Why I started Tenant Tracks?
People often ask me, “How can you stand it?” That question is in reference to the fact that I collect rent from urban tenants who are living in some of Connecticut’s more economically depressed cities. The honest answer is that I can’t stand it any longer. After 20 plus years of fixing and improving properties, I am so tired of saying, ‘I fix them and they break them.” I just got worn-out by so many non-compliant tenants destroying my apartments after they decided to try to live for free in my buildings and this behavior just had to stop!
I just can’t understand why so many tenants refuse to pay rent, they all have many excuses, but the fact is that we as property owners need to pay our obligations on time. Tenants need to be responsible and now they need to learn that the free ride is over because Tenant Tracks is here to help landlords as an information database as well as a facilitator for collections of debts owed by current and former tenants.
In the mid to late 1990’s, I, as president of the Waterbury Property Owners Association and others regularly visited the State General Assembly advocated for improving Connecticut’s liberal Landlord-Tenant laws. We passed many useful laws between 1996 and 2001 but then things slowly changed. As property values started climbing again, landlords forgot about the bad housing laws and found themselves building equity again. The visits to the State Capitol became fewer and lately the laws have not progressed much to help the property owners, all this is to my great disappointment.
Today, most of my friends have now sold off their buildings finally recouping their losses from the last real estate crash from the late 1980’s and now a new generation of investors has taken over. The new investors and building managers need to know this web site is for you. Investment real estate has to work on cash flow, other wise, if you speculate in real estate for appreciation, you are playing the “Bigger fool theory of investing” and the last few buyers into the game get clobbered!
Together we can make the cash flow once again from our multi family buildings in our Connecticut cities. Landlords enter as much truthful and relevant data about your tenants as possible. The more information you enter, the better this web site will become. The rules are simple; you must be a member to access the site, and we will verify that you are who you say you are! The information you provide us about your tenants must be truthful as you the member are ultimately responsible for any claims that your present or past tenants make about false information. Any sums of money you claim that are owed to you must be in active collection for us to report that information to protect all of us from liability issues.
That’s it, it is pretty easy, go ahead now and tell your tenants that if they don’t want to pay rent, now there is a place to report this non-payment. Next explain that a collection agency will be hired to collect what is owed to you, and lastly explain that most decent landlords won’t rent to them in the future. The free ride is over for non-compliant and bad tenants thanks to your input and cooperation with our company.
