A proposed Senate bill would allow military families to break their off base leases if military housing becomes available, this story reports.
Sounds great, right? Maybe not.
When we PCSed to Fort Campbell, Ky. last year we were place 91 on the list of people waiting for on base housing. Since that didn’t make our odds very good of getting a place on post before our 10 days of military funded hotel use was up, we found a home in the community and signed a lease.
Six months later we got a phone call offering us [semi yucky but still livable] “surplus” housing, including one more bedroom than we are technically allotted. I wasn’t loving our chosen off base neighborhood, and I would’ve loved to say “yes, thank you, we’ll move in tomorrow.” Problem? We had a lease off base … and the penalties for breaking it would have been forfeiture of our deposit or, if the owners took us to court, the remaining six month’s rent.
Needless to say, we stayed put.
This bill, however, would make it possible for renters to jump ship on their lease when on base housing comes up. And you better believe military families would take advantage of it. Six months in a neighborhood is enough to realize that you hate it and that your on base friends have it good — really good.
The problem, my friend Rick Maze points out in his story, is that this will completely screw over landlords. If I were the owners of our current home, who are also military members, I would be very hesitant to rent this house to another military family knowing that they could leave me in a no-renter-lurch at any time.
And if I did decide to rent to a military family regardless of the risk, and they bailed for on based housing … I then would be stuck paying for two homes until I could find another renter. If I lived somewhere other than the base where the home is located, I may have to make unplanned trip to take care of my house. And if I was deployed and my spouse and family were at home dealing with all of Murphy’s cruel jokes at one time, I would feel really, really stressed out and not nearly as focused on the mission as I should be.
See where I’m going with this?
While this measure sounds like a fantastic idea for renters, it sounds like a terrible idea for landlords, many of whom are servicemembers themselves.
Thoughts?
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We currently own a house and are renting it out (while living OCONUS), so my mind started jumping ahead to all the possibilities you mentioned while I read this post: stuck paying two rents, having to find new—possible non-military— renters in a very military-based town, and dealing with that house while you're in another state/country/deployed. I would hope that if this does go through (honestly, I'm commenting before reading the link), there would be some more stipulations before tenants could just hand the keys back.
I also wonder what that would do to the current waiting lists on many military posts. In your situation, when you guys were offered the on-base house, you turned it down, which means that it was offered to the person in line behind you. In some areas, you may have as many as half of all the people on the waiting list who opt NOT to move on-base because of an off-base lease.
But this speaks to a MUCH bigger problem: the availability of housing on-post and the Draconian restrictions and rules about the waiting list. For example, if you know that your lease expires at a certain time, why can you not go on the waiting list with the stipulation that you will NOT be allowed to move until that certain month? Why can you not be "officially" put into the waiting queue until you've arrived at your duty station? Is there a better way to handle the waiting list issue that might reduce or eliminate this problem?
wow, this is going a bit far… Lets support our troop by all means, but lets not forget who doing the supporting….. seems that soon we will see houses for rent ( military need not to apply signs )… going way to far into this. Also, will this go for on post housing ???? have a friend who want to move off base, and has to give a 60 day notice or they loose there housing allowence for 2 months ??? what a way to trap the soldier on post …uh.
If they have orders they are not going to take away two months BAH. Most on post housing will require a 6 month least, now if they have lived there for 2 months and want to move, then yes, by all means they should pay up to the 6th month mark. Especially if it is a post with long wait lists. Some places have more desirable housing on post then off.
I once worked in the military family housing office at San Diego, CA. We did place people on the housing list prior to their arrival if they sent in their application ahead of time. To be fair, we use the reporting date to their command as the date that they will be in line for housing like everyone else. The list is being track down via the computer database and we assign housing base on the applicant’s number on the housing list in a specific location where they initially picked. Back then it was really tough to get into the military housing because of limited housing availability due to the amount of BAH was well below the average rent in the area and most military personnel would rather live in military housing than shelling out extra money out of their pocket. to live off base. Now that BAH has increased tremendously, the list is a lot shorter and the chance of getting assign to a military family housing sooner is much better.
Folks, people have been dealing with this issue for decades and it was never a major problem. Why? because you had them put in the lease that if military housing opened up or if you had to PCS you were allowed to break the lease without penalty.
It's all about thinking and doing the paperwork ahead of time folks. You don't need another law written because you're not thinking ahead for yourself.
I think this is good because, at my base, we've seen a push to get more people living on-base to include personnel who are single and wouldn't usually get or expect base housing, but who fill important positions.
I don't know if it is uniformly hard on landlords. It's definitely harder if you're the landlord who takes care of business all by yourself. Myself, I'm using a real estate managment firm because, not only does it alleviate a lot of the day-to-day work that would be difficult with me living outside the local area, but then there's a professional agency looking to make sure they've got the house rented out to a good tenant, otherwise they don't make money.
Then, as JJMurray points out, there has always been the risk of tenants breaking the lease due to PCS orders. This wouldn't be very different. It would be like getting a new tenant who was just ousted from their last rental by their old landlord, spends a little time in the current rental, then gets orders.
It's actually very different than a PCS. "Most" people don't PCS within the a year of signing a lease. The turnover of renters could increase exponentially over a couple of years time. Even with a property manager, there will be more wear and tear on your property and more opportunity for lapses in rental income.
I understand that you're usually going to be around longer for a PCS, but it doesn't always happen. One time, dad was stationed at one base but we never spent more than a year in any one house. Landlords were always wanting to move back into their properties. The result was that we were in our last house for less than a year when PCS orders dropped. The big thing is that a landlord likely won't know if the applicant standing in front of them is one of those few.
Plus, there's still the question of just exactly how many people would be getting this opportunity or want it. Just because people have the ability to get out of the lease to move on base doesn't mean housing will open up for them or that they'd want to BE in on-base housing once they've lived off-base.
So I don't think it will "completely screw over landlords", because, with as many people I've seen sit on waiting lists their entire tour or arrive with no intention of living on-base, I don't know if the numbers will be that high.
I do think that it would only be fair for landlords to be able to ask "are you applying for on-base housing" and use that as part of their application process just the same as I've had them ask "how long will you be stationed here".
If I had been in this situation while on active duty, I think that I would approach the landlord and ask if I could find a highly qualified tenant to replace me immediately, with no need for advertising, or a couple of months of down time. If I am a great tenant, and I find a great new tenant, perhaps they will accomodate the proposal.
in California we had a military clause in our lease that specifically stated if we got housing on post we could break the lease. That was the only reason we agreed to live there. And luckily in Alaska we were able to get out of our lease after six months to move on post because my husband was deployed. I would agree with a bill making it something across the board for military families.
I agree, I did 22 years active duty in California, Florida, and overseas. Every lease i ever signed for off base housing had a "military clause", that let you out of your lease without penalty in the case of PCS orders or assignment of military housing. All you had to do was show your landlord a copy of the PCS orders or a memo from the housing office showing you had been assigned military housing. I never had a single issue with that in my experience.
You just have to think ahead and make sure that clause is in your lease.
As an Army spouse and a landlord I have to say I'm freaking out a little bit. We own 2 houses that we purchased prior to the housing bubble catastrophe that we are forced to rent out as we have PCS'd to another state. Our mortgage/taxes/insurance which were covered by our BAH when we occupied the homes aren't covered by the rent we can charge (based on fair market rental prices), so we take a loss every month. We can't sell without taking a big hit because property values have not recovered fully to prior to the housing crash. Add to this the potential of losing a month or two of rent more than once every 12 months, and this causes potential crippling financial problems for us and probably other landlords. (We do have a military clause in our lease agreements for those who receive PCS orders).
OUR LEASE IS FOR A YEAR, IF A MILITARY FAMILY RENTS OUR PROPERTY THERE IS A MILITARY ADDEDUM WITH THAT LEASE.
Landlords should stop being fail at life and not buy homes if they can not make payments without renting.
A landlords finance issues are not my problem , that simple. Not a big fan of living on post and I have not had too for the last 2 years , last experience of onpost housing was abysmal . Now I can make rent , pay the water , electric , heat and internet bill with BAH . I do not have to pay some parasite company 15 dollars a month for a fence , I do not have to get rid of a furry family member cause 3 pets are too many.
I do not have to mow any part of my lawn, I have no senior member's jacktard spouses too deal with .
I do not have to "police the hood" whilst same jacktard spouses and their senior military members are nowhere to be found. I can in fact shoot someone who acts menacing or is on my property without a legal hassle. Looking at you here PTSD zoloft zombie tards. Hope I never have too live in crappy enlisted or officer housing ever again , fingers crossed and short time to go.