Only for eviction

Only when the tenant wants out, except the landlord does not get a month of rent in reverse, for the all the work involved in tenant turnover


Keepo

As a landlord, I don't feel like this is that big of an issue. It's the cost of doing business. Besides, there are so many shady landlords out there, the tenants do need rights.

That being said, the RTB needs to have a better turn around time. My father in law had to evict a tenant for no payment and it took like four months to get a RTB hearing, so it was six months unpaid rent (two months unpaid initially and four months of free rent until the hearing) and $3k bailiff bill to kick the tenant out. Brutal system.

Thats brutal.

As a scummy tenant technically you can live for free in any unit you want in vancouver. Sign lease > move in, dont pay > your good to go for 6 months > sign new lease with another unit > repeat

And there is literally nothing stopping people from doing it

What's worse is that the tenant can still appeal the RTB hearing decision. So even though the Arbitrator sided with us and gave us the Order of Possession, the tenant can appeal the decision. I don't know if that would take another four months to get another hearing, but luckily the tenant did not appeal.

I get due process, but the RTB is so backed up and underfunded someone who knows the system can game the system like you mentioned.

That's where you have to do your vetting well or hire a property manager to do all this for you. Literally talk to previous landlord of someone applying to rent your place, check their place of employment, vet their SM, do your homework. Still no guarantees but you've done due diligence. I heard talk of a website of delinquent repetitive assh*le tenants ... I wonder if there is that. It's like the carfax of tenants.

so with the eviction that went sour. Did your in-law still need to give 1 month of rent as payment to the tenant? And what happened to the 4 months of free rent, do you get all that back after arbitration ruled in your in-law's favour?

witha 6 month ordeal that prevents you from collecting any rent money, and another $3k payment to the bailiff, it further builds on my point that airbnb is better than dealing with RTB. You get a bad airbnb renter, they leave after the night or few days and you get to move onto the next renter. If they extend their stay without paying, just call the cops to have them removed. the "cost of doing business" seems far less when things don't work out if you rent out your place through airbnb vs one that deals with RTA.

The rule is either one month of free rent or cash worth one months rent. So since he got more than one month of free rent, that was already satisfied. We didn't inquire about it specifically though.

We did not bother asking for compensation for the unpaid rent because every property manager and everyone on reddit/forums said it's impossible and not worth the time to collect. We would first have to find where the tenant resides, then serve him a notice to go to court, and then go through that entire process. We decided it wasn't worth it. So we just bent over and took it.

The Baliff cost was a total surprise though. Because the tenant did not move out after we got the order of possession. We had to hire a baliff to physically remove the items and the tenant, the baliff had to hire movers and rent a storage locker for one month to hold all of the tenants items. The landlord has to pay for the movers, the rental locker, and disposal if the tenant doesn't retrieve their items. Within that month, the tenant has one opportunity to remove their possessions, anything left over the baliff has to dispose of at our expense. For us, it was just over $3k for the entire process.

For this exact reason I am biased towards tenants who have a profession where they are regulated by a college (e.g. nurses, lawyers) because I can actually look up their license and see whether they're in good standing...

...no guarantee of course but it's another check/balance.

I go thru this a lot.
doesn't matter what happens, i see both sides.

being -20 up in northern BC, you cna't just go in and throw ur tenant's stuff away on the curb. You're watching too much Gangster movies in HK.

Yes it seems unfair if you go thru RTB and i had a tenant leaving couch and stuff and breaking my windows etc. It's called the cost of doing business.

Doesn't matter if the guy is rich upon checking his background; my guy was working for a fortune company but lost his job so he worked the sytem; i went down the street 5 mins after winning the hearing to garnish his account at the bank but there just wasn't enough money in the account.

If you can, get a tenant who you have a mutual friend with

At the very least, in that case, you have some accountability then

I think I read it here. Someone rented to a friend's acquaintance through church. The tenant turned out to be a bad one.

What are some useful checks and some useless ones a landlord might do when vetting potential tenants?

If I was them I’d just go back to the church and start dragging that person through the mud until they left lol.

Credit check, record of employment, requirement of pre-authorized cheques, RCMP background check, employment and rental references, etc.

Most of that stuff, even mentioning it in an ad will weed out a lot of losers whether you intend to do them or not

I think this is an important point. Most landlord's forget they're running a business and it's not all sunshine and rainbows.

My aunt rented to a lady from her church, single middle aged mexican lady, and she was a nightmare to deal with. She got very territorial with the shared space and my aunt and her literally got into a wrestling match, where they ended up on the ground wrestling, pulling hair, the whole works.

The pastor of the church even got involved and he luckily convinced her to move out. It was still a three month process, she was still paying rent though, so I guess that is the positive. My aunt can be a little abrasive, so i'm sure she's not totally innocent, but it was a wild story.

The lady also stopped going to the church after that incident, probably because everyone knew about what happened and my aunt was a long standing member there while this lady was relatively newer.

“Shared space” is the key phrase there. No thanks.

I would never build anything with a shared space, whether it be laundry or even a garage. It’s just asking for headaches whether it’s between owner and renter or different renters. Not worth it. Sacrifice a closet or somthing for a laundry pair or don’t have laundry at all. Shared spaces are generally due to the greed of the landlord imo.

It was a shared outdoor space. A garden area. They were battling for garden space.. It's actually comical.

Oh lol.. yes.. that’s hard to imagine

I pictured a fight over laundry lol

An immigrant over garden space? Seems pretty accurate to me lol.

Just a couple good church goin folk being reasonable. Nothing to see.

Whoever posted above ... no guarantees. You just do your part and due diligence. Some Fortune 500 company guy could lose job. The thing is that if this is the cost of doing business, one has to do a cost analysis, is long term rental better or is short-term AirBnB better? No right answer ... unless you go to reddit forum. I feel for landlords ... maybe because it's one bad experience with renter. Present one is fine and stable but dealing with a gutted unit is frustrating to say the least. It really brings out the worst anger in you.

1) you'll never get any of these things. As you can't authorize someone to get your those info.
2) I'll get the info and then photoshop and send it to you.

There's a fine line - rental reference yes, RCMP check they might not let you and you also don't get to get their results. Pre-Auth. cheques are great however, people have a lot of accounts with zero dollars and people rather e-transfer so you can't garnish them.

If you do reference and employment checks, there's a fine skill on how to ask. I have seem their roommates answering their phones and a few questions was a way to call them out.

LIke whitev70r said... you're an owner.. and after 10-20 years... they paid off your apartment and you're sitting on capital gains as well. If you're ain't long term to even think that far... u might as well play the stocks.

If any applicant denied anything, then they’re gone, period. That’s how you thin the heard.

You can also pay for court searches in BC, having a middle name of an applicant you can see if they have any pending or previous court dates and the general details around those dates.

Employment checks I would say, give me a name of your employer or manager, tell them I will be calling, and I will be calling the company directly.

Of course the tenant doesn’t have to agree to any of this, but if you automatically tell me you’re not doing it, your application is in the trash.

Yup,

When we rented our first place so many years ago, our landlords absolutely did call our references: Both my employer (my boss) and my "former landlord" (Who was my uncle, because I actually had no former landlords lol)

It's easy to fake an employer or landlord reference. Just give them a friends number.