Articles

Lessons from Eviction Court: Multiple Notices Can Ruin Your Eviction

Posted by Stephen Marshall on

Lessons from Eviction Court: Multiple Notices Can Ruin Your Eviction

Automation is a great feature of technology. We don’t have to write checks to pay our bills each month, we can just set them up to have the amounts deducted from our bank accounts. It simplifies life for us. Except when it doesn’t. Many landlords now use software that automates many of their daily and monthly tasks. I’m all for this, as we need to make technology work for us whenever possible. But it can create new obstacles. Your software that generates notices each month when a tenant hasn’t paid the rent can kill your eviction. Here’s how it usually...

Read more →

A Service Dog? But You're Not Disabled . . .

Posted by Stephen Marshall on

A Service Dog? But You're Not Disabled . . .

Tim and Faith own several rental properties near the local university. They’ve been in the business for five years, after long careers in the country music industry. They’ve become quite experienced in managing their properties and dealing with the typical issues that arise when renting to students. Faith manages the properties, while Tim takes care of the basic maintenance issues. A group of four students recently moved into one of the campus properties owned by Tim and Faith. The students signed a single lease in which they agreed that pets were prohibited. However, several months later, while doing a routine...

Read more →

The 10 Commandments for Assistance Animals

Posted by Stephen Marshall on

The 10 Commandments for Assistance Animals

Stewart is the property manager at Collins Square Apartments, a small rental community with 31 units. Collins Square allows its residents to have up to two pets. Its lease agreement requires each resident with a pet to pay an extra deposit, to follow local leash laws, to pick up after the pet and dispose of its waste, and to keep the pet from disturbing other residents or causing damage. Quinn recently signed a one-year lease at the community. At the outset, he notified the management that he had an assistance dog and provided a letter from his therapist that verified his emotional...

Read more →

You Talkin' To Me?

Posted by Stephen Marshall on

            I got a text message last week from a friend in south central Kentucky who has been reading kylandlordlaw.com. He said he thought the site is “a great resource for landlords that are under that particular law”. While I took a second to bask in the compliment (okay, several seconds), it struck me that my friend, an attorney who practices criminal law, was under the impression that kylandlordlaw.com is only of benefit to landlords in certain parts of the state.              This impression was based upon my friend’s (correct)...

Read more →

Disabilities For Sale? The Black Market of Assistance Animal Verification Letters

Posted by Stephen Marshall on

In our discussion of the Hidden Disability Conundrum, linked here, we noted that landlords do not have to take a tenant’s word for it that he or she is disabled and has a disability related need for an exception to the landlord’s rules and policies. Instead, the landlord may require that a tenant provide reliable verification if the disability or the need for the accommodation is not obvious or known to the landlord. Although I’ve repeatedly stressed that landlords shouldn’t try to play the role of a medical professional and question medical opinions, this doesn’t mean that you must accept...

Read more →