With the California real estate market turned upside down, the FTB has decided to force property managers to pay FTB 7% of all money they send their out of state clients. It is even worse for out of the country clients! It all begins in April 2009 and any property manager that does not comply will subject themselves to fines for each violation.
We are in the process of contacting our clients to tell them what is happening. The FTB has never made a pubic announcement as far as I know. They just started calling property managers to see if they were doing it! Their own online information says that residential rentals are exempted. But that policy has changed.
With the state broke, they must need some cash flow. Most owners in state or out of state have enough expenses and mortgages to make owning a rental low on net income. There is not a lot of money for them in this category.
If you are a property manager in California and had nothing to do or thought this was a great month, think again, go back to your office, and get cracking.
When a tenant moves into a rental property most landlords do a written report to document the wall condition as well as many other conditions. They might note for the living room, for example, that the walls have "New Paint". This would be done for each room in the house. If the tenant disagrees, if there was a hole in one wall for example, the tenant could amend the form to allow for the exception.
When the tenant moves out at the end of their lease the walls are reinspected by the landlord to determine the difference between the condtion the tenant originally received the property, and what the end of tenancy condition is.
Here in California an allowance must be made by the landlord in the tenants favor for "normal wear and tear". So the landlord cannot bill the tenant for repainting without making an allowance for this "normal wear and tear". The law never defined what "normal wear and tear" was, so each landlord must set their own policy.
At HomePointe we give the walls a three year life. So, if the tenant received the property with new paint and the tenant lived in the property for three or more years, they would not be charged for any painting. But if the tenant lived in the house for only one year and the interior had to be repainted, the tenant would pay for 2/3 of the paint bill and the owner would have to absord the other 1/3. The tenant would get credit for the year they lived in the house, but would have to pay for painting for the two years they did not live there.
This policy has worked in court although there is always the subjective fight as to whether the house really needed painting that second time.
We are publishing our weekend showing schedule in the Sacramento Bee at no additional cost to our clients that have vacancies. This gives us some of the best print exposure for residential rentals of any company in the Sacramento Region.
HomePointe also posts to many websites including www.Rentals.com, www.RentalHouses.com, www.craisgslist.com, www.hotpads.com, www.lycos.com, www.oodle.com, www.RentalHomePros.com, www.googlebase.com, www.NetRent.com, www.RentBits.com, and of course, www.HomePointe.com.
Here is the link to the Sacxramento Bee Ad: http://ts.merlinone.com/scripts/foxisapi.dll/sur.x.go?-y_qYkfVkp
January turned out to be a busy month for landlords in the greater Sacramento area. As has often happened in the past, a slower December (we rented 45 properties), lead to a busy January as pent up demand drove the market to make up for the slows during the holidays.
We noted that all price levels have been seeing demand. Many renters are coming out of foreclosures and we are working with those individuals that have maintained their credit even though their mortgage went south. In Sacramento it has been quite a real estate market with many homes dropping in value to the point where the homes loan is much greater than the value of the home.
Investors are picking up many of the bank real estate owned (REO) for pennies on the previous dollar (some cases of 25% of the previous value!) and we are signing contracts to manage those.
If you need a house to rent check us out at www.HomePointe.com. We have houses for rent in Sacramento, Natomas, Elk Grove, Roseville, El Dorado Hills and more! Need property management? Let us know!
www.HomePointe.com
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Property Management Rentals and Maintenance in Sacramento, Yolo, Placer, and El Dorado Counties from offices located in Sacramento, Roseville, and Orangevale, CA We manage residential and commercial.
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