For many years, landlords (and tenants) in Pennsylvania have faced uncertainty on their respective legal rights to personal property of tenants left behind in rental properties. How long did a landlord have to hold onto tenant possessions left in the rental...
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Landlord-Tenant
Service Animals for Tenants with Disabilities: When Landlords and Condominium Associations Must Waive “No Pets” Rules
The American Veterinary Medical Association estimates that substantially more than half of all households in America own either a dog or a cat. Many of those who own pets consider them to be members of the family, and dogs didn’t get the name “man’s best...
Don’t Let the Bedbugs Bite You or Your Wallet
I remember the good night saying “Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite” from my childhood. But for many years, I didn’t think bedbugs were real, and for many more, thought they were extinct. Recently, however, they have come back, and are the...
Mortgage Fraud Task Force Hits Real Estate Investors Close to Home
Beaver Financial Services was for several years a vendor member of Acre of Pittsburgh, and several of its loan officers attended meetings each month, in their light blue shirts with beavers on them, offering to help investors obtain bank financing. The company...
Collection of Bad Checks
The expressions “bouncing a check” or “writing a bad check” are popular in today’s society. The question arises though: what do they really mean and what can you do if someone issues you a bad check? In Pennsylvania, bouncing a check occurs when a person...
EPA Delays Enforcement of Certification for Lead Safe Renovation, Repair and Painting
If you have not yet taken the EPA approved RRP contractor certification class, and have work to do on your pre-1978 properties, you have a little breathing room. The EPA announced Friday, June 18th that it is postponing the enforcement of the requirement that...
What Should the Landlord Do if the Tenant Abandons the Premises
A. Termination of Leaseholds Generally A Landlord can terminate a leasehold for any one of three reasons: (1) the term for which the property was rented is over; (2) the Tenant is behind in rent; or (3) the Tenant has breached (broken) some clause of the lease...
Seven Things You Need to Know Before You Buy Rental Property — Thing Seven: The Return on Your Investment
I have saved the most important thing to know about a rental property before you buy it, THE RETURN ON YOUR INVESTMENT, for the last in this series of articles. After all, we call ourselves real estate investors because we buy and operate real estate as an...
Lead Certification Training for Landlords and Rehabbers
As I write this article, we are less than a week away from the imposition by the EPA of its new requirements to minimize lead exposure during remodeling and renovation of pre 1978 housing units. Since last month, I have attended along with over 20 other ACRE...
Seven Things You Need to Know Before You Buy Rental Property — Thing Four: Your Tenants
Most of the time, we do not buy rental property which is vacant. We buy with at least some existing tenants, so we can enjoy immediate cash flow from the property. Banks generally prefer to loan against existing cash flow, instead of taking your projection as...