One Dollar Allowance

My last post was about the tenant who vacated the house. She was one of the more difficult ones that we had to deal with. Her rent payments kept getting later and later, to the point that she was over a month behind on payment and wasn’t making partial payments. She finally vacated on August 1st.

Honestly, this is not going to be a polished, pretty, professional story. This post is a complaint about people and their inability to be grown ups and take responsibility for themselves, and that’s just this house is going.

TURNOVER WORK

The tenant did a great job cleaning the place and had the carpet professionally cleaned, so that was a big deal in getting through the turnover. Most of the house is carpet that is less than a year old, but we had laid LVP without leveling the floor for the living room area, and that has not worked well. Our lesson learned is that it’s definitely needed to lay leveling if you want your floor to stay in place. We also picked a fairly cheap option, and it seems the ‘locking’ mechanism isn’t the best. On the flip side, it’s extremely satisfying to bang the boards back together and watch the seem disappear. So we had to do that in several areas for that flooring.

Then there were random odds and ends. There was a toilet seat stained purple, a stove burner broken in half (the things that happen amaze me), and two cabinets had food left in them. I mopped down the floors and did minor paint touch ups. The fridge wasn’t working when I got in there. I moved it out from the wall to make sure it was plugged in and then shook it a bit, and it turned back on; that’s probably going to be an issue later. Overall it was a pretty easy turn over.

RENT OR SELL

Honestly, this house seems to attract a less-than-stellar group of interested tenants. I’m not sure why because the location is actually great, and if you rely on the bus, there’s a bus route to all major areas right behind the house. It’s a townhouse, so walking in to a flight of stairs is daunting, but you get a garage and private driveway as part of the gig. I’m just surprised at how hard it has been to find a new tenant here. I was ready to sell.

The issue is that if we sell, then we need to pay capital gains taxes on the profit, unless we 1031 exchange it. But to 1031 exchange it means buying another rental property, and I’m pretty burnt out on managing tenants at the moment, so that wasn’t too enticing either. I decided to see how a few showings turned out and go from there, but we had already broached the topic with our realtor to figure out list price.

TENANT EVALUATIONS

Shortly after having this struggle, I showed the house to about 10 groups in the matter of a few days. No one met the criteria we have laid out, but that’s not surprising. There were two candidates who stuck out. They were equal in how they didn’t qualify, but one was looking to move mid-August and another was looking for mid-September. I went with the mother/daughter/granddaughter group looking to move mid-August.

They had an ESA dog. I don’t mind an ESA dog when it’s actually necessary, but she didn’t have paperwork and it didn’t seem legitimate, but I have no more fight in me. The difference to me is $250. Their credit was barely above 500, and there were a few other red flags about verification of who they are. Again, it’ll probably come back to bite me, but I’m too tired to care at this point. It’s been a long road of managing difficult people.

MOVE IN

They had originally said about August 13, but when it came to signing the lease, they decided on August 19. At the lease signing, they were to bring the security deposit, $1350. They showed up with $1300 in cash and then struggled to set up an electronic payment method to get me the $50. They also expected me to allow them to pay in cash every month for rent, and I was direct in that cash is not sustainable because that makes me have to figure out getting to you to pick up cash. We got the lease signed and agreed to meet on the 19th at 9:30 am.

A couple of days before move in, the daughter of the crew texted me that she has another dog and is worried about coming up with the money for having an animal on the lease. I let her know that I wouldn’t charge her and it’s fine. I was hoping to garner some good will. Again, that $250 means more to them than to me at this point.

On the 19th, at about 9:20 am, the oldest tenant of the crew texted me that they were running late. I said I was already there and whenever they could make it would be fine. Then she texted me that she only had part of the rent. That her daughter’s pay check doesn’t clear until 1 pm. Now, they work with the City in some fashion, and the City had agreed to pay $500 towards their rent for the first month. So I had agreed that they just needed to pay $850 to get the keys because I had verified the program with the City already. So they were asking me to turn over the unit to them with $425 in hand. I declined. I asked her to let me know when they’re ready to pay the full $850 and I’d meet them. Unfortunately, getting a time decided was not going well. I just don’t understand why people think I’m sitting around waiting to show up at this house for them. I finally had to say I needed to meet before 2, otherwise it wasn’t going to happen until like 8 pm.

The daughter of the group was complaining about setting up an electronic payment method. Lady, you’re 22 and it’s 2026; I find it hard to believe you can’t figure this out on your own. She texted me constant updates. We also had an issue with the water getting in their name. They just kept texting me all day about what they were doing, and it was too much. I just need the payment. I don’t service the water company. I don’t service Venmo. I don’t service PayPal. I just need the payment in my “hands.”

Well, they made 2:00 happen and even was able to pick up the check from the City, so I started with the full $1350.

They had made a big deal about there being no blinds in the bedrooms. We’ve learned along the way that the more things we provide, the more it becomes our problem when the tenant breaks them. So over the years, we’ve removed broken blinds and not put them back up (you want landlords to provide things like window coverings, treat them nicely). We decided to provide the 3 missing blinds in the bedrooms. Well, when she moved in, she complained that they weren’t on the back doors, but I still didn’t add those.

Since they’ve moved in, we had an issue with the HVAC not working. The coils were frozen. It’s been a whole debacle. The one tenant texted me rudely that it being 80 in the house was unacceptable because she has a 3 year old. After all the issues with setting up their accounts, getting payment, making things harder than they needed to be, I was done. I wrote back that there was a proper way to establish this relationship, and in all my time as a landlord over several houses, I haven’t had anyone start off this in such a way. I wasn’t making it 80 degrees in there. When I was there, the air was running and it was comfortable. I can’t know something isn’t working until you tell me it’s not working. My tech ended up getting out there on Saturday and Sunday to manage it and get it running again.

SO FAR

At this point, they still are difficult. They had issues paying their partial month balance, but they got it paid. That’s another thing – I can’t believe the number of times people say “my employer messed up my pay check.” It just doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve been on the payer side and it’s not something that gets messed up. It’s pretty automated, especially when these people are likely using a punch clock system to make it even more automated.

I’ll just wrap this up here. Hopefully we continue to receive rent and it doesn’t become a bigger issue as we get into the winter months.