Real Estate Lease: Fill & Download for Free

Hello Joanne!According to the Netflix “Dirty Money” documentary, he is. They call him “a tier-one predator.”Kushner is not just oblivious to the struggles of his tenants—he is the perpetrator of them.The documentary details Kushner Companies' shady business tactics. Kushner took control of the company after his father, Charles, went to prison for trying to obstruct an investigation by blackmailing his sister with a video of his brother-in-law having sex with a prostitute. The probe was led by then-prosecutor Chris Christie. Why Chris Christie and Jared Kushner hate each other so muchThe episode shows "the apple didn't fall far from the tree,” noting that Kushner "quickly began managing the family business via underhanded practices of a despicable sort."Much of the episode focuses on "construction harassment." The show details how Kushner Cos. regularly ousted residents from its rent-stabilized apartments in New York by launching "unnecessary large-scale renovations intended to make life so miserable that tenants flee their homes," The Beast reported. In turn, the company was able to increase rent prices without running afoul of the city's rent regulations. NYC fines Kushner Companies $210K for falsifying construction permits at rent-stabilized buildingsThe company also failed to repair damages in apartments and hit residents with baseless rent fees in both New York and Maryland.Residents at the company's Maryland apartments accused the company of forcing them to pay sham penalty fees when the company needed additional revenue after its disastrous purchase of 666 Fifth Avenue for a record $1.8 billion in 2007. The real-estate company owned by Jared Kushner's family is dumping its financially troubled flagship skyscraper in New York CityAfter leaving his role at the company to work at the White House, the show looks at how Kushner "exploited his undeserved political role to obtain lucrative financial deals for his family, which in turn has made him a figure easily exploited by foreign powers eager to gain leverage over the president," The Beast reported, describing the episode as a portrait of "unrepentant real-estate scumbaggery." https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/kushners-overseas-contacts-raise-concerns-as-foreign-officials-seek-leverageKushner Cos. bought up 6,000 rental units last year in the Maryland and Virginia area for $1 billion in spite of a long history of allegations of fraud and misconduct.The company was fined $210,000 in 2018 for 42 instances of failing to identify rent-regulated tenants at one of their New York properties in violation of regulations. Kushner Company Fined $210,000 For Lying About Rent-Protected Tenants"Misrepresenting the facts to make a buck is shameful, especially when you're hurting tenants and worsening the city's housing crisis by doing so," New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said at the time.The company's tactics also came under the scrutiny of prosecutors in Maryland. A 2017 investigation found that Kushner Cos. sought the civil arrest of 105 tenants since 2013, making it the most frequent user of the tactic in the state. Falsifying Permits | Kushner Companies | Blackstone GroupMaryland Attorney General Brian Frosh filed a lawsuit last year accusing the company of using "unfair or deceptive" practices after a years-long investigation determined it was responsible for "hundreds of thousands" of violations.The company charged "sham" fees on "distressed, shoddily maintained units" that had "conditions that can adversely impact consumers' health and well being," Frosh said.Many tenants "have had to endure living in the units that are infested with rodents and vermin, plagued with water leaks that have caused mold and other issues, and, at times, lacking basic utilities," he added. Others "experienced rodent infestations so severe that they have rodents living and dying in walls and kitchen appliances; damaging carpeting; chewing holes in drywall and screen doors; and leaving droppings on floors, counter tops and furniture." Maryland AG: Kushner's company had "hundreds of thousands of violations"Then there was also this…In Maryland, Kushner Companies owns and manages thousands of low- and middle-income rental units over more than a dozen housing complexes, which investigative reporter Alec MacGillis collectively dubbed “Kushnerville” in a 2017 exposé. Unlike in New York City, there wasn’t an economic incentive to push out Kushnerville’s tenants. Instead, Kushner Companies maximized profits by spending minimally on the units’ upkeep, while gouging the tenants with a slew of fees, many of them dubious, on top of their rent. The Beleaguered Tenants of ‘Kushnerville’ — ProPublicaIt wasn’t just the residents of Kushnerville who were subject to these predatory practices; it was the former tenants of the complexes too. When Kushner Companies bought these buildings, they went into the files of the previous owners looking for money to collect. One of these former tenants was Kamiia Warren, a single mother of three, who was working as a home health aide while also attending school.Kushner Companies relentlessly pursued Warren for $3,014.08 for breaking her lease with the former owners. However, Warren didn’t owe the money. She had received permission to move out early, but years after vacating the property she no longer had the paperwork to prove it and didn’t know how to defend herself in a court system Kushner Companies expertly weaponized against her. Her Kafkaesque ordeal resulted in a legal judgment against her of nearly $5,000. To collect, three days before Christmas Kushner Companies began garnishing her paychecks. Then it zeroed out the $900 in her bank account, leaving her destitute.As if that weren’t heartless enough, Kushner Companies requested that the court approve a body attachment for Warren. A body attachment is a civil arrest warrant that enables the local sheriff to incarcerate debtors, essentially for the crime of being poor. Kushner Companies was not alone in employing this draconian tactic, but it employed it far more aggressively than any other real estate firm in the state.Fortunately, MacGillis’s article resulted in Warren getting pro bono representation, and once she had legal counsel in her corner Kushner Companies immediately caved and eliminated her debt. Why had Kushner Companies been so harsh in its dealings with vulnerable people like Kamiia? Kushner’s CFO told MacGillis the firm had a “fiduciary obligation” to its partners to maximize revenue. While this explanation may be morally bankrupt, it is perfectly in line with how most businesses operate. Jared Kushner, Slumlord Millionaire, Can’t Evict the VirusTo conclude: I think it’s more than fair to say that Jared Kushner is a slumlord millionaire…

First, you should LIVE in your first rental property. You should do all of the repairs and remodeling yourself. This is the only way that you will gain the experience to know how big of a construction nightmare you can bid on, and then handle for your next project, and eventually, the ones after that.By living in your own rental, you are automatically given the right to perform an astounding number of projects in many states, with no license whatsoever. You might not even need permits for some of the smaller tasks!Once you start to know a LITTLE bit about what you are doing, (probably around 10 to 20 houses for most people), then you can possibly know enough to spend money on hiring general contractors and handymen type workers. You will know enough to spot the professional goldbrickers and incompetents instantly, and swiftly remove them from your projects forever after.If you don’t know what you are doing, and then you hire somebody to do work for you, how will you ever know whether or not THEY know what they are doing? How will you know before the money runs out? How will you fix the resulting disaster? You KNOW it won’t pass inspection.Just this year, I looked at a house being prepared for use as a rental unit. The owner was a woman who was at least doing her own painting. She had a “professional”, licensed, plumber come in, and make some modifications to the basement plumbing so that a new bathroom and bedroom could be created out of unused space for additional rent. I gasped in dismay at what I saw! “Why did you pay the bill for this mess?”, I asked her incredulously. Her answer? “I was afraid he would damage the project even worse if I didn’t…”Yikes!This same year, I also looked at a flip being remodeled by a career, licensed contractor who had presumably done hundreds of projects over the years, both for himself and for other homeowners. I know he had done several, because he was paying all cash for his flips.In my opinion, he had paid about $100,000 too much for his project. “You’ll never make any money on this property after paying that much for it”, I predicted. He coolly looked me over, and said that he was pretty dialed in to the local market. He further stated in subsequent conversations that he would have the house completed in three more months, and sold profitably sometime during the ensuing winter. I looked at him incredulously.While I do not know how much he ever got for the house, (it was still unsold the following summer, meaning that the asking price was far too high for the local market), I can say this:Unrepairable flaws were being built in to the house in order to save on unexpected, rapidly mounting renovation costs. I listened to the inspector describing how the entire roof insulation would have to be ripped out, and rigid insulation installed in order to create air flow to remove moisture. I watched thousands of dollars of materials and labor get expended over the next few weeks as this apparently completely unexpected expense burned up his budget and schedule.Hidden flaws in sheetrock were being painted over in a closet, where they were unlikely to be found until your hand accidently pushed through when you lost your balance and steadied your hand on the wall someday.The very cheapest carpet was installed. Fibers fell out of the scraps that I was given even before I got them home. I only use them to cover muddy walkways in the backyard until I finish putting in some gravel.Serious drainage issues were left for the new homeowner to discover for themselves, probably during the next winter after they moved in.I do not consider myself to be a competent designer, but flaws that I immediately noted included:The “classy” granite countertop had a sharp corner jutting out into an obvious pathway to the living room. “Ouch, Guess how many times the new homeowner is going to curse THAT oversight during the next few decades?”Going into your attached garage and parking your car, now entailed having to walk BACK outside into the rain, (it rains here a lot, so the homeowner WILL be constantly getting wet as a result), and then walking around half of the house to the front door, in order to get back OUT of the rain. Was it worth a new, “private”, master suite? I think not.The point of all this?This guy was a lifetime professional!I shudder to think of buying homes for rentals that are “all ready to go” that he is planting continuously in the communities in which he operates his “business”. What if I were to unwittingly buy one of them in another town someday? I am seriously considering ONLY buying fixers, so that I will have FIRST HAND information on the type and quality of repairs that were performed on it. The potential liability is too great to buy a flipper from an incompetent builder.If you think that I exaggerate the situation, think again. A longtime real estate developer put in a subdivision a block away from a house that I once bought. The project took a few years to complete, as it involved well over one hundred houses. The old site was an eyesore, an old mill operation that had been abandoned decades before, when all the trees were finally cut down for miles around.What you probably don’t know, is that lumbering operations back then discarded the bark as useless material. This piled up and compresses over time. However, it is not a stable building material. For several months, giant piles of bark, dirt, and sand, along with a few assorted rocks and miscellaneous garbage were dug up, and sorted by a giant machine that rumbled like the dickins during operation. The bark was still wet, and unrotted after all those years. The piles were so high, that it repeatedly smoldered and burned from spontaneous combustion. That’s right, no matches needed! The fire department got tired of distress calls from neighbors smoked out, and condemned the pile. They had to level it to under 6 feet high. It had been over 30 feet high in places. It was eventually sold to gardening centers.Next, fill dirt was brought in and packed down. To make construction easier, the subdivision was leveled. This means that neighboring houses on the low side of the property line that faced the new subdivision now had useless windows. Who wants to look at a pile of dirt higher than the top of your roof? Yes, this was all perfectly legal in that town.I walked around the subdivision nearly daily, observing details of construction, noting defects in craftsmanship and enormous quantites of wasted materials. Sometimes I would get permission to pick up scraps, and I would actually go through house after house cleaning up after workers.Eventually, the noise from the construction stopped keeping people awake at all hours of the day, heavy equipment arrives before 6 and unloads, so that construction workers can get started on the dot at 7. Fancy new tile roofs, and attractive yards made selling the new units easy. In fact, the developer had to charge $100,000 MORE per house than he had planned, as housing prices in the area had risen rapidly during the long construction period. He laughed all the way to the bank on THAT deal, eh?I drove through the subdivision when about one third of the units were sold. What kind of people would buy such houses? People with expensive car payments, was the instant, and most obvious answer. Solid citizens, paying their taxes, paying their mortgages, and paying their car payments. Pride of ownership was evident everywhere. No more living on the wrong side of the tracks for THESE people! They were getting ahead in the game of life!Want a chuckle? Attempt to guess what it is that I knew about every, single house in the subdivision that the new homeowners didn’t know. What they couldn’t possibly know, because they weren’t around while work was being done on their new castle?Every day, 30 to 50 freight trains, loaded with 99 cars each, traveled at the reduced speed of 25 mph on the badly maintained section of track, not 50 yards from their new property! Because they were moving so slowly, each train takes an amazingly LONG time to pass out of hearing! My property vibrated each time one rumbled by. Do you think ground vibrations are good for houses? Can you say, “mini-earthquakes? For the rest of eternity? It was a major transport line for the railroad…Next, because the fill dirt was only allowed to settle for about 8 months before foundation construction started, EVERY single house in the subdivision had interior angle cracks, all the way through the slab, (which concrete is prone to), where the garage attached to the house. The long garage made a right angle bend in the slab perimeter. I looked. Not one, single house escaped settling and then cracking in this manner!Because the builder was “thrifty”, and utilized modern building techniques, OSB was used for sheathing. No houses being built today fail to take advantage of this low cost product dreamed up by lumber mills looking for ways to make a buck on otherwise useless lumber. Their garbage is chewed up into little, thin strips of wood shavings. These shavings are then “oriented” in such a way as to provide mutual support, much like the layers in plywood. They are then glued together, (I kid you not!), and compressed to uniform thickness, and cut to exact, uniform sized sheets. Oriented Strand Board is not always made out of completely waterproof glue. You can tell, because when it isn’t, the shaving swell with water during rainstorms, and the product loses its integrity. Almost as badly as particle board, which is made out of sawdust glued together. That’s right! Don’t let your cheap, particle board entertainment center get wet and leave standing water on it for long. It will bulge hideously, like the ravenous sponge that it secretly is, and the screws won’t hold at all any longer. And then things fall apart.The OSB in every house was repeatedly rained upon, without being covered, during an unusally wet summer. Guess how long it will take for the new homeowners to “discover” how much it is going to cost to repair THAT hidden damage? Will the house warranty cover some of the expense? Naw! It will have expired LONG before anybody notices that there is a problem. A problem that existed from day one. Yep! Them’s the breaks, when you buy a nice, shiny, new house from a “reputable” builder. Scoundrels, on the other hand, will treat you MUCH worse, heh!Do you really need another story? Okay.Two years ago, I meet a guy in another state. He is partnered up with some real estate mentor of his, who wants to raise money for his church funded, overseas, orphanage. That’s right, his own church…I have no problem with people who want to learn real estate, and make big money for seriously needed projects. However…I went over to his mentor’s latest project, a partial burnout in a town with a failing economy. It was ambitious, but definitely possible. As I helped the understudy with some yard work outside, I asked him how long they planned for the project to take. “Oh, about a month”, was the clearly uneducated answer. “You’re kidding”, I insisted.“No, really! The last project we did together only took 30 days to complete, and we made $30,000 on that flip!”“Wow! I guess that you guys really know your stuff if you can make that kind of money in just 30 days”, I replied.Next, the mentor himself informed me that the church needed “office space”, to house the growing employee base that would soon be needed to support local missionary work, which consisted of primarily providing care to abused, single moms out on the street. More Lord’s work, evidently. Since I had so many opinions on everything, perhaps I would be willing to swing by the proposed office building and take a look at it? If I liked what I saw, then I could either help fund the building purchase, or, buy it myself, and lease it to the chuch on “attractive terms”.Huh? What is this? I was already in another state, so I figured that I would check out the local commercial market while I was there at the same time. Nothing to lose, really…The mentor called the real estate agent to meet me at the office building.I arrived early, and began taking what eventually turned into hundreds and hundreds of pictures while waiting for the real estate agent to show up. The exterior problems included:No street parking. Potholes immediately in front of the building. (City drainage issues, no way to legally fix by yourself). Building exterior patches failing, exposing shoddy construction techniques (something I noted extensively in my Iowa travels and visitations, for some odd reason), and the building was part of a block long structure. Three other business spaces, only one occupied. (Vacancies are a bad sign, economy is tanking, at least locally).Realtor drives up and unlocks the door so that I can get into the building for sale.Do the rest of the retail spaces come with the building? No, says the realtor.I ignore the hundreds of dollars in dump fees that the worthless restaurant equipment stacked all over the place will cost. Stainless steel can be recycled, sometimes for a few pennies over your gas and transportation costs. I focused on the various puddles of standing water around the center of the unit. When was the last time it rained here, I asked the real estate agent. Oh, about 6 weeks ago, he replied. Yikes! Water that won’t drain or dry up for 6 weeks!?!The vacant unit next door turned out to be part of the deal. The real estate agent pointed out the hole in the dark wall where I might pass through to inspect the other area. Holy cow! It was in such terrible shape, that I finished up documenting the disaster that I was walking around in, and headed back outside. I am saving myself about an hour of typing by skipping most of what I saw, so you’ll have to use your own imagination.Outside, it turns out that the only off street parking next to the building isn’t part of the deal. It is going to be tuned into yet another addition to the already too long office building by the current, deluded owner. Where do customers park I wondered? The real estate agent pointed down the street to the next block.Getting back on the phone with the mentor, I stated that he would have many unexpected renovation costs if he went through with the purchase of the building on his own. As much as I love disaster fixers, I would have no part of this one. He asked me how much it would cost to complete renovations on the building. I told him that I had absolutely no idea, but that $100,000 wouldn’t even begin to make a dent in the carnage.He sighed, and admitted that it sounded as if he would have to investigate a different facility for pursuing the Lord’s work.How did you manage to make such quick work of your last project and so profitably, I asked.Oh, we got lucky, and only had to do painting, he replied.I see. And about how many projects have you done, besides the one you are now working on, I asked.Just the one, he replied.Swinging by the guy doing outdoor work on the current project on my way out of town to say goodbye, I informed him that they probably should stick to cosmetic flips in the future for now. I didn’t see them completing their current project for at least 6 months. And only then, if they didn’t run out of that $30,000 along the way. Which was almost inevitable, given their utter lack of knowledge or experience in real estate. They both had families to support, you see, so most of their budget would be blown on rent and groceries. Yep. Big real estate wheeler dealer wannabees were still living in rented, rundown houses. Sigh! Good luck on starting that overseas orphanage, or the women’s shelter! Bye!The Lord can work in some mighty mysterious ways at times…I do not exaggerate, when I say that this is merely the tip of the delusional iceberg out there. Just prowl around on Craigslist in the real estate section, if you need further, and more local proof for yourself.“Let the buyer beware”, is more relevant today than when it was first coined, thousands of years ago!Start small. Fix your own houses. Make small, affordable mistakes that are relatively cheap to fix. Live with your mistakes, so that you begin to understand which ones make things unlivable. Nobody cares more about your money than you do. So, first hire the person who cares MOST about your money! Keep making small, steadily increasing steps towards the big empire dream.By definition, “good” contractors are rare. They are also extremely busy. That is because everybody wants to hire them. That is because they do reasonably competent work. They are too busy and too expensive for you. Some day, you’ll be able to afford to hire them. Everybody else that you might be able to hire before then is incompetent.You read it here, and you read it from me.Don’t make anybody have to say later on, “I told you so!”Good luck and may the Lord bless!

I did, but it wasn't actually them that wrecked it, but they were the first link in a chain reaction that wrecked it..they decided they wanted to move out before the lease expired, so they sublet my house, unknown to the agent… then those people, supposedly school teachers (I suspect not), wanted out, so gave the keys to some blokes they met at the pub, enter destruction…during this a real estate company was supposed to be managing the house, while hubby and I, and children were in Papua New Guinea for 3 years.… we came home to have a baby about 18months into our transfer, and found out the “teachers" were in, so, rang the agent and said WTF, so then the teachers were, apparently, placed on a 6mth lease. It was some time after that, they decided to leave and put the pub people in. This was 37years ago, so before landlord insurance, it cost us $12000 to repair the damage. I rang the real estates Head Office, which was a huge company in Australia, and told them I was going to sue for repairs and they said to me “go ahead and do your worst, we've got a legal department that will chew up, and spit out anything you can throw at it". For 37 years I have bagged this company to anyone who mentioned to me that they were considering using them. Then my daughter found a unit being sold by the company, I went with her and told the agent what I thought of the company, and that my trust factor was zero and falling. He told me he'd been with them 25 years and he acknowledged that when he started with them, they were terrible, but that the old days had gone. He turned out to be a great agent. It's devastating to come back to find your home trashed..my advice these days is, please, please take out Landlord Insurance.