Oldcontroller's Blog

Hell is other people.

Okay, maybe he said it. Maybe he didn’t. It’s still true.

Events supporting this assertion of late follow, in no particular order. Warning: If pointless grousing annoys you, click away immediately.

1. A tenant calls, attitude dripping from his voice. The air conditioning isn’t working, he says. It’s miserably hot in the apartment, he says. If the a/c isn’t working, I believe it’s miserably hot in the apartment. It’s miserably hot outside, too, and where he lives you do not want to leave your windows open, even when you’re home. I asked him how long the a/c has been out. A week, he says. You read that right — it’s been hot as all get-out, his a/c died a week ago, and he waits until Friday afternoon a week later to let us know. Is it going to be fixed today, he wants to know. Not bloody likely, I think, but don’t say. I did tell him that if he’d notified us a week ago, for certain by now it would be fixed. Unfortunately for him, the owner of that apartment group has a warranty with a company not to be named, as I have nothing good to say about their service. So he’s probably going to swelter in his apartment for another week, if he’s lucky and the warranty company doesn’t have to order any replacement parts from the moon, which is where the previous job’s replacement parts had to be ordered from, judging from the time it took for them to arrive. And to think if only he’d let us know when the problem occurred, instead of waiting for the air conditioning system to somehow magically repair itself. Which in my experience almost never happens.

2. We’re holding a rental house for a woman moving here from out of state. She brought by her security deposit and pro-rated rent checks, which we held until the 8th, the date on the checks. She’s supposed to be in on the 13th (today) to sign the lease. She called week before last, wanted to know if we can give the key to the house to a friend of hers who is helping her move. He would be here August 6th. No, she won’t be in to sign the lease before then, but can he get the key so he can put her things in the house? Well, let’s consider that request. We had post-dated checks which may or may not clear (haven’t heard anything yet, but the week is young). We have no enforceable agreement with her, so if she moves in and then destroys the place, refuses to leave, refuses to pay any more rent, whatever, we have no legal recourse. Give her friend a key to one of our properties without a signed lease or certainty of payment? What a great idea! Sarcasm aside, I explained to her we couldn’t do that. She wondered what she was going to do, paused, maybe waited for me to rescue her from her dilemma. I didn’t. I suppose she’ll call back when she gets it sorted out. Or not. She may have already sorted it out with the rental folks.

3. I fielded a phone call from a remarkably unpleasant woman who lives in a subdivision where two of our rental properties are located. One of them is now vacant, as the corporation we rented it to, who filled it with several of their subcontractors, has experienced a slowdown in work and is moving their guys to other places. The guys living there apparently unnerved the neighbors, and according to her words the biggest problem was their ethnicity. She made a point of mentioning it, several times. Apparently it was very important to her. Also that they drank. And there’s trash everywhere, a computer chair sitting out front, the grass is too long, it looks terrible. Another neighbor went over of his own volition and mowed the yard once, but it needs to be done again. And this house is, all by itself, lowering property values in the entire subdivision. It should be stated that it hasn’t been vacant long, the guys who were in the house left without telling us they were leaving, and they left food and trash in the house. This neighbor has no idea what the inside of the house looks like, but it’s worse than the outside (I didn’t tell her, no need to stir that pot). And we have people scheduled to go there and take care of everything before it rents again, or sells. While she was snarking about people’s cultural backgrounds she interrupted herself to announce someone had just arrived and she was going to go talk to her. “Good idea,” I said before thinking. I’m not sure she noticed my tone. But she did buttonhole our rental management person, who just now explained to me how nice this woman was to talk to in person, also. Yes, there’s a bit of sarcasm there also. People are amazing.

4. One of our tenants is extremely late with July’s rent. She’s been meaning to drop money orders into our drop box for some days now. Then she said she’d mailed them, is baffled that they haven’t yet shown up yet. She really does seem to think we’re idiots. If the payment doesn’t show up by close of business today, she’ll probably end up dealing with the sheriff’s department. In the meantime, she’s tap dancing as fast as she can. I don’t understand the thought process people go through to determine paying rent is optional, but it seems a common activity for some folks.

5. A woman called and asked for information about two of our rental properties. She wants to know if they have wood panelling. I have no idea. I said so. I told her she could sign out keys and go look at them, see if they’d suit her. This is what I recommend anyway — there’s no way to be sure a house will suit you unless you see it, or have someone you trust see it for you. She was a bit miffed. Here’s the thing, though — they’re rentals. If the walls are covered end to end with wood panelling, and she’s not buying the place, why is that a showstopper? My husband and I rented for many years, most of it in Germany, and if you never experienced German tastes in wallpaper in the 80’s, you’ve really missed out. A columnist for the Stars and Stripes newspaper once described the wallpaper in his house as Howling Mouths From Outer Space, and I think we had that in one of the houses we rented too. What the heck does the wallcovering in a rental property matter?

6. Owners are fun too. We’ve got a rental in a subdivision near the Air Force base that is owned by an Army officer who is being transferred elsewhere. He and his wife are getting a divorce, which is always a bonus in a transaction. She signed the paperwork for the management agreement without any qualms, and I know this because I was there. Weeks later she announces that she’s decided not to move, comes back from whereever she’d gone in the interim and parks herself in the house. We’ve already got a tenant who has already paid her security deposit. Eventually it got sorted out — her chief complaint was that her soon-to-be ex-husband wasn’t telling her what was going on, and the tenant is moving in Wednesday. But we did get another call from the soon-to-be ex-wife with a load of questions, all of which were covered in the management agreement. Maybe she didn’t have a copy. Or maybe she didn’t want to take the time to read it. Well, she can call us and ask. We love answering questions that people can address by just reading the stuff we give them.

7. We have tenants who recently moved into one of our rentals which can only be described as craptacular. In a neighborhood not the worst in the area, but not the best either. Their rent reflects the situation — $500 a month. Their complaints have settled down in recent weeks, but for awhile there they were making daily demands that involved upgrades to the house, new appliances, yard work, and other issues. The no-kidding maintenance problems we took care of, because we have to. Unfortunately our rental person (not a property manager, she doesn’t have a license) got a bit confused about which faucet was leaking and our maintenance guy went over to check the problem and said there wasn’t one. I sometimes wish I had a staff of people on call to take care of my every whim, too. Guess I should have married Donald Trump. And so should she.

*sigh* That’s all. Just griping. Thanks for listening — assuming you haven’t already clicked away, say, to this, which is much more cheery. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to spend $1,000 on a pair of shoes without it totally destroying your budget for the next year? I’ll never know.