"Don Klipstein" wrote in message
...
In article , Oren wrote:
On Tue, 1 Feb 2011 21:55:34 -0500, "Robert Green"
wrote:

I was thinking of something remote controlled, like a kill switch for
the
furnace or something similar. Something that would make staying in the
home, not paying rent unpalatable. Would it make sense to keep the
utilities in our name and pass them through so that we could cut them
off,
or does cutting off a deadbeat's electricity boomerang back on the
landlord?

Put all utilities in the tenant name.

If they go all stupid, don't spend a bunch of money of ways to get
them out. Just take the front door off, frame and all. Explain you
have to order a custom made Mahogany door from Belize.

How about if utilities are in landlord's name and the lease specifies
that utilities are responsibility of the landlord?

Oops, the furnace had a transformer burn out about a week into January,
and the replacement one has a "lead time" of 2 weeks or a month.

Preferably, the lease specifies that the tenant is not allowed to
perform modifications and repairs to items regulated by building or
housing-unit-rental codes. (my words).

It seems half the hard work of becoming a landlord is finding an air-tight
lease that covers every contingency without being so long and onerous that
no one would sign it. Fortunately, modern youngun's are used to signing
thirty page legalese-infested contracts without reading them, so maybe I'll
slide by. (-:

Furthermore, I have seen leases requiring that tenant must not use a
heat source other than landlord-provided heating system for home heating.

That sounds like an excellent clause considering the sources of ignition my
Dad used to find when he was doing forensic engineering work. We literate
types don't realize that people without even a HS education don't know about
a lot of the things we take for granted. Every year we have several fatal
house fires and CO poisonings from just those "other" heat sources you note
should be banned by contract. The problem, as I see it, is how does a
remote (or even local) landlord know that the tenant has stopped paying his
gas bill and is running kerosene heaters or even trash fires in a oil drum?

My experience in delivery jobs suggests to me that problem tenants
disproportionately tend to have a problem with indoor temperature lower
than 70's F.

A very interesting observation.

--
Bobby G.