[One Sip of a Book] How Can You Avoid Malicious Tenants?

Some sentences encapsulate the entire content of a book, while others instantly resonate with the reader’s heart, creating a connection with the book. Here, we introduce such meaningful sentences excerpted from books. - Editor’s note

Many people use rental business as a side job while working in an office or running their own business. However, it is unwise to jump into the rental business recklessly with the mindset of “Buying a house is difficult, but renting it out can’t be that hard.” In reality, there are countless cases where people start rental business without sufficient preparation, fail to overcome unexpected problems, and soon end up selling the property. Observing such cases with a heavy heart, the author introduces his own secrets accumulated over more than 10 years of managing rental business. The author repeatedly emphasizes that “rental income is not unearned income.” Securing good real estate, meeting good tenants, making reasonable contracts, and managing all these tasks well are all “work” for landlords. The author weaves these tasks into 50 stories on how to handle them efficiently.

Receiving money as a provisional deposit before drafting the contract is very risky for landlords. If you take the deposit in advance without meeting the tenant, it becomes difficult to back out of the contract later even if you decide not to proceed, because you would have to pay double the deposit as compensation. / p. 92

How can you avoid malicious tenants? The tool for that is the rental deposit. If you can select tenants with financial capability among those who want a monthly rent contract, the chance of avoiding malicious tenants increases. By setting the rental deposit as high as possible, you can somewhat screen them. / p. 103

When a tenant moves out before the lease expires, there are two points to be careful about. One is checking the restoration to original condition, and the other is signing a new tenant contract. While the tenant is living there, if there are no special problems, you only need to manage monthly rent payments and minor repairs, but you must pay close attention to tenant move-ins and move-outs. Since move-ins and move-outs often happen on the same day, careful attention is required to avoid mistakes. / p. 176

Like all legal disputes, eviction lawsuits are long and tedious battles. Once you experience a lawsuit, you realize that all activities related to the tenant become important evidence. Text messages, SNS contents, certified mail, anything related to the tenant can serve as evidence. / p. 190

I Am a Landlord | Written by Park Wankyu | Mirae’s Chang | 256 pages | 15,000 KRW

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.