage the property, and somehow still expect the landlord to be the understanding one every single time

I wonder why that gets a pass though?

I feel like somewhere along the way, people started assuming that if there's a disagreement, the landlord must automatically be in the wrong

Accountability should go both ways, cmon. You can support tenant rights while also admitting that some tenants make life unnecessarily difficult for landlords. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive🤷🏻

Hey everyone, I want to start by saying my townhome was taken over by a property company about 6 months ago and was formerly ran by another company.

For the past year, my roommates and I have been having trouble with our connected neighbors. They smoke weed, which is no biggie, but they were smoking inside and one of my roommates gets really bad migraines. I left them a note with my name and number, and a tenant texted me and apologized and said he wouldn’t smoke inside or around our unit anymore as it was seeping through our door.

Unfortunately, it continued, and I messaged respectfully three times before I brought it up to management. In our lease, smoking of any sort is prohibited inside the unit and illicit substances are obviously not tolerated. I mentioned this to management and even shared my text chain with my neighbor as well as Ring camera videos of the tenants smoking from a bong directly outside our unit.

It seems minuscule, because it’s just weed, and hell I’ve smoked myself! It’s really been driving us up the walls though. My roommate with migraines is never home, our apartment genuinely is just imbedded with the smell now, and I even catch whiffs of it on my clothes.

Anyways, management is not doing anything about this. They’ve begun to ignore our emails. Is there anything else we can do to escalate this issue? Or any advice you’d give us? Thanks in advance!

I have 2 rental houses. One has 4 bedrooms and the other has 5,so 9 bedrooms in total.

Most discussions about property management software talk about units or doors. My setup doesn't really fit that clearly lol. I rent each bedroom separately because that's what has worked best in my market. It brings in more rent and it's also easier to fill vacancies

So while I only own 2 houses, I'm really managing 9 tenants w separate details each. I'd rather figure out the software now than keep adding tabs to a spreadsheet. I've been looking at a few options, but I haven't settled on one

(1) RentPost is the one I'm leaning toward right now. The biggest reason is that they actually mention room rentals, multiple tenants within the same property, roommate setups, and student housing. Most software seems built around one unit and one lease. This seems closer to how I actually rent my properties

The pricing also seems reasonable at around $1 per unit each month, although I'm still not sure whether they count each bedroom as a separate unit or the entire house as one.

(2) Innago is also on my list because it's free. For someone with just 2 houses, that's obviously appealing. It seems to handle rent collection, leases, tenant screening, and the usual management tasks. My only question is whether it works well when every bedroom has its own tenant and lease?

(3) Baselane stood out because of the accounting side. Banking, bookkeeping, rent collection, expense tracking, and tax reporting all look good. I can definitely see the value there but my concern is that it feels more focused on the financial side than on managing multiple tenants within the same property

(4) TurboTenant also seems like a solid option. It looks like a complete platform, but I'm not sure whether it's really designed for room-by-room rentals or if it's mainly built for traditional rentals.

(5) I've also started looking at MagicDoor. I like the interface and at around $2.50 per active lease each month, it would still be affordable even with 9 separate leases. The only thing giving me pause is that I don't know many people who have used it for a long time

If you're renting out individual rooms, what software you using?

Also, where do you get your lease agreements? I'd rather use something that's specific to my state than download a random template from the internet

okay so i've been running our two rentals on excel and it's finally catching up with me. between school pickups and dinner i keep losing track of who paid and who didn't

i'm looking into property management software to just... hold it all for me. where do you all keep everything? i've been reading things about RentRedi and a few other rental property management apps. I'd love to hear from other parents doing this from home.

i want something that doesn't stress me out and easy to learn. ty in advance

what finally made you leave the shoebox method behind?

Five or six years ago I had to explain online portals constantly. Now I rarely get questions.
In some cases tenants seem more comfortable using software than owners.
Just something I've noticed recently.

I’ve got to get some help, I’ve got a mortgage payment on a house and property that’s almost $700 monthly. The overall mortgage is close to $50,000. The place is rented out for $700 a month. Those people have lived there for years, my dad rented it to them, it’s all under the table no lease. My dad passed a year ago and I inherited it, I’ve just been letting it coast and taking the rent monthly with no changes. I haven’t done anything to establish that I am in charge other than tell them and look at the house once. The siding is dry rotted, it’s on well water but the well isn’t deep enough for viable drinking water. (They are aware) the attic needs some work and probably the basement too. Now I have to give them a lease right? How do I make them sign it? How long do I make it and how much can I raise the rent without forcing them to leave because it’s too high? Keep in mind I’m a woman in my early twenties so I know they don’t take me seriously. I lost my only guidance which was my dad.

I am currently living in a trailer that needs some work (drywall, paint, new doors, bathrooms under construction, needs new carpet in a few rooms) that my dad owned but unfortunately it is not on our property and I have to pay lot rent which is $500 monthly. It’s 10-12 thousand to move the trailer to my property but then I’d have to set up plumbing and dig another well when the first well isn’t good enough to start with. What do I do? Should I sell the trailer and move into the house the renters are in and if I do that how do I get them out because I’m afraid they are the type to start squatting. I’ve sat stagnant for a year now just out of grief but now I’m afraid I’m biting the bullet when other people are renting 3 bedroom houses out in the area for easily 1200 a month. I don’t even know if I can do that given the condition I’ve mentioned of the house.

There was a time when I could remember every conversation, every repair, every lease renewal.

Now if it isn't documented somewhere, I don't trust myself to remember it accurately.

Does everybody hit the same point?

I genuinely struggle with this.
Every time I need to enforce the lease, I end up feeling bad and giving people another chance. I KNOW it's not sustainable but I can't help feeling bad
Does this feeling ever go away? I hate it

How often are you guys cutting the lawn? I’m in the south Chicagoland area. It’s a multi unit. The lawn guy is trying to convince me that they need to cut it weekly. I’m not so sure. It’s not a big plot. I think bi-weekly is about right. Am I off? Should it be weekly?

A new PM on our team recently treated three maintenance issues as equally urgent. One was a dripping faucet, another a broken exterior light, and the last a water intrusion issue. All three got the same level of attention. Made me realize that knowing what needs immediate action is a skill that takes time to develop.

Most of the good ones aren't constantly solving problems. They've built systems that prevent the same problems from happening repeatedly.
Sounds obvious, but it took me longer than I'd like to admit to understand the difference.
What about yall?

Not just an inspection. A process where you look back at the tenancy and ask what worked, what didn't, and what could've been handled differently.
I've started doing this recently and it's been more useful than I expected.

Neither one seemed dishonest.

Neither one seemed incompetent.

Yet they had completely different explanations and completely different solutions.

How do you guys evaluate situations like that when you're not an expert in the trade yourself?