When a tenant moves into your rental property, they normally will pay you or the property manager a security deposit. This amount is normally equal to one month’s rent and is held by the landlord/manager until the end of the duration of the lease. In Texas, landlords or managers are required to return the deposit within 30 days of the tenants move out. However, there are a few scenarios where the landlord is given the right to retain this deposit.
Nonpayment of Rent
Most states, including Texas, allow the landlord to retain the security deposit in the event your tenant begins to forego paying their rent. Your tenant, by definition, is contractually obligated to pay their monthly rent and failure to do so entitles you, the landlord, to keep the amount equal to past due rent.
The Lease is Terminated Early
If your tenant decides to terminate their lease before it expires you have the right to retain all or part of the security deposit to cover any costs associated with the lease. The specific wording may vary across lease agreements so double check yours to make sure you are entitled to this. A typical Texas Association of Realtors lease will have a clause written in it protecting the landlord in the event of a lease termination.
Damage to the Property
Damages to your rental property entitle you to retain your tenant’s deposit. However, normal ‘
Working as a property manager, it’s easy to think the job won’t be that hard and that most of what you’ll be doing is collecting rent payments. Then you come to find out that property management is much harder than first anticipated. Part of any venture in life is learning from your mistakes and as a property owner in Austin, Texas, this includes you. Here we’ll go over some of the mistakes to avoid if you choose to self-manage your Austin rental home.
Charging too much or too little
If you’ve chosen to work with an agent to help lease your property this shouldn’t affect you too much. However, let’s imagine you’re choosing to find a tenant for your property on your own. You post ads for your property to the usual sites such as Craigslist or Facebook, but is this helping? You might find a tenant, but do you know how much to charge them? Realtors have access the MLS which houses a lot of real estate data, some which is important in this situation. Working with a property manager would have allowed you to run comps in your area to accurately pinpoint the amount you could charge for your Austin rental home. Self-managing owners do not have this luxury and instead price their property on their...
If you own a rental property in Austin, Texas you’re probably aware of how expensive property maintenance can be and this is usually a cost landlords tend to ignore. Why do you need to replace that siding that still looks okay? Or why replace that roof that is only missing a few shingles? The truth of the matter is that there are quite a few features about your rental property that require regular upkeep and Stone Oak Management, as your property management company in Austin, TX, can help in many ways! We work with a network of specialized vendors throughout the greater Austin, Texas region and have access to reduced rates from these vendors due to our bulk of work. We pass these savings onto you, the rental property owner! In addition to savings on maintenance and repairs, we help you comply with property code and help avoid lawsuits for any unwanted property mishaps. Maintenance will always be required for a property and no matter how careful your tenant might be it can get expensive fast if not property addressed in time.
Maintenance costs are no fun – we agree! However, spending money on preventative maintenance can save you thousands of dollars down th...
Stone Oak Management is committed to ensuring that its website is accessible to people with disabilities.
All the pages on our website will meet W3C WAI's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, Level A conformance.
Any issues should be reported to jason@stoneoakmgmt.com.
Website Accessibility Policy
