Rental Lamentations
If I were to get a penny for every emotions that I have gone through with being a property owner and having renters, I would be a very very rich man. I know that I am not the only one in this, and there are many in my shoes, but no one feels my pains –
I know this will probably come off as being elitist, but who gives a crap.
1. Why the “bleep” do renters always believe that they should not have to pay their rent…huh?
2. Why the “bleep” do renters always break yo “bleep” and then come up with excuses why they shouldn’t have to replace it?
3. Why the “bleep” do renters…
I know this is not indicative of all renters, but a good one is the rarest of diamonds…hard to find.
I have had 4 sets of renters in my property over the last 9 years and only one (Michael Maxwell) held up his end of the bargain – in fact he went well beyond normal tenancy; so good was he in fact, he gave me back the property in better shape than I gave it to him.
Since then, I rented to this woman, her daughter and husband/boyfriend from “West Virginia”; I think they were lying about WV, but anyway, they totally trashed my house from top to bottom – ripped off the garage door, dogs crapped all over the carpet (it stunk like hell you wouldn’t believe how bad…it literally smelled as if someone had died in the house for weeks and man-juice was soaked in the carpet all over the house – I had to replace sheetrock and repaint the entire house); they broke my pool filtration system – thus the pool was infested with mosquitoes for weeks. Thye did so much more, I could go on for a while on this – eventually, we got the city to evict them – yep! an actual friggin’ eviction.
After this terrible mindbending experience – it took me 5 months in 2007 and close to $40,000 to repair my house – yessir…I had a public nuisance made out of my property by these people in a very nice neighborhood; understandably, my neighbors were not very happy with me – in fact I wasn’t happy with myself either. At the end of the day however, it was/is a pretty bad market, and although I even toyed with the idea of letting go of this property, it really has a soft spot in my heart (beware of your emotions!!!).
Ok…so I kicked those “bleepers” out, fixed up the house and decided that I would be more stringent on my requirements for living there, bearing in mind that we are/were in a down market with a bunch of homes being foreclosed, and that I had 2 others under my belt to keep afloat as well.
First, I hired a local company headed by a man (don’t remember his name right now) to manage the property for us – I had just gotten assigned to the USS Carl Vinson from CENTCOM, Tampa, so I had to make a quick decision again – keeping the property locked up that I had just spent a small fortune repairing or risk getting another set of tenants and hope for the best.
Well, as Mr Murphy would have it, I had to fire the dude after the first day he had tenants in there – we gave him explicit instructions “absolutely no pets allowed” – dude rented to a gay couple (nothing against gay couples here) with two huge dogs. I was so pissed when I found out about it from my next door neighbor who left a message on my cellphone about it. I called up dude about 2:00am and yep…I went ethnic on his a#$.
Next, we got Buck and Buck, a well known realtor in Jacksonville for years. By this time the sensitivity level was well off the chart. We got off to a rough start to put it mildly when they told us that they could not give us the relationships of the people in the house. We rented to them for roughly a year and a half. They eventually broke the lease and ran off with a part of the last month’s rent, as well as, owing hundreds to several local services such as cable, utilities, and the tax man.
As far as the condition of the house was – well, it could have been worse. They installed two satellite dishes on my roof, potentially ruining my roof that cost me over $7000 two years ago, they trashed my master bedroom carpet, and poked a bunch of holes (big ones) all over my house.
This time around, it worked out that I am transferring overseas for a year at the same time this happened, so I moved my family back into the house. We have a year to weather this market and see what the future holds for this property. I would really like to keep it, but if I do, it will require a totally new approach. Who knows…I might just end up locking it up and getting my neighbor to keep an eye on it for me.
So – I know all renters aren’t bad, but my experiences that most aren’t, so my ears will be forever perked if I do decide to continue this route.
