I am renting a property. I kind of wish now that I would not have agreed to the lease terms I did. I also wish I would have asked for some money in advance. This guy is not destructive but he never cleans anything. I am certain I will need to pay to get it done professionally after he leaves. I should have never agreed to pick up all the electric costs either because he is here all the time using it...but he does pay his rent so that is a plus.
I have heard of such cases where the landlord would be inventing a list of damages so he has a reason not to return the one month deposit to the tenant who is leaving. One such case centered on the paint of the house interior, that the children of the tenant had damaged the said paint so re-painting is in order. But for all we know, that was already the condition of the paint when the tenant moved in. Fortunately for us, our landlord was kind enough not to even charge us anything for any damages like that. So we got the full one month deposit back.
While there are some dodgy landlords around, a lot of signed up now to that deposit scheme were they don't actually keep your money, they send it to a government run initiative and they keep hold of it until you move out, then you apply to get it back off them, it's not the landlord you need to ask, which makes things a lot simpler I think.
My mistake then, but if we are doing such an agreement we just need to be prepared for it and try to respect the terms of the deal.
When you ask the tenant to pay a month in advance you were really asking for the deposit that is required for them to move in. I don't think it's applicable to ask getting it to be more than a month or two ahead especially if they're dealing with the expenses of relocating to a entirely different area or to a different part of town. I think that it's important that the landlord take that in consideration especially when they're going to the process of doing such standards as having someone pay and application fee or asking for a deposit and first months rent due to ensure that the property is potentially going to be occupied. I'm into standing long-standing relationship is with tenants vs choosing my tenants based on how much or how much more they can pay me just so that I'm able to pocket more and make the pocket less.
I think the one month rent I advance is more of a security measure for the landlord more than anything else as you know then whatever happens you'll at least have one months rent to fall back on if that tenant does turn out to be a liability.
I see that as the deposit and it's something pretty common to avoid that tenant make damages and disappear, it's more than fair as far as I see it.
When I moved into my place I had to pay a damage deposit which was equal to one months rent. When you move out you don't get that money back until the landlord does an inspection of the property and makes sure that there was no damage done. Must places do require a damage deposit when you move in.
Don't most renters do that? But this doesn't correlate between paying on time. Some people just struggle to make it by so they will still have trouble paying on time, or at least all of it.