“Dear PoPville,
I’m a small-time landlord of a studio apartment in NW DC. I bought the studio for myself in 2018 and it was my dream apartment, so when I moved in with my now-fiancé I was looking forward to renting it out to someone who would (hopefully) love the space as much as I have. It was the first apartment that was all mine and I’m a sentimental person, so it meant a lot to trust someone else living in it.
My 1st/current tenant is the absolute worst and owes 3 months of rent and late fees outlined in the lease agreement. Read More
“Dear PoPville,
I’m the proud owner of a 7yo husky and I recently sold my condo. I’m in the market for an apartment but it turns out my husky isn’t welcome. Apparently the breed is on the Restricted Breed List that many buildings use. Read More
Photo by Olaf Zerbock
“Dear PoPville,
Local colleges have gone remote for the most part for the fall, so many students are not planning to return to dc anytime soon. A student tenant, who is not returning for fall, recently stop paying his share of rent for a group house. He has been trying to find someone to take over his responsibilities for the lease, without much luck. I am curious if and how other landlords may be dealing with similar student tenant issues, since there are a lot of colleges in DC. Thank you.”
“Dear PoPville,
I recently purchased my first condo (yay!) that is a 2 bedroom, 2 bath where each room has its own bathroom. My hope is to rent out the second bedroom so that I can get some help with paying the mortgage, while I’d be living in the other bedroom of course.
My question is, being someone who knows absolutely nothing much about DC laws much less about renting, where do I start with renting out the room? Read More
Photo by angela n.
“Dear PoPville,
I am a small-time landlord (just one condo), and my tenant has been making late or partial payments since the pandemic started. I had some email and phone conversations with them early on, and assured them that I could not try to evict them if their April rent payment was late while they waited for various assistance programs, including expanded unemployment benefits (part of their income is from freelancing, which I knew at the outset), were implemented.
At the beginning of May, the tenant paid all of the April rent and half of the May rent. Read More
Photo by PoPville flickr user Erinn Shirley
“Dear PoPville,
Tenants recently moved out of my house in DC. I inspected the property two days after they moved out, and everything seemed in order. Because they had just bought a house, I wanted to be nice to them and return their deposit asap, which I did right after the inspection. Three days later, I moved back into the house and discovered the washing machine gasket was covered in mold and hair. I know to expect some mold in the gasket, but this went beyond normal wear and tear. Three days of trying everything (Concorbium, bleach, baking soda paste, etc…) has done nothing to remove the smell or the mold stains. Read More
Photo by PoPville flickr user Mr.TinDC
“Dear PoPville,
My husband and I had a tenant move into our English basement unit about six weeks ago. We live upstairs in the main unit with our four week old baby. Unfortunately, it’s become evident that our tenant is a daily marijuana smoker and our entire house now smells like marijuana everyday including our daughters nursery. My husband let her know about the situation and she said she’d stop but she hasn’t. We can’t go on with this, it is a real health hazard for our daughter, what are our best options? Unfortunately, we trusted a realtor with the lease and he overlooked putting a no-smoking clause in there. We are obviously very distressed by this. Any legal advice/experience with this helpful.
Thank you!”
Ed. Note: Back in the day we spoke about when an elderly neighbor’s pot smoke was also getting into someone’s apartment and in May 2016 “we’re pretty sure babies should not be exposed to pot smoke”.
Photo by PoPville flickr user Bossi
“Dear PoPville,
How hard is it to evict a tenant that is not paying rent?
I know that tenant rights are very strong in this city but I have a tenant that has not paid rent for a few months. I have done everything I can to work with the tenant but this has not helped. I finally filed for an eviction notice, had the tenant served with papers, and a court date has been issued. Does anyone have any experience with this and know how long it will take for the tenant to actually be evicted?
To be clear, this is not a tenant who appears to have any financial hardship and did sign a lease for an upscale building in DC.”
Photo by PoPville flickr user Brett Bowers
“Dear PoPville,
We just discovered that our relatively new basement rental tenants are growing weed in their bedroom. We’ve been getting headaches from a smell from the basement since the day they moved in and when we asked what the heck the smell was they’ve claimed it was incense (which technically it was). They are using it it seems to cover up some type of smell from the weed but we are not sure exactly what. The smell occurs often during the day so we think it may be something that they are doing to the weed.
Needless to say – discovering the presence of the weed growing during an inspection of the unit (which we did alert them to) has us really pissed and we are wondering what we can do between now and when the lease expires? The lease they signed with a rental company prohibits smoking of any kind in the unit as well as conduct of any illegal activities. It also prohibits use of the unit for anything other than residential purposes (e.g. no business activities). We have a small kid and don’t want any of this on our property (legal or not). Would appreciate any advice of what we can do/request until such time as we can cancel the lease.”
Photo by PoPville flickr user Mr. T in DC
“Dear PoPville,
I own a grouphouse in Columbia Heights and am in the market for a 4 unit property in the Capitol Hill. If I acquire the four unit in Cap Hill, is my grouphouse considered a 5th unit whereby forcing me to abide by rent control laws? Or, would I simply own two rental homes, one of which has four separate apartments.”
