Property Management Agreement Property Management Agreement Full Packet: Fill & Download for Free

To start, a digression & intro - and then the reasons I support labour party.In a way it is tricky: if you discuss political parties then there are certainly people who say "none of the above", or "they are all crooks" -- and to a degree they have a point.However, "best is the enemy of good" is a lesson everyone should know.It is a mantra in Product Management, it is something every startup should know (MVP is another way of saying it).Compromises are inevitable, and the right answer is to do what you can -- while working to make things better.In other words, waiting for ideal is destructive. If you do not vote, or you say "there are no alternatives" then that is not only destructive in itself, it is letting someone else make the decision for you -- a decision that will (by definition) be worse for you then the choice you would have made.That is a reason why you should care and why "there are no alternatives" is a bad reason.Now that is scrupulously non-partisan.If you read it & say you support Tories, I'll disagree; but at least I'll respect you for supporting someone.Conversely, while I have a lot of sympathy for Russell Brand's emotional argument I disagree with his "do nothing" strategy.All of which is a long precis to why I (at times grudgingly, at times cheerfully) support Labour.In essence, I believe Labour Party are the best hope we have for making lives better for for the majority of people in UK.That includes both social & long-term economic growth.Part of that is they are the party that most explicitly cares about the bottom 80% and will do a bit better at prioritising them, rather than Tory party ambition to prioritise top 10% or fewer.That most explicitly applies to young people. Housing, education, jobs are all areas where Labour policies are better for Gen Y and below, while Tory policies shaft them in order to help older-voters.Incidentally, this is not self-interest. As a nearly 50 yr old who is pretty well off, if I were motivated by my personal outcomes (pay packet etc) then voting Tory would be far better for me.I mentioned long-term growth. I feel Labour is more concerned with this (investment, education) while Tory priorities are more about making a quick buck (and being able to take your money away).Some of your comments reflect recent politics: eg- The argument on debt is a party political argument, not simple fact. Debt went down from 1997 to 2007; it has gone up from 2010 to now. That's worth a whole long discussion ;)- since Labour are in opposition they can't propose policies: they oppose the government.- Iraq & Afghanistan wars were supported by both parties. I do think Iraq was appalling, but what opposition there was came from parts of Labour (Cook, Short) while Tory were gung ho. So While I blame Blair, I can't say that labour was wrong & Tory were rightSome of the policies I liked:Minimum WageDevolution for Scotland & WalesGood Friday agreement & peace in Northern Ireland(though I admit a lot of credit goes to Major, it was Blair who closed the deal)Freedom of Information ActHuman Rights ActIndependent Bank of EnglandCivil partnershipsAlthough they wimped on full 'marriage' this was progress. All credit to Cameron for moving to Marriage but this was opposed by much of Tory party & would never have been possible without Civil Partnership.Progress in reducing Child PovertyHuge investment in educationHuge investment in NHS (+25% increase in real terms)Longest period of uninterrupted growth in UK historyLowest unemployment for 50 yearsLowest inflation in decadesLowest debt in decades (in 2007 debt was 2nd lowest in G8)Some people would say 'banning fox-hunting'. Personally I'm not over-bothered either way, but for those who do care it is a big one.Education Maintenance Allowance (one of Britain's big problems is poor education / training. This wasn't perfect but it was a start).There is a degree Tory is "the nasty party" and while I'm sure many of them are well intentioned, I don't like nasty parties, and I do not like a lot of Tory policies.Just now, I think Labour is right to stress building more houses as a priority: partly because it is a damn good way to get economy moving and partly because we desperately need more houses to get prices down.Conversely, I think Tory strategy of Government subsidising property loans is F@#&ing stupid. We don't need higher prices, we don't need to subsidise people who've got lots of money, we shoudn't be deliberately fuelling the bubble.Finally, for all its flaws I am very proud of NHS and I loathe the concept of the US system.It was Labour who did NHS (Tory voted against it 21 times) and Tory policy after promising "no top down re-organisation" has had the biggest (and most expensive) re-org ever, to destroy that & move us to a US-style system.Not to say I always vote Labour.Right now the place I live is Tory-LibDem marginal, with Labour is tiny.So I vote LibDem in order to avoid worse outcome.For several years (thanks to Blair) I supported LibDems & I do still like a lot of their policies. But lies on tuition fees & Nick Clegg have moved me back to Labour.To quote the man who founded the NHS

I faced this very question in my career. In fact, it is the reason, I was a contract programmer for 15 years (essentially the heart of my career). By working on contract, I was not bound by the intellectual property rules the same way. Yes, all the work I did for my contract employers was theirs, but any work on my side project(s) was mine. I had to carefully segregate my time. Usually when I was on a contract, I had little to no time for my side project. So, instead of vacations, I took 3 month stints between contracts, to allow me time to devote to my side work.And, I was always very upfront about it. And, it wasn’t always positive, but neither was it always negative.In fact, the reason I got the contract at Intel, which led to them hiring me full-time, was because of my side project. I had managed to become vaguely well-known in the compiler circles and had done a project very similar to what they had wanted built. The latter fact was far more important than the former. Most places want to hire you for something you have already successfully done. You just have to parlay that into what you want to do next, how you build on that to build the next bigger thing you want to build.However, at the same time, that made for my hardest decision in my career. Well, it wasn’t hard to make, but it did take a real change in direction. In 2001, when I was still contracting for Intel and my [now ex-]wife had left are “startup” of 15 years and returned to full-time work herself. (Working on side projects is much harder and much less financially rewarding than full-time work. More on that below.) She was encouraging me to do the same. It was also a time when the contract programming market was shrinking.There was a law 1706, the was designed by the temporary agencies to discourage companies from hiring freelance employees directly and only get them via the agencies. This made companies very scared of contract employees. The lawsuit against Microsoft over benefits to contract workers only made it worse.And, in particular, Intel said, we can put together a full-time employment package for you or we can extend your contract for one more year, but then never have you work for us again. So, I told them to make me an offer. Their offer was very generous, not only did they pay me in after tax wages, what I was making as a contractor before taxes, but they paid off the headhunting agency that had placed me, offered me benefits that I had been paying out-of-pocket for and granted me stock options, and made sure that everyone was happy. This is what took my income to $200k/year. It was a no-brainer decision, an offer I could not refuse.However, it also essentially was the end of my side projects. Even though I had the right to work on them (I had insisted on that, as they preceded the arrangement), I no longer had the 3 month breaks. I did manage one more major enhancement to Yacc++, porting it to C# from C++. But, I know longer was actively promoting it and getting new customers. I got a few, but without advertising and efforts to generate them, the result dwindled to a trickle. I also wasn’t putting in the time to improve it. Thus, it languished and by 2015 had essentially evaporated. That was the cost of that choice.I did parlay the knowledge I had of parsing and regular expressions into a good project at Intel, where we built an innovative hardware component that accelerated regular expression processing. Actually, we built two and I designed four. The first one we didn’t build because we figured out that the off-load cost of getting the data to a separate accelerator was more than solving the problem on chip, so even if the accelerator was infinitely fast, it was never going to improve overall throughput. The second one, we resolved that problem, but never took it to silicon. In the third one we resolved that problem and had a solution that significantly improved Snort performance (our benchmark application).I was designing the fourth (which would have done all of PCRE and LR parsing in hardware), when we learned that another group had not done their work properly and the fifos that were supposed to move data to and from our chip weren’t reliable and packets were dropped when the device was under load, so that A0 version couldn’t get beta tested, and without beta tests, there were no customer design wins, and although the problem with the fifos was fixed in the B0 version, we lost our edge and there would be no follow on and a point-project was not a solution that Intel wanted to push.So, I got to work up some benchmarks convincing customers that there was an x86 software only solution that was “close enough”. And, for a certain set of problems, that was true. That is part of the maxim: lies, damned lies, and statistics. You can craft a benchmark that shows what you want if you carefully pick your story. And, the fact is that with Snort we did (eventually) get the software implementation to boost the performance by 3x, which in a software solution is quite good, 10% performance improvement are generally more the target.Intel later bought the software company and I got to lead the on-boarding team and in the process design an interesting optimization to it. However, Intel has never done well with software. They don’t know what to do with it besides use it as a loss-leader to sell hardware and rarely does software impact hardware sales enough to move the needle. As far as I know, all the principals involved with the project eventually got laid off.But the point is, that by working full-time for Intel and Google essentially ended my side projects until I retired. You may get permission to do so, but you will rarely find you have the kind of focused time that successful ones require. And, successful ones is the segue to the topic I promised above.Side projects while emotionally rewarding are rarely more than that. I can tell you that my partner and I made $1M selling the software we wrote. Sounds like a big number right? Well, it took 15 years of 2 people working on it to do so (not full time mind you, but calendar time). Divide $1M by 30 person years and you get an annual salary of roughly $35k/year per person. That’s not so impressive now is it? We were averaging something closer to $150k/year per person as contract programmers. And since that was essentially garden-variety SWE work, it was far easier. Especially, since it did not involve negotiating with lawyers or accountants or customer service issues. If you make major sales, you can be the corporate lawyers and accountant are going to want to justify their salaries by negotiating some change to the standard agreement. You have to push very hard to resist that. It is not the kind of work that a software engineer enjoys, but it is part of selling a product. It’s no surprise that after 15 years of that my partner ended up asking herself why we were doing this.So, when imagining that gravy-boat in the sky, where you are immensely rich, do not fictionalize a software career as getting you there. Yes, you can earn good money. I have not complained about my salary as one. But it is far more middle class than most people expect. You will be able to pay off your house and it will be a comfortable one (although, since the break up, I am still paying on the one of my own despite being retired), but no mansion. And, you may retire a couple of years early. I retired at 61 rather than the 67 I had been projecting, although with only half what I was planning on, and well less than a tenth of what is considered well-off in Silicon Valley (not that I have ever lived there).A few people make really good money in the software business and do become rich, but most of them do so, not directly by being software engineers, but by becoming owners of companies that disrupt some market. So, if being rich is your dream, understand what it takes. You probably have to sell your soul to do so. My soul preferred writing software, still does. That’s my motivation. One can only have one preoccupation. A servant who tries to server two masters, serves neither well.

Not necessarily…While no one can guarantee outcomes, my experience has generated the perception that the difference between having a peaceful and profitable life as a landlord comes down to the following:Being hyper-proactive: Having a complete framework of documentation, reviewed and vetted by your attorney, printed-off in file folders for the entire rental process: from the boilerplate advertisement, to the telephone interview, the in-person interview, the application, the disclaimers, the receipt of deposit, the rental agreement, the walk-thru checklist.I have created my own Landlord’s packet of 16 documents, end-to-end (from inception to end of occupancy) that covers nearly every possible aspect of the legal part of the rental. Not included are every possible eventuality, such as eviction documents have not been pre-established as this would be a case by case unique situation, and documents like this would be authored by my attorney. The scope of my documents remains within the normal course of the rental, from beginning to end.Know the law, your rights as a landlord, specific to your state. Study. Do your homework. You do not have to go visit the Law Library at your local University, most of this stuff can be found using a google keyword searches.Screen your candidates and under no circumstances, accept anyone who just drops by with a song & dance. In my case, I have internal-only documents in which I have laid out a framework of,“Only accept candidate 1, if their FICO score is between range of xxx and xxx, if they have at least x years of employment at a permanent, W-2, full-time position that pays at least $xx,xxx per year.You need to pre-establish your acceptance criteria and not get swayed by sob-stories.Credit. Capacity. Collateral.No “stories”.Hard objective, clear measures of that prospective applicant’s success to earn income and be stable - in document form.Measurements that I have determined in-advance, such as:If prospective applicant has a FICO score below 680, but above 640, but has demonstrated no less than 5 years of experience with their current employer, in a permanent, W-2 validated position, then their low FICO score can be overcome with having an income resulting in a total debt-to-income ratio of less than 50% and the set rent cannot exceed more than 25% of their gross. In addition, they are required to put down 125% of the regular deposit.No hearsay. No conjecture. No speculation. No stories. No bullshit.Anyone who says, “I just need someone to give me a chance” needs to find that chance in rental property that is not mine.Require applicants to furnish last year’s W-2’s, tax returns, proof of employment letter from their employer and HR telephone number and the name and contact information from their current and all past landlords. If they have not rented before and do not have past landlords, then I am not a charity and I do not need to be their first. Someone else can take that risk. They must have a rental history and I WILL be talking with their landlord at-length before I rent to them. No stories - I do not care if the applicant’s landlord died, is no longer in the rental business, is out of the country - either I talk with your landlord, or I do not rent to you, period, end of story and I do not make any exceptions regardless, regardless if it is the applicant’s fault or not. I do not want to hear stories, I want hard facts, documents and proof. This is a formal investigation and I will interrogate every aspect of an applicant before accepting them, just shy of ramming a microscope up their butt and looking around to find any shit up their ass.Run background checks, credit checks, criminal background checks and call their current and previous landlords. In my 16-document set is my internal checklist of things to ask the past and current landlords of prospective applicants. Insist that each candidate provide this information and fill out the Application completely, or reject them all-together. I do not want “Chester the Molester” living in my property!Size up your candidate. If your applicant is professionally employed for several years, has an education, earns beyond the minimum threshold that you have pre-calculated to have the ability to pay rent (consider front-end and back-end debt-to-income ratios, just like a mortgage company underwriter would), has at least a 680 credit score, and comes across as amicable - then start the second round of investigation.If your candidate is bad-ass Biker Billy, with tattoos, a 530 FICO score, “in-between jobs” or “self-employed” or cannot prove bona fide W-2 permanent employment directly through their employer (yes, you call the employer directly) or earns so little that right out of the gate, you know that they will struggle to pay rent - then…DO NOT ACCEPT THAT APPLICANT AS A TENANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!DUH!!!WTF!?!?!IT IS OKAY TO TELL PEOPLE “NO, YOU ARE NOT APPROVED. I WILL NOT RENT TO YOU”I do not accept applicants who are self-employed, if a significant amount of their earnings is on-commission, if they have pets, if their employment is temporary, independent contractor or anything less than the standard-issue:PERMANENT, FULL-TIME, W-2 EMPLOYMENT WITH A REPUTABLE EMPLOYER - not some fly-by-night operation.Employed as a teacher at the local school, works for a Fortune 500 company, is a manager at an establish brick-and-mortar business - but ONLY people who are stable, work for stable employers, consistently earn more that sufficient income to pay rent, and have been responsible with both their credit and the relationships with their past landlords.Find any reason at all to quash renting to any applicant, and only if they pass the highest of standards, will I let them in the door.By the way, the longest that my rental property has ever gone vacate due to lack of a qualified renter, in the past 16 years - has been for a week and a half of vacancy. Otherwise, I have had folks lined up to rent from me, and while not everyone was willing to comply with my formalities, many were, and those few who passed my standards, have rented from me or currently still are. My current tenant has rented from me for the past 3 years, without any late payments, a few minor issues to handle, but for the most part bliss.Only choose the BEST candidate, not necessarily the FIRST candidate who applies. If you have to let your rental property sit vacant for month, it is cheaper to have negative cash flow than property damage and court costs.If the applicant comes to the interview and there is ANYTHING that I do not like about them (that is not a violation of the Fair Housing Act) - but things like their attitude, attentiveness, appearance, cleanliness, demeanor, punctuality, or completeness on the Application……then done, rejected.Do things by-the-book, regardless if your rental property is an ADU (Auxiliary Dwelling Unit) or an entire multi-building complex).If you want to make this work, then run this like a professional business, everything documented, with internal procedures in place AND DO NOT EVER DO BUSINESS HALF-ASSED WITHOUT PAPERWORK - GOD FORBID AT LEAST HAVE A RENTAL AGREEMENT OR YOU ARE A COMPLETE IDIOT!If you do the proactive INTERROGATIVE work on the front-end, to screen out problem tenants on the front-end, and only accept the cream-of-the-crop tenants that have demonstrated, with supporting documentation, that they are not going to deal you shit - and if your rental property is backed by a contract that spells out precisely what is going to fly and what is going to not work - and you make it clear that you are a professional and will not take any shit - but will also hold up your end of the bargain as a landlord, that you will fix things that break, you will leave them alone and let them live their life and not get into their business - and be fair - and you happen to have your own legal council on speed-dial to back you up - then your landlord experience will likely have minimal problems.Also, never do business with friends. Never become friends with your renters, maintain a professional, arms-length relationship.The folks who get into problems are the ones who do not do their homework, let any charlatan on their property and then have to pick up the pieces later.It is a hard-requirement in my rental agreement that the tenant carries renters insurance for the entire duration of their occupancy.Anytime anyone comes on to your property, and ESPECIALLY IF THEY HAVE A CONTRACTUAL LICENSE TO OCCUPY you are accepting exposure to liability: legally and financially.This is not about playing Stanley Roper and unclogging shitters on sitcom “Three’s Company”. This is about the fact that when anyone accepts a financial and legal risk, this requires that they be compensated, and as the rental market will bear a certain price point for housing, it is up to landlords to determine if they accept this risk, and what the terms of which types of specific risks will they accept.If carrying existing rental property cost me $2,000.00 per month, and if the depressed market could only bear $300.00 in rents, then it is not worth it to rent to anyone. Sell the property, unless there is reason to believe that through speculation, that either rents will increase or property values will increase.Being a landlord is:—————————UnderwritingMarketing*Risk Management*Property Management Maintenance and General ContractorPlumberInvestorCredit card companies are compensated for offering credit to higher-risk cardholders in the way of higher interest rates. Being a landlord is no different,if will even accept the applicant at all to begin with, nonetheless, I might require that that prospective applicant pay a higher rent, or put down a higher deposit, or both, to offset risk. If doing this results in quashing the deal, then so the better, I might have just dodged a bullet.To accept additional risk, is to require compensation for doing so.Lowering the rent out of compassion is a double-whammy: first of all, you are not being compensated for additional risk, and secondly, you are using emotions to guide your business decisions and third: you are generating a perception to the new tenant that you are a soft-hearted pushover. Buckle-up, because it is going to be a stormy night...A hypothetical:A homeless teenager comes knocking, has almost no documents, but was thrown out of his home by his parents.I call social services. Minors cannot enter into contracts. There are also perception issues that could be troubling, at-best. Just because I might feel heartwrenching compassion, does not mean that my role as a landlord is the appropriate vehicle in this situation. That youngster needs counseling, job training, life skills training that a place like Urban Peak has to offer, not my rental apartment. All of those things are out-of-scope of my professional training, expertise and role as a landlord.A hypothetical:I have a tenant who has rented from me for several years. That tenant is coming up short, and unforeseeable circumstances have already exhausted their savings. That tenant comes forward, as soon as they know, and before rent is due, and sits down with me and makes a plan to make good on rent.I will work with them, as long as they keep the promises that they make, and that those promises are reasonable and fair to begin with, and as long as these kinds of talks and arrangements are not an ongoing thing.And yes, if the tenant states, “I will pay you $500.00 on the unpaid balance of the rent on next payday, which is July 15th: you can be assured that this, and all other promises, will be drafted into document form and signed by both landlord and tenant.Do not trust or believe ANYTHING that ANYONE says. Only believe documents, especially those furnished by third-parties, such as the Applicant’s previous landlord or employer.Buy a book on being a first time landlord. Follow every step. Be and act like a professional.If you do things half-assed, then you will get half-assed results in return.An ounce of work on the front end, will preemptively protect you from hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage on the back end.Instead of doing ounces of work, don’t stop with pounds - do tons of work on the front end and build every aspect of your business and cover your ass 20-ways to Sunday.Be honest, be fair - but never accept from an applicant or tenant: no stories, no excuses, no justifications, no games, no convoluted arguments, no arguing, no bullshit and no crap. Do not make your problems, to become my problems.Every adult has a responsibility to solve their own problems with their own resources, savings, assets, ingenuity or effort.No, I will not accommodate you, and I do not care what your circumstances are, and I do not want to hear it. You know the rules. Follow the rental agreement to the precise letter, or there will be consequences. We both signed a LEGAL DOCUMENT and I am not fucking-around, I as serious as a heart-attack.Run a tight ship, project strength and command respect, and you will get it, and your monthly rental income.Have your shit-together: I am talking spreadsheets, legal documents, a filing system, checklists and dress up like a professional when you interview potential applicants. This is a JOB, not a hobby.I take my job seriously. Every single thing in my rental unit that has ever worn out or broken in my rental apartment - I personally fixed it the same day that my renter reported it. I have upgraded many things for my tenants.AS A LANDLORD, I PROVIDE A SERVICE:…a safe, private, professionally-managed, clean and nice, completely functional and furnished apartment -and like stink-on-shit, the very second that anything breaks, the same day, it will get fixed or replaced to the tenant’s satisfaction. I make sure that my folks are happy, know that they are safe and that life is good for them. I want my tenants to be happy, at least from the standpoint of the service that I provide as a landlord.But it ends there. I am a private individual, not an ATM machine or public charity. No stories. No problems. Solve your own fucking problems and do not put your shit on my shoulders. Is it my job to be your landlord, not to solve your problems, be your mother, be your financial adviser, debt counselor or friend. I am not your friend, I am your landlord and understand the difference.I am nice, amicable, polite - but the moment that someone thinks that they can fuck with me, then game-over, they better run like hell, or start backpedaling quick, because I can morph into a real bastard faster than a Corvette can do zero to 60.I do not care if people like me. It is not my job to be popular, liked, admired - only to be a professional and fair.Fairness applies both to the tenant and fairness to the landlord and is evaluated by me objectively.I reward favorable tenants who do nothing-more than comply with the minimal terms of the rental agreement. I do not have to personally like them, agree with them, or anything - but as long as they pay rent and follow the rules, they are golden with me.But I look for your typical fuck-ups, and have learned their methods, and I do not let them on my property even for an interview. I do not rent to slackers, losers, fuck-ups or anyone who is one iota-less than a fellow professional.If you rent from me, it it is because you have already proven yourself as the professional that you are and have a track record and paper trail to prove it - and believe you me, I look for any gaps or red flags like a bloodhound.You can either proactively solve a little problem now, before it becomes a major problem, by being able to identify prospective applicants who possess the propensity for breach or non-payment - by denying them consideration.Or you can pick up the pieces and re-actively solve a major problem with your attorney, the courts, your insurance company, the police because you let some loser slip through the cracks out of compassion.Don’t be a charity. Be a business. Be a professional. Run your business just like any professional would: with paperwork, formalities, criteria, interviews, applications, checklists, polices and procedures. Establish these before renting to anyone.Knowledge is power. Ignorance is not bliss.