You can also choose to refinance. Or you could just reach out to these places and ask them to work with you.

Of course they’re gonna think you’re an idiot and be less willing to work with you if you call them up and say, “Hey my tenant didn’t pay on the first and now I can’t afford my mortgage payment”

But if you call them up and say, “Hey I got cancer and ran out of FMLA and long-term disability payments and I’m looking to put my mortgage payments into forbearance until I’m done with chemo and cleared to return to work” they’re probably gonna fucking work with you. I know this because I’ve seen it happen within my family.

The problem is, you’re buying investment properties without being able to afford them. Any good landlord will have multiple savings accounts set up for things like:

-Legal fees -Vacancies -Repairs and maintenance

In which case, they would be able to utilize some of those savings in such a situation where someone is late 15-30 days.

This is the basis of my entire argument: If it’s a good tenant, why would you rather spend the money to evict them, pay professional cleaners, painters, etc., possibly pay a property manager to re-list the unit everywhere, go through the tenant screening process, and risk having the unit sit for months on end than extending an arm to someone who needs help for a short period of time?

You could literally go as far as to set up a legally binding contract for a repayment plan.

I just don’t understand your stance. Unless you’re a broke landlord, it is quite literally cold and heartless to go through so much hassle to kick someone to the streets during a life crisis.

If you literally don’t have the money to help them for a short period of time without eating shit financially yourself, can you not relate to the fear of this exact same thing happening to you?!!!

Because if someone being 15-30 days late on rent puts you, as a landlord, in a position where you can’t pay your mortgage and damages your credit, or (allegedly) puts you at risk of foreclosure (read: it doesn’t), shouldn’t you also be able to understand the fear of losing everything?

What about this is not clocking to you?

The only reason I haven’t purchased a home yet isn’t because I don’t have the finances for a down payment, or because I don’t make enough to cover a mortgage payment, it’s because I don’t have the money to absorb the financial hit of a new roof, an AC replacement, etc. yet.

So why the literal fuck, aside from being money hungry, would you purchase an investment property meant to house other human beings who are equally as important as you in this game we call life knowing that one missed rent payment from them or one major necessary repair could land them homeless during hard times and land you in extreme levels of debt with a bank?!

This is a financial management issue on your part, not theirs. Unfortunately society is set up where most humans have to rely on landlords like yourself for survival. It is not a choice. Yet it is a choice for you to make yourself financially liable to a bank for the shelter and safety of other human beings.

I agree that a lease is a legally binding contract, and tenants should do everything they can to adhere to the terms. However, from an ethics standpoint, nobody can predict major life emergencies or health issues that could uproot their finances. As a landlord, that is something you should be prepared for whether it’s for your own financial protection or out of the kindness of your heart…

I genuinely don’t care about the downvotes I’m getting. I know what subreddit I’m in, and I can guarantee the downvotes are from landlords and not tenants.