I don’t usually spend much time on the tenant themselves, but there are a lot of lessons to share with this one.

We had to turn this house over last year when the two ladies who lived there moved to Georgia. They had been there a couple of years. We were busy when their lease ended, so when they asked for another month, I had agreed. But then we were on an awkward schedule for leasing. Our candidate pool was pretty low. We ended up settling on this lady who said she needed to find a place fast because her landlord was selling the property she was living in. She had told us that she needed to wait for him to return her security deposit to get us our security deposit. She told us this after we had already started the process of getting her into the house, so we just had to accept it. It took her 3 payments to get us the security deposit. That was the first red flag. She continued to be an issue for her entire tenure.

She was the type of person who wanted to hide behind her faith while continuing to treat us terribly. I can’t standing living through something like that.

The second red flag came when she kept saying her mail key wouldn’t work. She would take a week to respond to Mr. ODA with information on how it didn’t work. Finally, after several weeks of back and forth, Mr. ODA drove over there. He put the key in the mailbox number he told her and it worked fine. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but coupled with everything else we went through, it was telling.

LATE RENT

The third red flag was everything about rent. In February, she paid $1000 on the 5th. Since she paid the majority of rent up front, we didn’t charge her a late fee. She paid $350 on the 15th. Not bad. She paid when she said she would. Then it just keeps getting worse.

She let us know that she was going to be late for March. There wasn’t great communication, but we received half of rent on the 7th. After much follow up, she paid the second half of rent and $50 towards the late fee on the 28th. When people pay that late in the month, I know it’s going to cause the next month to be late. So April comes along and she barely tells us what’s happening. She just keeps saying she needs more time and eventually pays on the 25th with $50 of a late fee. No partial payments. Mr. ODA expresses the need for partial payments and to communicate what is going on. She acted like we were out of line for expecting rent. Then comes May. More bad communication. Mr. ODA finally expresses that the late fee is actually $135 and that’s written in the lease agreement (she’s surprised by that). We get rent and the full late fee on May 30th.

We’re in trouble now. I serve her notice that she’s to vacate the premises at the end of her lease term, June 30. Now, please note that as of the 6th of each month, we are well within our rights to serve her a notice that says she has 5 calendar days to make payment or we’ll file for eviction. We don’t do that. We keep hoping she’ll figure it out and get back on track like she tells us she’s working on.

In mid-June, we’re camping, and she calls Mr. ODA. She says she’s been praying on it, and Jesus wants her to stay in our house instead of finding somewhere else. Mr. ODA tells her that she needs to make payment to us for that to be considered. She says she’s going to look into her finances and she can probably get us some money that Friday (it was Wednesday). On Sunday, Mr. ODA texts her to ask what’s going on and she says she can’t pay anything towards rent because she “just” paid rent and her last pay check needed to go to other bills. Mr. ODA says we’ll give her until the end of July since now she’ll have less time to find a place, but she needs to get out. Again, our attempt to treat someone like a human instead of us protecting our business 100%.

She paid June rent on July 5. She told us it would be on July 3. On the 4th she hadn’t paid. Mr. ODA asked where payment was and she said “it’s coming.” She paid rent and the late fee that Sunday morning after more follow up.

She told us we’d have rent on July 31 before she moved out. On the 31st, she said she needed more time. She handed me cash on August 1st.

The person who owns the house has bills to pay. If I don’t pay my bills, the bank could take the house away. So you not paying your rent affects what I can pay. Now, I’m a good person and am always trying to be reasonable. We’ve set up our business so that we can pay our bills even if someone doesn’t have the money to pay their rent perfectly on time. But paying your rent a full month (or longer) after it’s due, with very little communication, and hardly ever following through on the payment date you gave us is taking advantage of us. There was no appreciation for us being understanding. There were hardly any apologies. We were always the bad guy for following up when payment wasn’t being made (while the payment date was actually the date she established and we never forced anything).

THE MOVE OUT

I sent multiple emails letting her know that if she was not out by July 31 at 5 pm there would be fees incurred. She would claim to understand, but then at 3:20, she told Mr. ODA she wasn’t going to make it. Mr. ODA said to move everything to the garage so we could start working on the house to get it re-rented. Well, there’s no lock on the door between the garage and the house, so that plan didn’t exactly work to get us a secured house while she finished moving out.

I will say that she kept the house in great condition. There were chew marks on molding, which says she may have had a dog that wasn’t authorized, but she had the carpets cleaned by Stanley Steamer and the house was cleaned up when she vacated. It’s always a risk when you’re telling someone to get out because they haven’t paid rent that they’re going to destroy something or leave trash behind.

She kept trying to tell Mr. ODA that she’d be done by 8, then 10, then midnight. She really expected us to meet her to get the keys at midnight. Then around 9:30, she texted Mr. ODA saying she was really just too tired to continue and would need to finish it the next day. I met her out there at 9 am. She said she couldn’t get a u-haul and needed more time, but her truck reservation was for 5:30 pm. I literally said that the goal post keeps moving so how was I to know that she’d actually be out of there that night. She tried to give me the keys to the house at that point, but I had to explain that if she gives me the keys, then it’s on me to drop everything and be available when she got the u-haul, and it wasn’t fair to me to keep having to show up to be told she wasn’t done.

Well, she ended up getting the u-haul a bit earlier and was able to text Mr. ODA that she was ready to turn over the keys. She did eventually get everything out (well, except for two cabinets in the kitchen).

But that wasn’t it. Mr. ODA decided to offer to get her the mail that was in the box. It was really because she wanted to check on the 1st one final time, but Mr. ODA didn’t head out there with the mail key. So after multiple back and forths, they finally decide to meet at a park in town. She then shows up a half hour before the agreed upon time because she was able to get out of work early. Well, that’s not how meet ups work. I just can’t comprehend the number of times that this lady thought that we just sit around waiting for her to decide to need us and that we were just going to magically appear when she rubbed her genie lamp. So Mr. ODA went out of his way to get her the mail, and she was bothered that she had to wait – even though he was 8 minutes earlier than the agreed upon time.

SECURITY DEPOSIT

In the end, it wasn’t bad. She got 80% of her security deposit back. I charged her for a broken stove burner, trash removal from the kitchen, and a stained toilet seat that needed replaced. The house was very clean, so I didn’t need to put much time into that.

SUMMARY

She lived there for less than a year, but she was one of the hardest people to manage. I try really hard to establish a relationship with my tenants that says I’ll treat them with respect and understanding if they treat me with respect. I get praised and thanked up and down from my other tenants. This one wasn’t like that. She thought our bar of understanding needed to be way too high and was completely unreasonable. We were as gracious and patient as we could be.