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Basically, I want to know how exactly renter’s insurance would apply in a situation such as this. My landlord decided suddenly that she wanted to replace the carpets in my apartment, and I reluctantly agreed to let her. As a result of a number of factors, the people installing the carpet ended up damaging several pieces of furniture and some relatively expensive festival tickets are now missing. My landlord gave me the typical runaround, saying that stuff was already damaged and that I should just file a claim with my renter’s insurance… basically telling me to shove it and make someone else deal with it.

However, the total cost of the damage is probably <$300, and I was under the impression that a deductible for renter’s insurance would be higher than that anyway, not to mention the fact that it seems to me that she should deal with this problem in the first place. Needless to say I probably should have gotten renter’s insurance, but am I wrong in thinking that she should be the one to cover the damage caused by a service that she shoved into my house?

Unless you bought insurance from Joe’s Incredible Insurance Barn, any decent carrier would deal with this. That’s (basically) how renter’s insurance works: “My personal property was here / not broken, and now it isn’t because something outside of my control happened.”

Of course, the insurance carrier is most likely going to harass the landlord or carpet company’s insurance carrier for the actual payout, but the actual renter isn’t.

It isn’t unheard of to have a low or zero deductible policy, especially on renters insurance, because it tends to be ridiculously cheap to begin with.

But in any case, having the landlady summoned to small claims court is probably all it would take to get the problem resolved.

Janice wrote:I own a 3-5 bedroom home (I guess officially 3br/2bath, but there is an upstairs with two rooms that have closets, etc, just no bathroom up there) that I have been living in and renting out to my friends for the past two years. Got lucky because they always paid rent, weren’t douchebags, etc.

This was while I am in college, though. I am graduating and do not want to stick around the house. My friends are all graduated now and are starting to move away and I do not want to have to rent it room-by-room to people I don’t know who are unreliable/etc. With the economy, it probably is not a good idea to sell the place. As such, I either want to rent it out to a group of students/young professionals, or to a family.

How difficult would this be to do on my own? Is it worthwhile to just get a manager who will take off 10%? I’ve had to rent out a single room before and it was a big hassle to get someone in there and to not have them skip out/abuse drugs (I’m talking shooting up, not just some pot smoking)/etc. Could I expect such hardships in finding a family or a group?

Currently the mortage is $1450, I actually bought it with a new roof/appliances/etc so very little maintenance (but I have $7,000 currently saved up and I put in more every month just for the house), and I pay $50 every 3 weeks for yard people to come by and keep it all nice looking, so if the manager wants 10%, I’d probably be looking at $1800/month to rent it and not be taking a loss, which is mid-range where I am, just above student “zomg how many apartments can we fit on the smallest amount of space” places.

10% is on the high end for property management, 6% is more common. I’ve also heard of some places charging a flat per-property fee.

Also it’s probably worth it to avoid any headaches stemming from occupant turnover, maintenance, etc. — ESPECIALLY true if you’re going to be out of the area.

One property is, on average, not a problem if it’s well maintained, but speaking from experience (I manage 28 units scattered around town) when something goes wrong it can be a full time job getting stuff back in order.

I use a property manager for my house in Florida. To me it’s worth it just to avoid the headaches, I never have to see or talk to the tenant, and that’s the way I want it. Using a manager keeps it business like and it never gets personal, so if my tenant is ever late with the rent, I don’t have to hear it, and the manager takes the appropriate steps.

I went with a manager through Coldwell Banker because their screening process is pretty strict, no prior evictions, no felonies, etc. I’m really happy with it so far.