Do-It-Yourself Landlord's Blog

In our modern times, out there on the internets you can find an increasing number of Landlords who are creating websites specifically for the purpose of marketing their rental properties. You might be considering getting into this game, and you’re wondering exactly how you might want to display your inventory, visually, on your site.

Well here’s a nifty little web-based program from the Rentvine camp which they've cleverly named MapVine, that is The Google enabled and will make the mapping production for your site virtually headache free. We made one for ourselves, just for kicks, to make sure it wasn’t a bunch of hype. Check it.




Everything is free. And they’ll even be hosting your specific map on their server(s), which is nice. Unless their servers go down, or are simply sold off. This is addressed in the rather hilarious Terms of Agreement page. Great quote:

We do try to make it work the best we can, but since it is free, you get what you pay for if something goes wrong.

Got that right.

Their system was a tad slow, but it was a high-traffic time of day when I was tinkering with the thing, so take that however you’d like. I’m still pretty impressed.

I uploaded three different map elements: A traffic jam, a homeless guy’s corner that I’m renting out, and a favorite bar that I’m pretending to sell. The whole process took me a whopping ten minutes DURING high internet traffic time. All-in-all, it’s a pretty badass little tool that will keep you from having to code, so you can concentrate on more important things. Like getting those units filled.

This New York Times article is quite possibly the best run-down on bedbugs I’ve seen to date. It dashes the myth that they’re only associated with filth and poor hygiene. It outlines the recent spike in reported infestations. It’s got Landlords a bit ruffled with all the talk of responsibility for eradicating infestations falling squarely on property owners’ shoulders.

The cost for remediation is prohibitive. Up into the thousands of dollars for a professional touch. And there are no guarantees that the little buggers won’t simply return. If a property does NOT have bedbugs one day, and then is infested the next, well, those bugs came from somewhere. Did the tenant bring them in? More than likely. Will they bring them in again? Difficult to say.

It’s especially difficult because of the stigma associated with bedbugs. Similar to the shadow cast over lice, it is assumed that bedbugs are the result of poor hygiene. This is a widely held fallacy, both for bedbugs and lice. But no tenant will want to take responsibility for bringing them into their own home, to save their pride if nothing else.

But some Property Managers aren’t taking the blame-game with a level head, as is seen here in a NY housing project where the tenant got evicted after she ceased making rent payments due to a child-horrifying bedbug infestation.

I’m not so sure it should be the responsibility of the Landlord. Not that they don’t have a responsibility to provide a clean and safe environment for Tenants, but certain infestations are NOT the result of poor property management. Most rodent infestations, or insect infestations (tree roaches, palmetto bugs, wasps, bees, ants, there are several potential examples) that result from poorly sealed properties, are understandably the responsibility of a Landlord. But what about infestations which obviously have no source in the quality of ownership? Kitchen roaches? Mosquitoes? Fleas? These are either brought in, allowed in, or openly attracted by the Tenants themselves.

Most pest control treatments are handled by the Landlord as a service, or as routine maintenance to ensure quality residences for rent. They aren’t wholly obligatory, most aren’t terribly expensive, and they rarely involve direct cleaning for the personal belongings of the Tenant.

So really, should Landlords take the financial beating brought about by remediation of bedbugs that were obviously brought in by Tenants? As is happening in NYC (based on the Times article mentioned above), where courts are finding in favor of Tenants, forcing Landlords to handle all remediation? I’m having trouble making that connection.

The cavalierly named Future Of Real Estate Marketing blog featured a rather interesting web-based rent comparison tool: Rent-o-meter. This is quite possibly the easiest to use and most intriguing rental-related site I’ve ever visited. It’s supposed to take the address of where you live (or where you Landlord) along with the associated rent and number of rooms. Then it spits out where your rental amount fits in with those of nearby properties.

As much as I hate to use the phrase, it’s a great example of why the whole “Web 2.0� craze is actually followed by trend watchers. The interface isn’t designed to lead you through a maze of blinking adverts. It won’t drag your eyes all over the place. No parade of click-through pages. The first page is just entry fields, and once you enter the information, it spits out a Google mashup map and a meter (hence their witty name) which will indicate where your rent falls within the spectrum.

The concept is great for wary renters, and Landlords who want to know whether they’re being too lenient with their rates. Great research tool.

However, just like any other information system, the quality and reliability of the output is only as good as the input. Knowing that, I wonder where they get their rental information? From those who query their system? Did they log my query, planning to use my address and rental info as a data point in future queries? Are we all just trusting each other not to lie? Like a wiki? Except there’s no fact-challenging functionality?

I only bring this up because there are a couple of homes in the rental output of the area where I queried which are obviously statistical outliers. I live in the same area, and I know exactly which properties the system is referring to, and there is simply NO way that those are the real rents they’re pulling for those places.

Otherwise, the utility of this site is obvious. Hopefully there will be some data scrubbing installed, to keep things on the level.