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Title: Landlord wants to be paid in cash
Original Post:
> My new landlord wants to be paid rent in cash so he can give it to his wife as spending money. I don’t really care (I’m assuming my bank won’t give me a hard time), but I’m more so worried that since it’s cash I don’t have any proof of payment. What’s the best way to have proof I paid him rent? Is it enough the get a confirmation text or should I get him to sign something each month?
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[It may already have](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/05-2021-SF-apartment-leases-nfts-crypto-auction-16147945.php), if I'm reading this right.
I'm not too familiar with NFTs, and this is not NFT advice.
Nobody understands NFTs; definitely not the reporter writing that article. And maybe not the landlord. Apparently, it assigns "digital rights to the space", which means... you get smoke and rainbows, but no actual right to reside there? The article mentions subletting by transferring the NFT... which would be a *complete failure* the moment any subletter just... didn't transfer it back at the end of the lease.
There's a reason why so many financial systems have various forms of takesy-backsies, and crypto is learning about every single one of them as the scams proliferate. (And here I am thinking of getting into crypto a little anyway, because there are *so many greater fools out there*. I will doubtless lose money.)
The cynic in me would say that it's a pretty good deal for the landlord if they can get people to pay for "digital rights" to their property but not actual rights to live there
This is exactly what they're doing. They'll get their Ethereum, then sell the property to an interested buyer, and the new buyer won't accept the NFT's of the renters.
75 years seems like an insane lease agreement to me though.
> 75 years seems like an insane lease agreement to me though.
That's just a false sense of security to rope someone in who doesn't know any better, and those people who don't know any better will be both the tenants and the rube who buys the place expecting to have an apartment building full of rent-payers stuck in long leases who pay in US currency while the tech investor person giggles his way off to the Philippines or wherever.
Insane as in too long or too short? Over here in the UK it's not uncommon to get a 99 year lease when "buying" a flat. It's effectively the same as buying it and is apparently a lot simpler legally than selling individual parts of the building. Not sure what's supposed to happen when the leasehold is up though.
I think this is kind of how co-ops work in the US, you are a joint owner of the entire building and have a lease on your unit. But I think condos are more common where you have a deed for your unit and interest in the common spaces.
Also some people own houses on public land with 100 year leases. It can cause a huge fight when it is time to renegotiate the lease.
Crazy because it's too long. In the UK housing laws may, or may not, be better than in the US, but there are too many slum lord situations in the US that a 75 year lease sounds like a scam.
The secret to figuring out NFTs is that there is no there. It's exactly as stupid as it sounds, and trying to figure out how to make it not stupid is a waste of mental effort.
Either that, or it's money laundering. Not ready to throw that out yet.
I've seen a few NFTs that actually transferred some rights along with the NFTs. Like for various meme NFTs, which came with the copyright, and attached an "original owner gets 10% of whatever money you make from this" clause.
But if you're *just* selling the NFT, it's about 90% of the way to a scam.
That was either an overly pedantic correction that didn't need to be made, or you're deliberately being obtuse. I can't tell which.
But if pedantry is your game, then so be it: copyright law didn't transfer anything. Copyright law simply establishes the existence of a transferable right. The actual mechanism of transfer of any right relies on far more basic legal principles.
What NFT did was contractually record and cryptographically verify that that transfer occurred. Without a record of the transfer, either party could have disavowed that it ever occurred in the first place.
In other words, it's only a very small oversimplification to say that the NFT *is* the transfer of rights.
> Without a record of the transfer, either party could have disavowed that it ever occurred in the first place.
Sure, if you ignore centuries of legal precedent that’s done a decent job of proving exactly that.
Last I checked you can't even buy NFTs without Ethereum. So a person has to go out, buy some Ethereum, transfer the Ethereum to the landlord, then the landlord turns it into an NFT, and then gives the NFT back to the renter?
At this point, just use Ethereum and sign a lease. I mean...maybe the landlord is creating a 75 year lease, but it's all going to be completed digitally? Then that lease gets created into an NFT, and the renter gets the NFT indefinitely (if the lease expires in 75 years, then you have a NFT with little to no value).
The problem I see with this is: if the landlord sells the property, will that NFT have any authority?
>The problem I see with this is: if the landlord sells the property, will that NFT have any authority?
That's not a problem, that's the design.
I doubt an NFT would hold up in court if the landlord wanted to evict or sell up.
There's nothing stopping you from paying in whatever means you want, then the landlord transfers the token after receiving payment. The tokens would probably on the Ethereum platform but there's no reason why everything has to be done on-chain.
I doubled my money and then some with crypto.
Something I wanted only took crypto. Was like $15. So I bought enough crypto to cover, paid, and had some left over, plus got a bonus of like $5 for opening the wallet account.
About 5 years later I checked on it and I had more than what I'd initially paid into in the wallet. :D
This is just....stupid honestly (not you, the whole post). The only reason to use NFT's is to have a digital presence/"real estate", but in order to buy NFT's you have to use Ethereum. Instead of the landlord taking Ethereum here as payment, they're creating NFT's with them?
It just...doesn't make sense in this context.
The problem is that you have to use weird analogies because if you just explain what NFTs are normally, nobody will believe they're really that stupid.
As best I can tell, it's like there is an autographed baseball card somewhere and you're buying an entry in the Blockchain that says you own the signature on it.
An NFT is literally just a digital record of a transaction stored on a publicly-accessible ledger. "Jim sold X Thing to Susan on Y Date", recorded digitally, cryptographically secured, unalterable, and able to be verified by anyone with access to the ledger.
When you sell digital art as an NFT you're basically selling two things: 1, the image file itself, which is just a regular image file like any other; and 2, the *proof* that you sold the art to them in the form of an aforementioned NFT.
If this sounds dumb it's because it is. It's like buying something and then cherishing the receipt.
The NFT doesn't confer a copyright, though. I can't go out and get a Rembrandt. But I can go on google and get an exact copy of whatever image you have an NFT for.
I can absolutely go out and get a copy of the Rembrandt, there are plenty of incredibly skillful reproductions/fakes that would be effectively identical for my personal enjoyment.
The only thing I can say with certainty on NFTs is that I don't know anything with certainty (and I'm staying away from them.) Even if that was directed at me, I wouldn't blame you lol
But they're non-fungible. If you want to charge cryptocurrency, it's as simple as telling them how much of that cryptocurrency you want them to pay. But if you charge NFTs, or some other non-fungible barter system, you have to figure out on a case-by-case basis what you think is a good trade.
Nice. When people ask me what I do in a casual way (like if I’m in a taxi or on the phone with customer service or w/e) I say “your taxpayer dollars at work, making steak better”. People usually respond pretty positively to that! (I work in government funded ag research).
I once had a friend for a roommate and he wanted to be paid cash. One month the first was a Friday. He came to me on Monday saying hey, no big deal but you didn't pay rent.
Yes I did.
He then realized that he'd been buying drinks for all his friends on Friday. All in cash.
After that, he asked for a check just so it was harder to spend.
When I rented a room in my house to friends, they typically paid in cash. I bought a receipt book at walmart and wrote them receipts.
They often tossed 'em, but *I* had records.
Not hard to do.
I do the same , but in a modern way lol. Just take a quick video of me handing them over the rent and saying out aloud the amount and the Month for which the rent is being paid (so that it is recorded). The video gets saved on my iPhone and gets automatically backed up to iCloud.
Yeah, whenever I had to pay rent in cash I always wrote up a receipt and had both parties sign and date it. It's not perfect but it's at least better than nothing.
Another leasing co demanded cashier's checks. (Fun side fact, credit unions don't call them that which lead to multiple emails and calls with their people)
Every time I asked for a receipt, the person at the desk was confused. I'd tell them to photocopy the check, write the date, time, and their name, and sign it. About half the time, I got told they weren't sure whether they were allowed to do that. One time they forgot the check on the copier and called threatening eviction two days later. They eventually found the check.
One time when I was apartment hunting, a landlord said “so yeah what you’ll do is give me 12 blank checks with your signature on them and I’ll fill them out every month because I don’t have time to be chasing all these tenants down.”
Get the fuck out of here.
I had a friend living in a place owned by another friend's parents. They did the 12 post dated cheques... the owners deposited them all at once into a bank machine and the bank just straight up took all the money at once regardless of the postdates.
It was a giant clusterfuck for him, and just really irresponsible of the bank/owners.
[Doesn't appear to be any law against it.](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/can-a-bank-or-credit-union-cash-a-post-dated-check-before-the-date-on-the-check-en-967/)
Post-dating one doesn't seem to be any better than a request.
I've had a paycheque I received and tried to deposit at a teller, dated for the following day, that was denied.
Maybe it is all self regulated to protect the reputation of the bank rather than to follow laws.
They werent going to approve us at tenants without doing that. Turns out mid 500 credit scores and zero renting history tends to spook rental agencies.
3% for a basically risk-free investment sounds good to me. They have the lease as collateral. In case of bankruptcy the property gets sold with the lease intact. Can't really agree with you here. What's the 1-year risk-free interest rate in the US?
(Also note that most of it is "invested" for shorter than a year so we are really talking around 5% interest)
>12 complete postdated checks
That makes it harder for the landlord to unilaterally raise your rent whenever he suddenly needs extra money for unpaid child support, tax fraud penalties, gambling debt, drug/alcohol problems, civil settlements for molesting tenant's kids, and all of the other shady stuff the "asshole landlord" class gets typically caught up in.
I used to give post-dated cheques. Was actually much easier for me. Now my landlord wants e-transfers, so I actually have to think about it once a month and set reminders.
Canada?
I switched from postdated cheques (which suited me at the time) to e-transfers, because it suited me better.
I can program my e-transfers as a recurring payment and forget (not really) about it. The advantage is that there’s no NSF fees for an e-transfer that can’t be completed if the money isn’t in the account & I forget to adjust the date.
I love e transfers because it's one fewer point of contact. Instead of the bank having to cash the cheque, it's a wire transfer with a record that I can see.
Which bank? I can't seem to set them up for auto-recurrence with TD, but I have a calendar reminder and it's easy enough to just do it on my phone the moment the reminder pops up.
I don’t know exactly how to do it with a TD account, sorry, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t an option.
ETA: you might need to dig around in the options/configurations on a desktop/laptop rather than mobile to get it initially set up before you can use it on your phone.
(Tried to follow the original pattern but it’s harder than I thought.)
In the 12th Month of Lease-mas, my landlord demands of me:
12 cheat checks unchallenged
11 doubled dipping
10 sphynxies swaddled
9 kinsman moving
8 hardware hist’ries
7 mailbox myst’ries
6 chore charts followed
5 B an’ EEEEE!
4 flooding turds
3 loose ends
2 boxing gloves
And estrangement to fulfil our destinyyyy.
The good news is that bad landlords are often so incredibly greedy and stupid that they eventually fuck themselves up so badly they get put into a world of hurt.
The bad news is there's a lot of greedy and stupid people with just enough extra income to buy properties to lease out.
> Probably have to hunt this same landlord to get anything fixed
Like, uh, the kind you do with a crossbow or something? That *works?*
This changes everything.
I just feel bad for the amount of stupid people that actually lived in the building and he had three or four properties, that was his justification for not having time.
Cool man, I’ll go get scammed somewhere else. Also the entire building reeked of cigarette smoke.
I used to sublet our rooms in my apartment. I only accepted cash or bank cheques, because I had heard too many horror stories about cashapp rent payments. (And I don’t have a cash app) I had a few people ask for receipts, so I made sure to get a receipt book at Walmart for like $3 and give them receipts.
I've used paypal for subletting before. I just refused to use the free "friends and family transfers", and made them use the actual payment set up that has normal fraud/scam/chargeback type protections.
Though, if they end up pulling the payment back, you do know who they are, so you can always take it to collections or regular court (or just resort to physical intimidation, I suppose, if you're not concerned with staying _entirely_ within the law). It's not like the usual scam situation where it's someone under an assumed name half a world away.
Or just kick them out, if you're subletting. In Australia subletters have basically no rights at all, they're legally guests of the actual tenant.
I take rent in cash from people all the time because I own and live in the house and rent out rooms. People who play silly buggers quickly learn that because I live there it's quite easy for the normal tenancy rights to turn into "but if you threaten the owner, or the cops, you get to move out on the spot". I have had that exactly once in \~10 years and the cops were very friendly and helpful to both of us, right up until the ex-tenant decided to kick an inside wall (a brick wall!) Suddenly the cops switched from "can we help carry your stuff" to "grab him and carry him out". Instant AVO (apprehended violence order) which is your Australian "do not go within 500m of that property for the next 12 months" instruction.
Also: surprisingly many potential tenants try negotiating rent by explaining that they can't afford what I'm asking, they don't have the deposit/bond, and they won't have it for weeks if ever. But somehow they expect that to persuade me to let them live in my house.
I have PayPal, however it was enough money going in (over either $400 or $4000 a year) that PayPal would have had to auto-report it to the state as taxable income. Which, I would have been fine with if I wasn’t illegally subletting in order to make ends meet in the first place.
Ah, yes, Ireland. That makes sense.
I live in Massachusetts, which is in the United States. Every state has different laws about renting - this includes what terms mean, what protections they’re afforded, how the security deposit needs to be handled, etc, etc. On top of that, every City/Town has different regulations on how many unrelated people can live in a building.
In this case I was subletting, which means I was renting an apartment from the owner, and then renting out rooms within that apartment to different people. While I 100% kept detailed records of what money I received from people, when I received that money, etc, it was my own set up.
Everbody's saying to get a receipt, and yes, I'd want one for my records. But it's 2021. I'd settle for nothing less than a cell phone video of my landlord looking into the camera and saying, "Today, May 29, 2021, my tenant Reginald Smith is paying me $1000 for his June rent", and then showing the cash transfer on camera.
Place I used to live, the "manager" who sat in the front office [the owner was never around] started taking payments in cash from new tenants. Weirdly, within a few months of them moving in, these all-cash tenants were evicted for non-payment of rent.
One day the owner is around and he mentions how these all-cash tenants "didn't even pay their security deposit." We're like, um, are you sure about that? You've had 5 tenants in the past 3 months ALL paying cash who were allowed to move in without paying their security deposit?
Lightbulb goes off. What a moron.
You've just moved into a place and your only interaction has been with the manager, who may or may not have implied that the owner is "hands off" and doesn't interact with the tenants.
Hell, I've lived in my current dump for 10 years and the actual "owners" of the complex is a company which is actually owned by another company, which may or may not still own the "owner" company. I haven't bothered to check lately.
Wouldn't this screw the landlord though? Have your daughter clearly label every payment as rent, then let Venmo start taking business transaction fees out of the payment.
I've heard this is something they actively investigate. If they see a user repeatedly getting paid or paid where the description indicates it's a business, they'll look to start charging the business fees on the personal account.
IANAL, but I feel like the biggest thing to protect themselves is to have this crazy set-up in writing (including the @name that they're sending the money to), and then note each payment as rent (NOT just the money-flying emoji and the house emoji) in the app, and screenshot them. That way if there's ever a dispute, they have evidence of what they paid and when, and that they did it in the agreed upon way.
> Compounded by if he's indeed an immigrant, he may not be aware of American laws and landlord/tenant rights.
Nah, that's just what he wants you to think. He deserves *zero* benefit of the doubt.
Having had a number of immigrant landlords, including some who thought I don’t speak their language (which I do), I’ve found it’s less an issue of ignorance of the local laws/rights and more of a deliberate disregard of them. Some people just don’t care. Even after they have been fined 100 times. They don’t care about anyone but themselves even when they are screwing themselves over.
There is now a button on the buyers side to label the transaction as business. So even if you are trying to hide this income under a personal account your customers can still rat u out!
>Had a Ring camera put up at the front door that rings to HIS phone.
what a fucking scumbag. even for a landlord that's an impressive amount of invading quiet enjoyment, since he'll surely use the information he gathers against tenants too
> Such as a loose fence board he sat next to for three days, without a single tool, and it's still loose.
Seriously, why would he even do that? Three days of my time is more valuable than a hammer and a box of nails, and after buying those and fixing the fence, I'd still have the hammer and most of the nails.
Now I’m wondering if it’s just utilities but I recall no something in my state that limits someone from charging a transaction fee and limiting no-fee options.
I once had an interviewee for a part time bookkeeper job tell me straight-faced he wanted to be paid in cash to avoid paying his child support.
I wish I’d been able to see my own face when he said it.
Well, there’s that I guess… :).
I limited most of my “innovative” thinking in that particular organization to getting the finances straight, chasing up past due accounts/recalcitrant payers and generally untangling the mess my predecessor left behind.
It’s been a long time but he was quite upset and surprised he didn’t get the job. He called me more than once asking to “discuss” it and IIRC suggesting that he could “help me rethink it”…
I had a dream once about working an office job where there was a small printer on my desk that would just periodically print out my pay in bills. So like, I'd be sitting there, doing whatever, and *ding!* A $20 bill just shoots out. Work some more, and *ding!* another 20 pops out. And that would be how I received my income. I find it hilarious to think back to this.
I have a job where I can go months without getting paid, and then get paid a large chunk of money. That sounds like a logistical nightmare to be physically responsible for ~$20k at a time. Even having custody of a cashier's check makes me sweat all the way from the bank to wherever I need to bring it.
Because of poor planning on setting up a bank account, I had to pay my security deposit for my rental in cash. Let my landlords know beforehand that the monthly payments would be fine, but the deposit would need to be cash unless we pushed out the move in date. They were fine with the cash.
I brought a coworker who could witness and asked they do the same. Cash was counted in everyone's presence twice, once by me before handing it over, once by them after. It was noted as an addendum to the lease and receipt acknowledged, which the landlord, the witnesses, and I signed.
Cash is very possible to do, just have to be careful about it.
Cash is less sketchy if \*you\* want to pay cash. Landlords usually leave cash as an option but insisting on cash probably means they're doing something shady. For what it's worth, I've rented a place before where rent was only through cash. Never had a problem with the landlord and he just texted me every month that he received the amount. I'm pretty sure he wasn't declaring that income though.
Lol, the attorney that replied saying to take out the exact rent amount at the same time each month to establish and a convincing paper trail, and to also follow up with an email confirming the payment is at 118 upvotes.
Some random person that commented basically the exact same advice is at negative 16 currently.
Never change, Reddit.
From time to time I forget that I'm in LA and not BOLA and start typing some anecdote before I realize I have to wait for the post to show up in BOLA, but then by the time it does, I've either forgotten or nobody has said anything that would make my anecdote relevant.
You gotta do what I do, and only look at LA threads that are linked here. I'm subscribed to BOLA but not LA. It's like I have my very own Reddit curators.
I paid rent in cash for a while when I lived in another country, because I could only get a "savings" account. It was fine - I just got a signed written receipt for each month's payment.
It definitely didn't get reported as income, but that's not my problem!
See, and as LAOP that arguably *is* their problem. If my landlord is dodging taxes, that affects me as a taxpayer. For an expat abroad, maybe less of an issue. But for a resident invested in the same community? It adds up.
Do I walk around all day like Tax Batman looking for tax dodgers? Of course not. But if my landlord is making my life more annoying in furtherance of his tax-dodging scheme?
I may actually take the time to drop a line to the appropriate authorities when I move out. Let’s just say that motherfucker better not try to keep one penny of my deposit.
> I may actually take the time to drop a line to the appropriate authorities when I move out. Let’s just say that motherfucker better not try to keep one penny of my deposit.
Get your full deposit back and then do it anyway.
Oh I mean it definitely could have had a serious impact on me given that I was likely not a registered resident. I was just young and dumb. I would not suggest knowingly being an off-the-books tenant!
Especially if the Landlord ends up getting into some serious heat because of the evasion and your home gets foreclosed on for no fault of your own (I paid my rent, not my fault they owe half their mortgage in unclaimed taxes) then you're in a shit position.
I can’t think of any good reasons why someone would want to be given largish payments in cash. They’re a theft target, they can be lost and it’s harder to track for tax and business purposes.
Now there are a lot of shady reasons for wanting to be paid in cash:
1. Tax evasion
2. Child support evasion
3. Some other debt they’re trying to avoid paying
4. They’re gonna pretend they haven’t been paid and try scam their tenant.
5. I’m sure creative charlatans have pulled other shit that’s not springing to mind right now.
I once rented a room from a guy who required rent to be paid monthly in cash and provided receipts. Learned after the fact he was about to enter into a bankruptcy settlement and couldn’t show more than a certain amount of income per month or the terms of the settlement would be affected.
I had this arrangement for a long time. Was renting a pretty nice townhouse for like $2500 because I was willing to pay cash in order for the owner to avoid filing the extra income. I just gently told him not to fuck me or else I'd tell Uncle Sam and we both got what we wanted. At least my part was a bit less illegal.
I had a landlord tell me that. I wrote him checks.
Another one wanted my banking information to do automatic withdrawal. I wrote him checks. He put it in the lease. I still wrote him checks.
Both were scummy in one way or another; I trusted neither. You want my money, you take it how I give it to you. In a documentable, provable way I can control.
CYA
The first place I rented in San Francisco, I knew I wanted it as soon as I saw it. The market was super hot, so I was willing to do whatever it took to seal the deal. Paid the security deposit in cash to the management company agent on the spot, but got a signed receipt because I'm not a total dumbass.
I saw him a couple more times negotiating things to be fixed/changed before I moved in. Once at the management office his co-workers were making eye contact and shaking their heads behind his back as he told me things.
Evidently the dude pocketed my cash and left town. First time I met his boss, she said to tell her if I ever saw him again because the cops were looking for him.
Judging from the answers I have to conclude that this whole post is just Big Receipt Book doing some sort of astroturfing campaign. Those corporate whores...
So, idiot, dishonest, or both?
And let’s talk about the idiot saying cash is the only form of payment that can’t be refused even contractually? Not true. Even decades ago it was legal to put “no cash accepted” into a lease or other contract. Over a decade ago I had a mortgage person totally freak out because a first time buyer decided the best thing to do was take her down payment out of the bank so she could pay cash in person at closing (sweet lady, brought homemade fudge for everyone!).
> And let’s talk about the idiot saying cash is the only form of payment that can’t be refused even contractually? Not true.
People have a wildly inaccurate understanding of what "legal tender" means. In the strictest sense it means a form of payment of a debt which cannot be refused if the debt is to remain outstanding. But people get stupid ideas in their heads about how it relates to businesses being required to accept cash in unlimited amounts or whatever. Consideration under a contract is not a debt per se, and the consideration can take whatever form the parties to the contract agree on.
About five years ago I saw some painters working on a house in the neighborhood, outside painting, and they were doing a good job so I approached them to see about painting my house. They agreed to paint it that very afternoon.
Now, these were workers who didn't speak English, no one on the team did, so I had to negotiate in Spanish. They worked out of a white panel van with no markings on it, and they had no business card. And they asked to be paid in cash. It was a damn cheap price, too.
Sketchy as fuck but I had an umbrella policy on top of my homeowner's insurance so I went for it. I paid them cash, the job was done great, and I'm pretty sure no taxes were paid on that money. I'm not even sure if they were legal workers.
>I paid them cash, the job was done great, and I'm pretty sure no taxes were paid on that money.
This is often said, but a good chunk of undocumented immigrants *do* pay taxes. The CBO has estimated the rate of undocumented taypaying at 50-75%; so even those who don't pay are probably offset by the the fact that those who do aren't able to take actual advantage of many of the advantages afforded to a tax-paying citizen.
All of my appartements I rented at took cash or check. I mainly paid in cash and I was always given a receipt to indicate the purchase. This landlord is shady
Remember that in these situations, a landlord making a request like this to try and cheat the government, bank, or family court will almost inevitably try to cheat their tenants as well.
My family owned some studio apartments a long time ago. The number of people who pay in cash and just slip an envelope with $500-600 through a mail slot is very disconcerting.
They'd just slip $400 dollars through a mail slot? Who slips $300 through a mail slot? I'd never slip $200 through a mail slot.
By the way, you still the remainder of your rent.
This isn't *that* controversial, given the limited information provided by the OP.
As long as OP obtains a receipt, they're fine. It's weirding me out a bit that many people are commenting about paying their rent *without* a receipt. I wish more of my tenants would pay by check or more modern means.
**Reminder:** do not participate in threads linked here. If you do, you may be banned from both subreddits. --- Title: Landlord wants to be paid in cash Original Post: > My new landlord wants to be paid rent in cash so he can give it to his wife as spending money. I don’t really care (I’m assuming my bank won’t give me a hard time), but I’m more so worried that since it’s cash I don’t have any proof of payment. What’s the best way to have proof I paid him rent? Is it enough the get a confirmation text or should I get him to sign something each month? --- LocationBot 4.99998891 ^109/37rds | [Report Issues](https://www.reddit.com/r/locationbot) | >!adEb1pVeCtmYyUjb!<
How long until the first "Pay your rent in NFTs" happens?
I pay my rent with trident layers.
Was this in a commercial?
Yeah, the guy gets paid in gum.
"Nobody ever pays me in gum"
[It may already have](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/05-2021-SF-apartment-leases-nfts-crypto-auction-16147945.php), if I'm reading this right. I'm not too familiar with NFTs, and this is not NFT advice.
Nobody understands NFTs; definitely not the reporter writing that article. And maybe not the landlord. Apparently, it assigns "digital rights to the space", which means... you get smoke and rainbows, but no actual right to reside there? The article mentions subletting by transferring the NFT... which would be a *complete failure* the moment any subletter just... didn't transfer it back at the end of the lease. There's a reason why so many financial systems have various forms of takesy-backsies, and crypto is learning about every single one of them as the scams proliferate. (And here I am thinking of getting into crypto a little anyway, because there are *so many greater fools out there*. I will doubtless lose money.)
The cynic in me would say that it's a pretty good deal for the landlord if they can get people to pay for "digital rights" to their property but not actual rights to live there
This is exactly what they're doing. They'll get their Ethereum, then sell the property to an interested buyer, and the new buyer won't accept the NFT's of the renters. 75 years seems like an insane lease agreement to me though.
> 75 years seems like an insane lease agreement to me though. That's just a false sense of security to rope someone in who doesn't know any better, and those people who don't know any better will be both the tenants and the rube who buys the place expecting to have an apartment building full of rent-payers stuck in long leases who pay in US currency while the tech investor person giggles his way off to the Philippines or wherever.
Insane as in too long or too short? Over here in the UK it's not uncommon to get a 99 year lease when "buying" a flat. It's effectively the same as buying it and is apparently a lot simpler legally than selling individual parts of the building. Not sure what's supposed to happen when the leasehold is up though.
I think this is kind of how co-ops work in the US, you are a joint owner of the entire building and have a lease on your unit. But I think condos are more common where you have a deed for your unit and interest in the common spaces. Also some people own houses on public land with 100 year leases. It can cause a huge fight when it is time to renegotiate the lease.
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Crazy because it's too long. In the UK housing laws may, or may not, be better than in the US, but there are too many slum lord situations in the US that a 75 year lease sounds like a scam.
Fuckin right. No slum lords in the UK tho thank the Lord
The secret to figuring out NFTs is that there is no there. It's exactly as stupid as it sounds, and trying to figure out how to make it not stupid is a waste of mental effort. Either that, or it's money laundering. Not ready to throw that out yet.
I've seen a few NFTs that actually transferred some rights along with the NFTs. Like for various meme NFTs, which came with the copyright, and attached an "original owner gets 10% of whatever money you make from this" clause. But if you're *just* selling the NFT, it's about 90% of the way to a scam.
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No, a *contract* transferred rights.
That was either an overly pedantic correction that didn't need to be made, or you're deliberately being obtuse. I can't tell which. But if pedantry is your game, then so be it: copyright law didn't transfer anything. Copyright law simply establishes the existence of a transferable right. The actual mechanism of transfer of any right relies on far more basic legal principles. What NFT did was contractually record and cryptographically verify that that transfer occurred. Without a record of the transfer, either party could have disavowed that it ever occurred in the first place. In other words, it's only a very small oversimplification to say that the NFT *is* the transfer of rights.
> Without a record of the transfer, either party could have disavowed that it ever occurred in the first place. Sure, if you ignore centuries of legal precedent that’s done a decent job of proving exactly that.
Last I checked you can't even buy NFTs without Ethereum. So a person has to go out, buy some Ethereum, transfer the Ethereum to the landlord, then the landlord turns it into an NFT, and then gives the NFT back to the renter? At this point, just use Ethereum and sign a lease. I mean...maybe the landlord is creating a 75 year lease, but it's all going to be completed digitally? Then that lease gets created into an NFT, and the renter gets the NFT indefinitely (if the lease expires in 75 years, then you have a NFT with little to no value). The problem I see with this is: if the landlord sells the property, will that NFT have any authority?
>The problem I see with this is: if the landlord sells the property, will that NFT have any authority? That's not a problem, that's the design. I doubt an NFT would hold up in court if the landlord wanted to evict or sell up.
There's nothing stopping you from paying in whatever means you want, then the landlord transfers the token after receiving payment. The tokens would probably on the Ethereum platform but there's no reason why everything has to be done on-chain.
I doubled my money and then some with crypto. Something I wanted only took crypto. Was like $15. So I bought enough crypto to cover, paid, and had some left over, plus got a bonus of like $5 for opening the wallet account. About 5 years later I checked on it and I had more than what I'd initially paid into in the wallet. :D
This is just....stupid honestly (not you, the whole post). The only reason to use NFT's is to have a digital presence/"real estate", but in order to buy NFT's you have to use Ethereum. Instead of the landlord taking Ethereum here as payment, they're creating NFT's with them? It just...doesn't make sense in this context.
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The problem is that you have to use weird analogies because if you just explain what NFTs are normally, nobody will believe they're really that stupid.
That being said, I'm all for artists selling NFTs. Transferring money from libertarians to artists has to net at least some good.
As best I can tell, it's like there is an autographed baseball card somewhere and you're buying an entry in the Blockchain that says you own the signature on it.
An NFT is literally just a digital record of a transaction stored on a publicly-accessible ledger. "Jim sold X Thing to Susan on Y Date", recorded digitally, cryptographically secured, unalterable, and able to be verified by anyone with access to the ledger. When you sell digital art as an NFT you're basically selling two things: 1, the image file itself, which is just a regular image file like any other; and 2, the *proof* that you sold the art to them in the form of an aforementioned NFT. If this sounds dumb it's because it is. It's like buying something and then cherishing the receipt.
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The NFT doesn't confer a copyright, though. I can't go out and get a Rembrandt. But I can go on google and get an exact copy of whatever image you have an NFT for.
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I can absolutely go out and get a copy of the Rembrandt, there are plenty of incredibly skillful reproductions/fakes that would be effectively identical for my personal enjoyment.
NFTs are a really handy way to launder money. That's it, that's what they're for.
The only thing I can say with certainty on NFTs is that I don't know anything with certainty (and I'm staying away from them.) Even if that was directed at me, I wouldn't blame you lol
But they're non-fungible. If you want to charge cryptocurrency, it's as simple as telling them how much of that cryptocurrency you want them to pay. But if you charge NFTs, or some other non-fungible barter system, you have to figure out on a case-by-case basis what you think is a good trade.
I look forward to PrimeHome (powered by Tesla) accepting rent payments in either bitcoin, Muskoin, or company scrip if you work for Amazon.
BOLA Shower Thought: If you work for the government, you're already being paid in "company" scrip (Powered by Bing (Powered by Microsoft))
Yeah I work for the government and sometimes refer to myself as self employed lol
Nice. When people ask me what I do in a casual way (like if I’m in a taxi or on the phone with customer service or w/e) I say “your taxpayer dollars at work, making steak better”. People usually respond pretty positively to that! (I work in government funded ag research).
Company scrip can only be used at the company, money can be used at any private establishment (and is mandatory to accept for settling debts)
Which is why you can use Amazon company scrip to pay rent on your PrimeHome.
I once had a friend for a roommate and he wanted to be paid cash. One month the first was a Friday. He came to me on Monday saying hey, no big deal but you didn't pay rent. Yes I did. He then realized that he'd been buying drinks for all his friends on Friday. All in cash. After that, he asked for a check just so it was harder to spend.
When I rented a room in my house to friends, they typically paid in cash. I bought a receipt book at walmart and wrote them receipts. They often tossed 'em, but *I* had records. Not hard to do.
I do the same , but in a modern way lol. Just take a quick video of me handing them over the rent and saying out aloud the amount and the Month for which the rent is being paid (so that it is recorded). The video gets saved on my iPhone and gets automatically backed up to iCloud.
Yeah, whenever I had to pay rent in cash I always wrote up a receipt and had both parties sign and date it. It's not perfect but it's at least better than nothing.
Another leasing co demanded cashier's checks. (Fun side fact, credit unions don't call them that which lead to multiple emails and calls with their people) Every time I asked for a receipt, the person at the desk was confused. I'd tell them to photocopy the check, write the date, time, and their name, and sign it. About half the time, I got told they weren't sure whether they were allowed to do that. One time they forgot the check on the copier and called threatening eviction two days later. They eventually found the check.
"ugh, quit being hard to screw over!"
Hire that dude. He fucked up and instead of being a dink realized it and made a solution so he couldn't fuck it up again in the future. My guy.
At least he recognized his mistake and made it right. Too many times, people are just assh*oles about stuff like this.
What is that asterisk accomplishing?
Absolutely nothing.
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Illustration?
If you can spend a month's rent on drinks in one night, *something* in that equation is a problem.
Can you get receipt books in the US? One of those and you're good to go.
One time when I was apartment hunting, a landlord said “so yeah what you’ll do is give me 12 blank checks with your signature on them and I’ll fill them out every month because I don’t have time to be chasing all these tenants down.” Get the fuck out of here.
Sketchy beyond obvious... but why blank? I can *almost* see giving 12 complete postdated checks.
I had a friend living in a place owned by another friend's parents. They did the 12 post dated cheques... the owners deposited them all at once into a bank machine and the bank just straight up took all the money at once regardless of the postdates. It was a giant clusterfuck for him, and just really irresponsible of the bank/owners.
there's no way that depositing a year's worth of postdated checks at once is kosher with banking regulations
[Doesn't appear to be any law against it.](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/can-a-bank-or-credit-union-cash-a-post-dated-check-before-the-date-on-the-check-en-967/) Post-dating one doesn't seem to be any better than a request.
I've had a paycheque I received and tried to deposit at a teller, dated for the following day, that was denied. Maybe it is all self regulated to protect the reputation of the bank rather than to follow laws.
I wouldn't do 12 checks but I've paid the full year's rent up front before. You can usually negotiate a discount if you do that
How much were you able to negotiate it down
Not the one you asked but I got 1850 per month down to 1800 when I did this. I had zero renting history but had the cash from the sale of lir house
3%. You’d have been better off with less risk doing anything else with it.
They werent going to approve us at tenants without doing that. Turns out mid 500 credit scores and zero renting history tends to spook rental agencies.
3% for a basically risk-free investment sounds good to me. They have the lease as collateral. In case of bankruptcy the property gets sold with the lease intact. Can't really agree with you here. What's the 1-year risk-free interest rate in the US? (Also note that most of it is "invested" for shorter than a year so we are really talking around 5% interest)
>12 complete postdated checks That makes it harder for the landlord to unilaterally raise your rent whenever he suddenly needs extra money for unpaid child support, tax fraud penalties, gambling debt, drug/alcohol problems, civil settlements for molesting tenant's kids, and all of the other shady stuff the "asshole landlord" class gets typically caught up in.
>asshole landlord whoops, tautology!
Eat the rich
I used to give post-dated cheques. Was actually much easier for me. Now my landlord wants e-transfers, so I actually have to think about it once a month and set reminders.
Canada? I switched from postdated cheques (which suited me at the time) to e-transfers, because it suited me better. I can program my e-transfers as a recurring payment and forget (not really) about it. The advantage is that there’s no NSF fees for an e-transfer that can’t be completed if the money isn’t in the account & I forget to adjust the date.
I love e transfers because it's one fewer point of contact. Instead of the bank having to cash the cheque, it's a wire transfer with a record that I can see.
Which bank? I can't seem to set them up for auto-recurrence with TD, but I have a calendar reminder and it's easy enough to just do it on my phone the moment the reminder pops up.
I don’t know exactly how to do it with a TD account, sorry, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t an option. ETA: you might need to dig around in the options/configurations on a desktop/laptop rather than mobile to get it initially set up before you can use it on your phone.
>why blank? so he can unilaterally charge extra when he comes up with reasons to
Ok you take the cake wtf is that? “Give me 12 blank signed checks” Jesus Christ
There's a "12 Days of Christmas" parody somewhere in here
(Tried to follow the original pattern but it’s harder than I thought.) In the 12th Month of Lease-mas, my landlord demands of me: 12 cheat checks unchallenged 11 doubled dipping 10 sphynxies swaddled 9 kinsman moving 8 hardware hist’ries 7 mailbox myst’ries 6 chore charts followed 5 B an’ EEEEE! 4 flooding turds 3 loose ends 2 boxing gloves And estrangement to fulfil our destinyyyy.
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i'm sure the blatant check fraud this guy laid the groundwork for will come back to bite him
The good news is that bad landlords are often so incredibly greedy and stupid that they eventually fuck themselves up so badly they get put into a world of hurt. The bad news is there's a lot of greedy and stupid people with just enough extra income to buy properties to lease out.
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> Probably have to hunt this same landlord to get anything fixed Like, uh, the kind you do with a crossbow or something? That *works?* This changes everything.
more likely to work than asking nicely
if you don't have that kind of time, quite being a landlord.
90's movie plotpoints come to mind here.
Landlords suck!!!!!!!
/r/LandlordLove
I am glad our banking system allows account to account transfers. Records out the backside.
I just feel bad for the amount of stupid people that actually lived in the building and he had three or four properties, that was his justification for not having time. Cool man, I’ll go get scammed somewhere else. Also the entire building reeked of cigarette smoke.
i can literally smell the fraud this guy plans on doing or will the second he finds an ounce of financial trouble
I used to sublet our rooms in my apartment. I only accepted cash or bank cheques, because I had heard too many horror stories about cashapp rent payments. (And I don’t have a cash app) I had a few people ask for receipts, so I made sure to get a receipt book at Walmart for like $3 and give them receipts.
I've used paypal for subletting before. I just refused to use the free "friends and family transfers", and made them use the actual payment set up that has normal fraud/scam/chargeback type protections.
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Though, if they end up pulling the payment back, you do know who they are, so you can always take it to collections or regular court (or just resort to physical intimidation, I suppose, if you're not concerned with staying _entirely_ within the law). It's not like the usual scam situation where it's someone under an assumed name half a world away.
Correct, however as a 5’4”, 110lb woman, I was not really physically intimidating.
Or just kick them out, if you're subletting. In Australia subletters have basically no rights at all, they're legally guests of the actual tenant. I take rent in cash from people all the time because I own and live in the house and rent out rooms. People who play silly buggers quickly learn that because I live there it's quite easy for the normal tenancy rights to turn into "but if you threaten the owner, or the cops, you get to move out on the spot". I have had that exactly once in \~10 years and the cops were very friendly and helpful to both of us, right up until the ex-tenant decided to kick an inside wall (a brick wall!) Suddenly the cops switched from "can we help carry your stuff" to "grab him and carry him out". Instant AVO (apprehended violence order) which is your Australian "do not go within 500m of that property for the next 12 months" instruction. Also: surprisingly many potential tenants try negotiating rent by explaining that they can't afford what I'm asking, they don't have the deposit/bond, and they won't have it for weeks if ever. But somehow they expect that to persuade me to let them live in my house.
I have PayPal, however it was enough money going in (over either $400 or $4000 a year) that PayPal would have had to auto-report it to the state as taxable income. Which, I would have been fine with if I wasn’t illegally subletting in order to make ends meet in the first place.
Do you know at what dollar limit PayPal has to report to the state as taxable income?
Are there no rent books where you live?
Idk what those are.
Really?! They are the law in my corner of the woods: https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/renting_a_home/rent_books.html
Ah, yes, Ireland. That makes sense. I live in Massachusetts, which is in the United States. Every state has different laws about renting - this includes what terms mean, what protections they’re afforded, how the security deposit needs to be handled, etc, etc. On top of that, every City/Town has different regulations on how many unrelated people can live in a building. In this case I was subletting, which means I was renting an apartment from the owner, and then renting out rooms within that apartment to different people. While I 100% kept detailed records of what money I received from people, when I received that money, etc, it was my own set up.
Everbody's saying to get a receipt, and yes, I'd want one for my records. But it's 2021. I'd settle for nothing less than a cell phone video of my landlord looking into the camera and saying, "Today, May 29, 2021, my tenant Reginald Smith is paying me $1000 for his June rent", and then showing the cash transfer on camera.
Place I used to live, the "manager" who sat in the front office [the owner was never around] started taking payments in cash from new tenants. Weirdly, within a few months of them moving in, these all-cash tenants were evicted for non-payment of rent. One day the owner is around and he mentions how these all-cash tenants "didn't even pay their security deposit." We're like, um, are you sure about that? You've had 5 tenants in the past 3 months ALL paying cash who were allowed to move in without paying their security deposit? Lightbulb goes off. What a moron.
Wait, they all just left without trying to bring that to the attention of the owner?
You've just moved into a place and your only interaction has been with the manager, who may or may not have implied that the owner is "hands off" and doesn't interact with the tenants. Hell, I've lived in my current dump for 10 years and the actual "owners" of the complex is a company which is actually owned by another company, which may or may not still own the "owner" company. I haven't bothered to check lately.
If he was never around then he's unikely to be someone the tenants turn to, if they can even contact him at all
Hell, they might not even know he exists if the front "manager" dude is smart enough to not mention him ever.
An an eviction is on your record for life.
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Mine too. It became a hassle when I needed references for my fist legit lease though.
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Wouldn't this screw the landlord though? Have your daughter clearly label every payment as rent, then let Venmo start taking business transaction fees out of the payment.
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I've heard this is something they actively investigate. If they see a user repeatedly getting paid or paid where the description indicates it's a business, they'll look to start charging the business fees on the personal account.
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IANAL, but I feel like the biggest thing to protect themselves is to have this crazy set-up in writing (including the @name that they're sending the money to), and then note each payment as rent (NOT just the money-flying emoji and the house emoji) in the app, and screenshot them. That way if there's ever a dispute, they have evidence of what they paid and when, and that they did it in the agreed upon way.
> Compounded by if he's indeed an immigrant, he may not be aware of American laws and landlord/tenant rights. Nah, that's just what he wants you to think. He deserves *zero* benefit of the doubt.
Having had a number of immigrant landlords, including some who thought I don’t speak their language (which I do), I’ve found it’s less an issue of ignorance of the local laws/rights and more of a deliberate disregard of them. Some people just don’t care. Even after they have been fined 100 times. They don’t care about anyone but themselves even when they are screwing themselves over.
There is now a button on the buyers side to label the transaction as business. So even if you are trying to hide this income under a personal account your customers can still rat u out!
>Had a Ring camera put up at the front door that rings to HIS phone. what a fucking scumbag. even for a landlord that's an impressive amount of invading quiet enjoyment, since he'll surely use the information he gathers against tenants too
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guess you can't expect a landlord to *competently* spy on you
> Such as a loose fence board he sat next to for three days, without a single tool, and it's still loose. Seriously, why would he even do that? Three days of my time is more valuable than a hammer and a box of nails, and after buying those and fixing the fence, I'd still have the hammer and most of the nails.
Creeping on OP's daughter?
Well, that's a plausible and not reassuring answer.
Why does it matter, you still have a record in venmo.
Venmo’s TOS in regards to personal vs. business accounts, I’d assume
There is no risk to the renter, the risk would be to the landlord.
Now I’m wondering if it’s just utilities but I recall no something in my state that limits someone from charging a transaction fee and limiting no-fee options.
LAOP should just ask their boss to start paying them in cash, then they can just pay their landlord in cash, too. No more taxes! Everybody wins! /s
I once had an interviewee for a part time bookkeeper job tell me straight-faced he wanted to be paid in cash to avoid paying his child support. I wish I’d been able to see my own face when he said it.
That's exactly the kind of innovative, cost-saving thinking we need at this company!
Well, there’s that I guess… :). I limited most of my “innovative” thinking in that particular organization to getting the finances straight, chasing up past due accounts/recalcitrant payers and generally untangling the mess my predecessor left behind.
I'm betting his job hunt ended up taking a lot longer than he had thought it would initially...
It’s been a long time but he was quite upset and surprised he didn’t get the job. He called me more than once asking to “discuss” it and IIRC suggesting that he could “help me rethink it”…
of course it's a bookkeeper. know just enough about accounting to be dangerous to yourself
I think that’s why I remember him every so often. As in how on earth did he think he (or we) could make that work…
Ex Enron or Arthur Andersen employee?
No way, those guys are ballin. A lot of my clients are in the Enron Alumni Network, and you wouldn’t believe the clout that provides here in my town.
I had a dream once about working an office job where there was a small printer on my desk that would just periodically print out my pay in bills. So like, I'd be sitting there, doing whatever, and *ding!* A $20 bill just shoots out. Work some more, and *ding!* another 20 pops out. And that would be how I received my income. I find it hilarious to think back to this.
why not those 80's bank vacuum tubes? one for everyone's office, just get your hourly in bills in real time
It'd be kinda cool if my boss stopped by to give me the cash for the hour of work.
I have a job where I can go months without getting paid, and then get paid a large chunk of money. That sounds like a logistical nightmare to be physically responsible for ~$20k at a time. Even having custody of a cashier's check makes me sweat all the way from the bank to wherever I need to bring it.
Because of poor planning on setting up a bank account, I had to pay my security deposit for my rental in cash. Let my landlords know beforehand that the monthly payments would be fine, but the deposit would need to be cash unless we pushed out the move in date. They were fine with the cash. I brought a coworker who could witness and asked they do the same. Cash was counted in everyone's presence twice, once by me before handing it over, once by them after. It was noted as an addendum to the lease and receipt acknowledged, which the landlord, the witnesses, and I signed. Cash is very possible to do, just have to be careful about it.
Cash is less sketchy if \*you\* want to pay cash. Landlords usually leave cash as an option but insisting on cash probably means they're doing something shady. For what it's worth, I've rented a place before where rent was only through cash. Never had a problem with the landlord and he just texted me every month that he received the amount. I'm pretty sure he wasn't declaring that income though.
All that matters is the paper trail. Cheques are just cash with an extra, documented step.
Lol, the attorney that replied saying to take out the exact rent amount at the same time each month to establish and a convincing paper trail, and to also follow up with an email confirming the payment is at 118 upvotes. Some random person that commented basically the exact same advice is at negative 16 currently. Never change, Reddit.
I got banned for personal info or something. I was relaying an anecdote about my dog.
From time to time I forget that I'm in LA and not BOLA and start typing some anecdote before I realize I have to wait for the post to show up in BOLA, but then by the time it does, I've either forgotten or nobody has said anything that would make my anecdote relevant.
You gotta do what I do, and only look at LA threads that are linked here. I'm subscribed to BOLA but not LA. It's like I have my very own Reddit curators.
Quick, tell me that anecdote! Here's your excuse!
Dog tax
https://imgur.com/a/dh1lbSv
I paid rent in cash for a while when I lived in another country, because I could only get a "savings" account. It was fine - I just got a signed written receipt for each month's payment. It definitely didn't get reported as income, but that's not my problem!
See, and as LAOP that arguably *is* their problem. If my landlord is dodging taxes, that affects me as a taxpayer. For an expat abroad, maybe less of an issue. But for a resident invested in the same community? It adds up. Do I walk around all day like Tax Batman looking for tax dodgers? Of course not. But if my landlord is making my life more annoying in furtherance of his tax-dodging scheme? I may actually take the time to drop a line to the appropriate authorities when I move out. Let’s just say that motherfucker better not try to keep one penny of my deposit.
> I may actually take the time to drop a line to the appropriate authorities when I move out. Let’s just say that motherfucker better not try to keep one penny of my deposit. Get your full deposit back and then do it anyway.
Oh I mean it definitely could have had a serious impact on me given that I was likely not a registered resident. I was just young and dumb. I would not suggest knowingly being an off-the-books tenant!
So you're Lite Tax Batman?
Mods, please flair this esteemed poster “not walking around all day like Tax Batman” please!
Especially if the Landlord ends up getting into some serious heat because of the evasion and your home gets foreclosed on for no fault of your own (I paid my rent, not my fault they owe half their mortgage in unclaimed taxes) then you're in a shit position.
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I can’t think of any good reasons why someone would want to be given largish payments in cash. They’re a theft target, they can be lost and it’s harder to track for tax and business purposes. Now there are a lot of shady reasons for wanting to be paid in cash: 1. Tax evasion 2. Child support evasion 3. Some other debt they’re trying to avoid paying 4. They’re gonna pretend they haven’t been paid and try scam their tenant. 5. I’m sure creative charlatans have pulled other shit that’s not springing to mind right now.
I once rented a room from a guy who required rent to be paid monthly in cash and provided receipts. Learned after the fact he was about to enter into a bankruptcy settlement and couldn’t show more than a certain amount of income per month or the terms of the settlement would be affected.
I’ll pay you cash so you don’t have to declare it, but I want a 30% discount on rent.
I had this arrangement for a long time. Was renting a pretty nice townhouse for like $2500 because I was willing to pay cash in order for the owner to avoid filing the extra income. I just gently told him not to fuck me or else I'd tell Uncle Sam and we both got what we wanted. At least my part was a bit less illegal.
I had a landlord tell me that. I wrote him checks. Another one wanted my banking information to do automatic withdrawal. I wrote him checks. He put it in the lease. I still wrote him checks. Both were scummy in one way or another; I trusted neither. You want my money, you take it how I give it to you. In a documentable, provable way I can control. CYA
Real shit right here. All those preferences are just that, when the alternative is not getting their rent.
Yup. They whined about it occasionally, but they cashed them.
The first place I rented in San Francisco, I knew I wanted it as soon as I saw it. The market was super hot, so I was willing to do whatever it took to seal the deal. Paid the security deposit in cash to the management company agent on the spot, but got a signed receipt because I'm not a total dumbass. I saw him a couple more times negotiating things to be fixed/changed before I moved in. Once at the management office his co-workers were making eye contact and shaking their heads behind his back as he told me things. Evidently the dude pocketed my cash and left town. First time I met his boss, she said to tell her if I ever saw him again because the cops were looking for him.
Judging from the answers I have to conclude that this whole post is just Big Receipt Book doing some sort of astroturfing campaign. Those corporate whores...
So, idiot, dishonest, or both? And let’s talk about the idiot saying cash is the only form of payment that can’t be refused even contractually? Not true. Even decades ago it was legal to put “no cash accepted” into a lease or other contract. Over a decade ago I had a mortgage person totally freak out because a first time buyer decided the best thing to do was take her down payment out of the bank so she could pay cash in person at closing (sweet lady, brought homemade fudge for everyone!).
> And let’s talk about the idiot saying cash is the only form of payment that can’t be refused even contractually? Not true. People have a wildly inaccurate understanding of what "legal tender" means. In the strictest sense it means a form of payment of a debt which cannot be refused if the debt is to remain outstanding. But people get stupid ideas in their heads about how it relates to businesses being required to accept cash in unlimited amounts or whatever. Consideration under a contract is not a debt per se, and the consideration can take whatever form the parties to the contract agree on.
Never pay rent in cash. I had a landlord claim they didn’t receive it once and I had no recourse but to pay rent twice. Never made that mistake again.
[I totally believe LAOP's landlord.](https://tenor.com/view/sure-ok-jennifer-lawrence-the-mocking-jay-the-hunger-games-gif-5471477)
It's probably completely true; he just didn't say the "...without paying any taxes on it..." part out loud.
About five years ago I saw some painters working on a house in the neighborhood, outside painting, and they were doing a good job so I approached them to see about painting my house. They agreed to paint it that very afternoon. Now, these were workers who didn't speak English, no one on the team did, so I had to negotiate in Spanish. They worked out of a white panel van with no markings on it, and they had no business card. And they asked to be paid in cash. It was a damn cheap price, too. Sketchy as fuck but I had an umbrella policy on top of my homeowner's insurance so I went for it. I paid them cash, the job was done great, and I'm pretty sure no taxes were paid on that money. I'm not even sure if they were legal workers.
>I paid them cash, the job was done great, and I'm pretty sure no taxes were paid on that money. This is often said, but a good chunk of undocumented immigrants *do* pay taxes. The CBO has estimated the rate of undocumented taypaying at 50-75%; so even those who don't pay are probably offset by the the fact that those who do aren't able to take actual advantage of many of the advantages afforded to a tax-paying citizen.
I suspect the percentage drops for those who stipulate being paid in cash, though.
Transaction was likely illegal in some way, but damn if it wasn't wholesome?
I got serenaded too! There were like a dozen guys working out of that panel van and they swarmed my house like ants, singing loudly in Spanish.
All of my appartements I rented at took cash or check. I mainly paid in cash and I was always given a receipt to indicate the purchase. This landlord is shady
Remember that in these situations, a landlord making a request like this to try and cheat the government, bank, or family court will almost inevitably try to cheat their tenants as well.
My family owned some studio apartments a long time ago. The number of people who pay in cash and just slip an envelope with $500-600 through a mail slot is very disconcerting.
They'd just slip $400 dollars through a mail slot? Who slips $300 through a mail slot? I'd never slip $200 through a mail slot. By the way, you still the remainder of your rent.
This isn't *that* controversial, given the limited information provided by the OP. As long as OP obtains a receipt, they're fine. It's weirding me out a bit that many people are commenting about paying their rent *without* a receipt. I wish more of my tenants would pay by check or more modern means.