Any land lords here - Do you take Section 8 tenants ?

Self explanatory from the title.  Those people on here who rent houses, do you accept section 8, government subsidized renters?  I have never have thought about it before.  I had been advertising  one of out places privately with no luck and just turned it over to a realtor but hadn't taken my old ad down.  A woman just called and asked if we take section 8.  I have no idea if there are strings attached or if I have to do something extra.  On the upside the rent check comes from the government so I don't' have to worry about late or non payment.   It's caught me off guard and I just haven't thought about it.  Anyone with any relevant  experience or advice ?

I have in the past, but do not now. 

Section 8 is a guaranteed check. You will always get paid. 

The problem is the tenant has no vested interest. Their share of the rent might be $7 or $10 per month. 

That can leave you with abused property, and no recourse. They often don’t care. They usually don’t have deposits either.

I would be happy to take Section 8 tenants who were sweet little old ladies without much money who were going to be wonderful tenants until they depart from this Earth.  If I could qualify them and chose them, I’d be thrilled. 

But you can’t. If you accept Section 8, you have to accept Section 8 in a non-discriminatory manner. 

I did maintenance for a few years at a multi unit apartment complex, half of which was section 8.

There were 2 kinds of people on it, very old single women, and well I don't know the polite term for the young ones. 

Our rental managers loved it because they could charge the state whatever they wanted. On average, the rent was double what someone not using assistance would pay. Maintenance for inspections was priority, everything had to be perfect. Not a problem for the old people, but the young people trashed everything, all the time. 

If it were me, I'd want to interview the potential tenant before even considering signing anything. 

If memory serves, they couldn't be evicted either. That may vary based on state, or it could have just been company policy, but that's something to look into.

Tons of paperwork, PITA, I'd suggest you keep looking.

This from a former landlord.

Thanks for the advice peeps.

On the upside, since we've turned it over to a realtor we are getting lots of interest.  The lack of a security deposit is a big concern though if you have no other recourse for damage.  

I lived in a complex of townhomes that was all built at the same time, but had no "governing body"; thus each building of 2-4 units were individual entities. There were 3 that had Section 8. All three of those regularly had police called to them. One was definitely dealing, although I don't know what. One weekend, a party spilled into the back yard (which was a large retention pond that was completely dry). About 3 minutes later, I was calling the police because I heard a gunshot (minor injury to the buttocks). 

I'm not a landlord, I don't know the rules about screening with Section 8, but I wouldn't do it if I wasn't allowed to screen the tenants with extreme detail.
 

Who knows, you might get lucky and not have any bad tenants.  If you do, they will be there until they decide to leave or they get arrested and taken away.

I have family in Canada that rented property under their equivalent of Section 8, and sadly, they've found that it brings the greatest proportion of the worst tenants out there while making those terrible tenants harder to get rid of. It's a great way to rack up some interesting stories though.

IIRC they got one decent tenant, one guy who gets up every night to pace and scream (who last I heard they're still stuck with), and one woman who did hard drugs (with to-the-door delivery!) and belongs in a padded room.

If I owned rental property, I wouldn't even consider it.

Looked into it years ago and decided to not go that route. We don't negotiate rent prices and don't back off requiring a deposit. Haven't had a unit trashed in years since we went that route. 

I had a co-worker that did it because it was the only way he was assured of getting paid.  He had to redo the units after each tenant because they would trash it.  After several repeats of that, he had had enough and sold them.       

I've sold off my rental property, but my parents still have 8 or so.  One woman convinced my mom to go section 8 and it has been the worst experience of her life.  Like spitfirebill said above they would trash the house, or worse yet, call every 5 minutes because something wasn't 100%.  She went as far as to get a copy of the codes and measured the railings on the front porch.  One was 1/2" off and she was threatened with a lawsuit if she did not fix it.  Since you are now under strict govt. control she had no recourse.  If you do not have to do, for god's sake don't.  

Having seen what Section 8 draws for tenants, I'd sell the property before I went that route. I finally sold mine because pretty much all people suck and dealing with them wasn't worth the money. 

My sister and her husband have 24 properties. Their philosophy? Rent to the top of the market, not the bottom. Buy better properties, keep them clean and nice looking, charge accordingly. Better people, more money, less crap to deal with. 

Thanks for the input.  I think I will pass on this and stay with regular tenants.  It's a good popular area and I don't think we'll have issue letting it within a couple of weeks.

Thanks as always brain trust.  GRM - Better than google for real life questions.

Toyman01 said:

Having seen what Section 8 draws for tenants, I'd sell the property before I went that route. I finally sold mine because pretty much all people suck and dealing with them wasn't worth the money. 

My sister and her husband have 24 properties. Their philosophy? Rent to the top of the market, not the bottom. Buy better properties, keep them clean and nice looking, charge accordingly. Better people, more money, less crap to deal with. 

A coworker and her husband have a similar philosophy, though they’ve actually been buying former section 8 properties and converting them into more upscale units. They’ve had quite a bit of success with semi long-term corporate housing. 

I knew some folks who did it for 7 years with a house they didn't have luck selling during the downturn. 

Said it went really well. Had a great tenant who they never had any issues with it. 

Downside was that the place was trashed when she finally moved out. 

I asked if they lost anything on the deal and they admitted that no, if anything that made out on the deal quite well. The cleanup after the Section 8 tenant left wasn't bad, they just hated the idea that people seem so careless about their housing conditions. They felt like "even though she was paying it, we felt it was still OUR home, and she should've treated it as such." 

I still wonder if we'll eventually get to a point where an app like AirBNB is used to rent "within network." Basically, people won't list houses for rent on the open market, they'll only list them through a system like AirBNB and demand positive reviews from tenants. 

pheller said:

They felt like "even though she was paying it, we felt it was still OUR home, and she should've treated it as such."

Well, that's their problem right there.  She wasn't paying for most of it.

I asked if her security deposit covered most of the damage, and they said no. I asked how much they think they might of lost on the deal they said "a couple of a grand, but we sold it for $100k more than way we paid so it was worth it." 

So her security deposit didn't cover all the damage, they paid a few thousand for the rest, but they made money renting to her, and they made substantial money keeping the house until the market improved. 

7 years though... that is a long tenure for a rental.

In reply to pheller :

That math is screwbally. 

The 100K has nothing to do with a section 8 tenant. 

The better comparison would be what was the price difference between the section 8 and a standard tenant, minus the clean up costs. 

I wasn't weighing the pros/cons of Section 8 tenants, just that they are the only people I know with experience doing it that I've had a chance to talk with. They didn't really have much experience with renting to "normal folks" and I guess at the time they were looking for tenants the rental prices were low enough that there wasn't much difference between Section 8 and regular renters. Again, no idea. Didn't ask that question.

It just sounds like there are situations where it might work out, and a lot of situations where it'll be a pain in the ass.

mtn said:

7 years though... that is a long tenure for a rental.

I think it was 7 years, but again, this was a conversation. They could have owned the house for 7 years and only rented it for a few of those years. Dunno. 

I just remember them talking about how they wouldn't be landlords again because of these notions of people being trashy, even if their mortgage was reliably being paid every month with profit on top.

I had a stretch where I worked cleaning apartments when tenants moved out. You couldn't pay me enough to deal with the Section 8 ones. Bags and bags and bags upon bags of garbage...  As in rent a dumpster and put it outside of the door or heave the bags over the railing. I am not saying that it was that way on all of them. It was just really gross and disgusting on most of them. 

I worked in maintenance for several years at 2 different properties that did section 8.  A lot of these stories sound pretty accurate, the other issue is the apartment gets rented to a single mother and her boyfriend comes with her and lives for free.  That's why you can go into these apartments and see giant tv's and nice cars parked out front.  

Not to say that all section 8 tenants are bad, but all it takes is one bad tenant to convince a building full of good tenants to move out.