Tenant Woes!

References to language ahead and some serious venting going on. Precede with caution!

When Jon and I purchased those four townhouses last month we knew we might have tenant problems. But I'd been a property manager before and knew what I might be getting into.

Three of the four units were already rented and we'd heard horror stories about the management company that was handling them. One of the renters was long term and had been there long before this management company had taken over. But we weren't sure about the other two tenants. 

I knew as soon as I knocked on the door of "apartment A" that there was a problem.

"What the F* do you want" a male voice yelled through the door.

He opened the door with a baby in his arms and a cell phone attached to his ear. 

He angrily snatched the paperwork from my hands and slammed the door in my face.

Problem #1 - A woman with 1 child had signed the lease agreement less than a year ago. Who was the man and baby?

A week later we return to begin laying floor in the vacant townhouse. Tenant A is needy and whiny. There are things wrong with her house. She has ants. Want, want, want! I make sure she's seen the letter that I gave to her boyfriend. She has. She also tells me I'm crazy for not wanting as many kids as I can have. She now has three. And apparently has plans for more.

How do you tell a tenant that if they'd clean up their house, they might not have bugs in their kitchen?!

Problem #2 - She waits until a day after the cut off to hand my husband her rent money while he happens to be down there working on another unit. He tells her that he normally doesn't handle rent money, but he'll make sure I get it. He reminds her that the rent is late and writes her a receipt with the date on it.

So I sent her a past due notice with her late fee.

I'm in the hospital waiting on my friend to have surgery when I receive a very irate phone call from her. She's furious! The other rental company let her pay whenever she wanted to pay. She tried to get me to believe that my husband had been there two days earlier so her rent wasn't late. I told her to look at the receipt he had given her. Lots of cussing and yelling later she informs me -

"I'll never F* pay you any late fees!"

and hangs up on me.

One week later - Problem #3.

I get another angry phone call. She has found out that she has to mow her lawn. The other rental agency had put in the lease that it was the tenants responsibility to take care of their lawn. But if a unit was vacant they had been coming by and mowing everything. Since they didn't screen any of the applicants the turn over rate was high. So the entire time she'd lived there, someone had mowed the lawn once a month. She refused to mow her lawn.

She was so mouthy and angry that I eventually put the phone on speaker so Jon could laugh with me. She had gone beyond mad to plain out senseless. Once I was finally able to get a word in I informed her of what her lease said and told her I would mail her a copy.

I made sure to highlight the sections about lawn care and late payment fees just in case.

Problem #4

I receive a call today. Her voice is slightly defensive as she tells me she has a maintenance emergency. Turns out someone in the house has put something into the tub and it's not draining. She demands that we come down immediately and unclog it.

I told her I'd call the maintenance man and get back to her. Sigh! Her lease states that tenants are responsible for any problems relating to use of the home or any problems that are from normal wear and tear on the unit. Because of a previous leak we hired a plumber to come check everything out last month before we purchased the place. The drains didn't leak and weren't clogged one month ago.

Not a pleasant call to return. She used words I'd never heard before and I thought I'd heard them all. 

I'm remembering a teacher friend of mine who asked a question a while back.

"Do the parents not think things through when they yell and cuss out the teacher who will be teaching their child all day tomorrow?"

I'm very glad that her lease ends in June. Crazy lady needs to go.

It gets crazier!!!

Just when I think my life can't get any more crazy, I add something else.

Jon and I have been talking for several years about getting back into the rental business. I had managed some properties in NC and really enjoyed it. I didn't own the homes, but the property manger job was fun for me.

So last year we started looking for some rentals homes here in Cookeville. Unfortunately real estate market here barely dipped when the economy did and the rental market is saturated. We were in Chattanooga one weekend visiting family and I saw a house for sale that I really liked. I LOVE house hunting. So when we got home I looked it up, just because. That led me to looking at potential rentals. I couldn't believe how much cheaper they were in Chattanooga. So we called a realtor and went house hunting. We were even more astonished to find that the rent was twice as much there. 

After several starts and stops we closed on 4 townhouses this month. Three of them have tenants. But one needed some updates before putting back on the market.

So last weekend, after my race, we drove down to give new owner notices to the three tenants. We also wanted to make a punch list for the next weekend.

This weekend the hard work began. We drove down Saturday night and started work. We will probably be going down almost every day this week to get everything finished. 

But the good news - we have tenants in place to move in next week. This puts the pressure on us to get everything completed. But it means that we won't be going without rent money for longer than two weeks.

The blessings and hand of God was in everything. We had initially offered on another couple of places. But the deal fell through. After we walked away we were informed that one of the buildings was structurally unsafe. Had we closed we would have been looking at some very expensive and immediate work. The rent income was also less than half what we are currently  making now. 

Some other blessings -

1. I ran out of applications (who knew that so many people would be interested?!) on Sunday. One of the downsides to having our townhouses so far from home is if you forget something, it's a 2 hour drive home to get it. I put a note about needing to borrow a printer on facebook. Within minutes I had several offers from local people. I was able to get them and have them ready by the time my next appointment showed up at the house.

2. My brother offered to come over and help us lay flooring for a couple of hours. He ended up staying all day. There is no way we could have accomplished so much if he hadn't been so helpful!

3. The couple that will end up renting from us were walk-ins. After my NC experiences, I was shocked to find so many people who didn't bat an eye at the $50 per adult application fee, the amount needed as a deposit, and the lease terms. In NC it was a fight to get people to pay. And I was lucky to get 1/2 the people who made appointments even show up. 

I have been chasing my tail these past few months as we finalized everything and I tried to keep up with everything else that was already planned. But I'm dropping some responsibilities this year, Caitlin will be starting school in August, and rented apartments are easier to manage than vacant ones.

I'm excited about this new chapter in my "work".