“No Basement” Is About To Become “No Tenant”

The lease on “No Basement” expires at the end of December and the tenants have informed us that they’re moving out. Our readers know that, for purposes of discussion, we’ve named our properties rather than rely on the more standard “Property No. 1, etc.” “No Basement” got its name because, you guessed it, it has no basement. Which brings us back to our current tenants. They are moving because, that’s right, they want a basement. My thought was to dig one for them, but Mike tells me that’s actually not as easy as it seems.

So now it’s time to make lemons out of lemonade (I think that’s how it goes). We get a chance to raise the rent (maybe) and to write about the experience here. So here is lesson number one when it comes to property turnover–get as much notice from the tenants as possible. Our leases require a 30 day notice, but we routinely contact the tenants about two to three months before the lease expires. This gives us the best chance either to obtain a renewal of the lease or, as in this case, to start preparing for marketing the property to new prospective tenants.

With the last property we turned over, The Ranch, we had two months’ notice and were able to move new tenants in without losing a day’s rent. Mike was largely responsible for this master stroke, and I’m expecting nothing less from him here. I like to call this my “zero tolerance for vacancy” policy. In terms of division of labor, I generally handle declaring policies and leave to Mike the more mundane details of implementation.

So now that we know that the No Basement tenants are moving, the next step is to make sure we know what the rental market is looking like for this neighborhood. We have a good idea, but it has been two years since we last rented this home. So we’ll dig into the data to get a clear picture of the current market in that specific neighborhood. We’ll be doing that over the next week or so and will write about how we do it and our conclusions.

In the case of The Ranch, the tenants left in April of this year. Now any bozo can get new tenants in the Spring. The lease for No Basement, on the other hand, ends on December 31. So, if Mike can manage to get new tenants on this one with no rent loss, I’ll bring in the new year by posting a video here with my rendition of this old Merle Travis chestnut: