A LANDLORD IN HELL

Hauling 8 tons, what do you get?

The Landlord — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:20:00 GMT

For astute observers, or people with calendars, the sixty days I was given to to put more gravel down on the driveway expired last weekend.

So much like a underachieving student in school, I was working on it the day before it was due.

Mother Nature helped out by only being in the mid-90's with 6000% humidity. The only consolation was the river-like air prevented the mosquitoes from achieving flight, so that was nice.

On Saturday, the gravel man (I think that was his official title) dumped 8 tons of gravel at the house. My plan was to spread this, by hand, over a 600 square foot area. Roll that around your head for awhile...my plan was to move 8 tons...with a shovel.

8 tons of jelly-beans sounds bad, but this is 8 tons of crushed rock.

Unlike most of my plans, which look very good before I start the work, this one looked doomed before I even started.

On Sunday morning, I arrived at the property. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of working with gravel...let me draw you a picture. Gravel is grey...now you are up to speed. A small pile of gray rocks sat squarely in the driveway.

My mind could not equate 8 tons and small.

My shoulders slumped at the thought that there was no where near enough gravel to get the job done. But I might as well start...

...two hours later it was done.

Now I know you thought there would be some drama or destruction or personal injury, but sometimes I guess things just work out.

Power to the people.

The Landlord — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:00:00 GMT

During my first open house, for my first rental property, the first question that was ever asked of me was: "Is this house a Section 8 house?".

Having grown up watching MASH, my only knowledge of Section 8 was that Klinger was always trying to get one so he could go home to Toledo. So based on my limited experience, she was asking me if this was a crazy house, which did not make that much sense to me.

My puzzled look was the only answer she really needed, but she went on to explain that Section 8 is government subsidized housing. Basically, the government, specifically Housing and Urban Development (HUD), pays the rent, up to a set amount, for low income families.

This program replaced the utterly brilliant, 1930's plan of housing all the low income families in one place. So we could keep an eye on them...wink...wink.

These lovely homes become known as the Projects and gave us some wonderful locations for movies like New Jack City and Boys in the Hood.

I would have loved to have been in the meeting where that idea was first floated, but I imagine it went something like this:

Government official 1 -- "I think we should put all the poor people in the same building. That way we can provide excellent living conditions in a controlled environment"

Government official 2 -- "Right...like a prison."

Government official 1 -- "What!? No, no, no...not like a prison. The residents could come and go as the pleased. They would have jobs and things to do."

Government official 2 -- "Oh I see...like an internment camp."

Government official 1 -- "What?! No, what are you thinking? This would be good for them and give them a chance to restart their lives."

Government official 2 -- "Ok...so we are going to help them, by forcing them to live in a one location, were their only interaction is with other people who are destitute and surround them with drugs, violence and crime..."

Government official 1 -- "You don't get to come to these meetings anymore."

Section 8 housing is a divisive topic among landlords. On the one hand, you get guaranteed rent from the government, but on the other the tenant can complain about the smallest item and the government will force you to correct it.

For guaranteed rent, I would rent to Satan, so Section 8 is no big deal to me. And of course, as always, there are wonderful stories to tell...which finally brings us to the story for this week.

One of my houses has now been rented to a Section 8 recipient for 4 or 5 months. The other day I received a call from her asking to add her boyfriend to the lease.

This is a BIG no-no for Section 8; if someone else lives in the house, then a Section 8 recipient can lose their benefits. Which would mean my guaranteed rent. So this is non-starter for me.

But why does she care if he is on the lease? Clearly, he is living in the house with her, what possible difference can it make that his name in not on the lease. Which I thought was a good question, so I asked it.

She responded that in order to turn the electricity on in his name, he had to be on the lease.

You can probably see where this is going, but I had to ask her...whose name is the electricity in now?

My sisters, was the response, and she is not going to pay it anymore. And I can't get it in my name, because I owe $700 from my last house.

I was truly shocked.

Here was a woman whose rent was paid for by the government, who receives food from the government, who receives a utility allowance from the government and who receives money from the government and she still ran up a $700 bill AND did not think she had to pay for it.

And despite now having the common sense (or perhaps common decency) to figure out how to pay her bills, she has figured out a way to trick the system so she can get what she wants.

After choking back the bile, I had to tell her I couldn't change the lease.

So now she sits in a dark house with no power...or maybe she found some other way to get the power turned on. I really don't know.

But I do know that come next month there will be a rent check sitting in my mailbox.

I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK

The Landlord — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:48:00 GMT

There was an old episode of CHEERS that has been replaying in my mind this last week.

In it, the bar has burned down and Sam is trying to figure out what to do. Sam had bought insurance with a huge deductible, so he didn't have enough money to rebuild. His friends are asking him why had he set the deductible so high and his response was...where were you when the insurance agent was talking 100 miles an hour?

You see most normal people don't think about insurance or insurance companies on a daily basis. You don't spend time pondering if a meteorite or a missile or Santa's sled or even something as mundane as a tree, falls on your house if you are covered.

But I have spent the last week or so worry about insurance, thinking about insurance and dealing with insurance.

Because (as you might remember) one of my trees had fallen.

Now if this was a commercial for insurance, some semi-famous actor would come appear on screen and tell you that you don't need to worry about insurance because...you are in good hands. But I am sad to say, if my insurance company was doing the commercial their slogan would be...sorry our hands were too busy stuffing our pockets with cash and we didn't even notice you.

So when we last left our hero, he was dealing with a tree that had fallen, had hit his neighbor's house and had done some minor damage to his house. We now continue our story...

The good news (I thought) was the tree had not hit my house at all. It had fallen across the power line, ripping it out of the side of my house. In the process it had taken off a board and bent a length of gutter. The worst part of the damage was the dangling power wires on my house, but all in all not TOO much damage.

The neighbor's house was smashed to bits. The tree had crushed their roof and destroyed one bedroom.

We called our insurance companies. Mine told me it would be three days before anyone would even look at it. I presume theirs took at different approach to handling clients, because lumberjacks were cutting the tree down the next day.

How do I know this? Because their tree cutters called me. They wanted to know if they should take care of the tree on my side of the property line. They said it would cost about $700 to cut it up and haul it away. As I had not talked to my adjuster yet, I reluctantly had to say no. They said they would cut the tree at the property line and leave the log.

So the next day there was a 24 foot long, two and a half foot wide log resting in my yard. If I had wanted to hollow it out, it would have made a lovely canoe. But instead it sat there for another two days until the adjuster appeared.

And appear he did.

Promptly on Wednesday morning he surveyed the scene. He took dozens of photos, took measurements, filled out forms…maybe he painted some watercolors…I’m really not sure. He spoke to the neighbor. He interviewed me. Though oddly, he didn't want to know about my goals or strengths, he just wanted to talk about the tree.

He walked back to his truck, where he spent the next 45 minutes typing in to his laptop and printing off documents. After which, he presented me with a check for ... drum roll please...$77.46.

No, that is not a misprinted, $77.46.

You see if the tree doesn't hit the house, the insurance company does not pay for the tree to be removed. Lucky, lucky, lucky me.

$77 just about covers all the gas I used driving back and forth to the house...so the $0.46 is pure profit ... excluding the actual repairs, of course. But I prefer to look at things from the positive side, so $0.46 cash in my pocket. Oh the treasures I can buy now....

While I toyed with whether to purchase a small island or a large yacht, I was still faced with the daunting task of how to get rid of 3 tons of fallen tree.

The first and most obvious option was to pay the $700 and have a professional remove it. For the mere pittance of $700, they will send several large, hairy, tobacco stained, toothless men wielding chainsaws over to my house to quickly make work of the tree. If that doesn't paint a pretty picture in your head, nothing will. In addition, they will come with powerful hydraulic equipment that could lift tons of wood, as easily as I lift the second plate of food at the all you can eat buffet. They would be properly trained, insured and bonded. This clearly is the best, if not only, choice to remove this gigantic piece of wood from you yard.

So screw that noise.

It will be a long, cold day in hell before I pay some redneck and his pack of half-ape men $700 of MY money to cut up a tree.

SURELY, I can do the same job myself and save $700. I mean how hard can it be...the damn thing is on the ground already…most of the job is already done.

I was sure all I needed to do was to buy a chainsaw and helmet, or something, and off to the races I will go...

So I jumped in to the world of chainsaws. There are dozens and dozens of different options on chainsaws. Bar length, engine displacement, number of teeth, tooth angle, RPM and the list goes on. A huge amount of information to digest and consider it order to properly select the chainsaw needed to complete the task.

I decided to buy a blue one. I think that is a very professional color and would do the trick.

My next surprise was my new chainsaw was not long enough to cut the tree across its full diameter. I would have to cut one side and then cut the other side to make a cut that was a full 30 inches across. That just doubled all my cutting. But the more time you can spend with a machine that whirls razor sharp little knives at 150 miles an hour, inches from your arms, legs and head is quality time, so I think I was really the winner here.

So after two cuts, a pile of wood chips 8 inches high and ten minutes of my life, I had successfully cut my 24 foot log in to two 12 foot logs. Yes!!! Yeah me!!!

Shockingly, cutting 3 tons of wood in to two equal pieces does not produce a piece that I can lift. Apparently, I had not thought this all the way through.

But then I made an interesting discovery, while I could not lift the logs...I could roll them. You see, a log is round...I had discovered the wheel!!

Oh the joy...dancing like a drunken sailor, I merrily pushed the log around the yard. Five feet in that direction and then five feet the in other direction. I was really making progress now. Five feet and then five feet back. After half an hour, a small crowd had gathered to watch by endeavors, but I came to the realization that the log was not getting any lighter by pushing it around the yard.

I was crestfallen.

Back to cutting.

4 cuts later, I had several 3 foot long logs. Now we are talking.

First, you can really roll a three foot log. Excellent, I will now push the log...oh wait, I forgot that doesn't help. But SURELY, I can lift a 3 foot log. After 30 seconds of straining (I want to lie and tell you it was 5 minutes), I realized that log was still too heavy. My quick math skills deduced this 3 foot log only weighed... 700 pounds. Ugh.

At a minimum, I would have to divide it in to seven sections to be able to do anything with it.

Maybe hiring those rednecks would have been a good idea...

Luckily for me, my phone rang. My wife had called another lumberjack. He would cut down another problem tree on the property and take care of this log (now logs) as part of the deal.

All and all that seemed like a really good deal...

I packed away my pretty blue chainsaw.

But what to do with those dangling power lines...and electrician is going to want a lot of money to fix those. SURELY, I can do that job.

I mean, how hard can it be...

If a tree falls on a rental, does it make a sound?

The Landlord — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:24:00 GMT

Yesterday, I got a phone call from the Fire Department.

As I looked at the caller ID display, flashing City Fire Department in red, I could only come up with two reasons the Fire Department calls: to ask for money for some charity or because something is/was on fire.

I held my breath and picked up the phone.

"Mr. Landlord, one of your trees has fallen on your neighbor's house. Your house has suffered minor damage."

As I processed his comments, mixed emotions flooded through my system, Yea! Nothing has burned to the ground. Boo! There's a big hole in a neighbor's house. Yea! My house has only suffered minor damage. Boo! My house has suffered damage.

"Which house is this?" I responded.

Based on the long pause, I guess this is not a typical question. He told me the address, which I should have already guessed because it is vacant.

Now it is my turn to pause. What do I do?

I spent many years in school (more than i should have), but in all my classes, no one ever discussed what to do if a tree smashes the neighbor's house.

"I'll come over and look at it" was my feeble reply.

Half an hour later, I stood in front of my house.

A once proud shade tree now rested across my neighbor's house, slowly crushing an outside wall. A fire truck was parked on the curb and a utility company employee was hurried cutting off the power to the houses.

A few spectators lined the street watching the whole process. My neighbors stood outside their house.

I expected shell shocked looks but people are more resilient than I give them credit for and everyone was pleasant. I spoke with my neighbors and exchanged contact information.

I felt phenomenally helpless in the whole process.

I went home and called the insurance company. In the next day or so, an adjuster will come out and look at my house. That house already has a tenant lined up for it, so that clock is ticking to get the repairs done to it in time.

I presume that will be another adventure.

Mr. Landlord, TEAR...DOWN...THIS...HOUSE.

The Landlord — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:58:00 GMT

Getting the mail is no longer the happy adventure it was when i was a child. Do you remember those days? You would go down to the mailbox and there would be a letter from Aunt Sue or a card from Grandma Smith with a ten dollar bill in it. All those other envelopes, marked Final Notice, Collections or whatnot, were someone else’s responsibility. Those were good days.

Now days, the mail doesn't contain any sweet surprises. Even unexpected checks come from some Nigerian lads trying to steal my money.

But the worst thing you can get in the mail is a registered letter. A registered letter sole purpose is to prove you receive it. No one needs to prove you got good new; you would confirm that yourself. No...only bad things come in registered letters. Lawsuits, Cease & Decease orders, paternity suits...all your usual evils.

Two days ago I received a registered letter.

And to add to my enjoyment, I wasn't there to receive the letter, so I get the little green card that tells me to come pick it up at the post office.

So I spent hours staring at this card; trying, desperately, to gather some information from the limited details on it.

The first clue that this is not a love letter is it is from THE CITY. (If this was a movie instead of a blog, the dramatic music would have started as you read that sentence; so to correctly set the mood, go back and reread it and pretend some ominous music is in the background.)

THE CITY doesn't send out cutesy-pie announcements or birthday party invitations. THE CITY brings nothing but pain.

I laid awake in bed, tossing and turning and million dreadful scenarios filling my head. What...what...what does THE CITY want??? In the past, I have received letters from THE CITY telling me the grass is too high at a property. But these were just regular letters. Not the dreaded registered letter. Had someone fallen in to a sinkhole and couldn't get out? I didn’t think I would get a letter about that, but who knows? Had a swarm of rats set up residence in my house? Was the house still standing? Was it really 3:00 in the morning? My head hurt from the questions.

As soon as the Post Office opened, I rushed in to pick up my letter. In mere moments, the nondescript white envelope was grasped in my hand. What horrors awaited me? With slightly shaking fingers, I opened it.

The first sentence read:

"An inspection of your dwelling or building revealed the dwelling or building to be in violation of Code Section 7-4-2-100 of the City Code."

Well that doesn't sound good does it? "Violation"...that is a very strong word; there is no misunderstanding there. THE CITY could have said "hey, we don't like..." or "we have a difference of opinion..." but they went with "violation". Pretty clear, THE CITY is not happy about something.

The second sentence read:

"You are hereby granted sixty (60) days to repair or demolish the dwelling or building."

OH MY GOD!! Whatever the problem is, it is so bad that my one of my options is to TEAR DOWN MY HOUSE. What the hell could be so bad, that the only course of action is to bulldoze the house???

Had my house somehow opened a portal to the netherworld and a legion of demons was pouring out??? Were the military forces of the United States engaged in a pitched battle for the souls of humanity?? Did destroying my house represent the one chance to save the world? If that was the case, I could kind-of understand THE CITY wanting me to demolish the house.

There was no "lets get together and talk about it" option. The options are do what we say or destroy the house...but they were leaving it up to me to decide.

Somewhere in this letter THE CITY must explain what exactly is wrong. I scanned the letter.

On page 2, THE CITY explained the clear and logical reason they were presenting me with the opportunity to turn my house in to a collection of toothpicks and splinters:

"The existing gravel driveway has no gravel still visible. Replenish the gravel to a depth of 4 inches."

HUH? All of this because I need to add some gravel to the driveway. No demons, no zombies, no flesh-eating viruses, no threat to the world. That can't be right.

I read the rest of the letter and that was all there was to it.

THE CITY had spent $2.25 (the cost of the registered letter) and told me I could tear down my house, all because there was not enough gravel in the driveway.

Apparently, THE CITY doesn't play games here. Clearly, having solved all the other crime in the city, gravel-less driveways are the new scourge of the neighborhood. Wouldn't someone think of the children?

Doesn't this all seem a little extreme??

I am A Landlord, not THE Landlord

The Landlord — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:33:00 GMT

The other evening, I was standing in the front yard of one of my houses, hammering a FOR RENT sign in to the ground. As I stood up, a twentyish year old man was walking down the street.

As he walked, he was screaming a conversation in to his cell phone.

I wasn't trying to eavesdrop on his conversation (unless you owe me money or i owe you money, I don't care what anyone does) but I don't know if this guy was angry, happy, remorseful, sad or fearful. From what i could understand of his conversation, he could have been arguing about a bad brake job on his car or negotiating a cut rate with a hooker or talking to his priest (maybe about exercising a demon). At best, I understood one in every ten words.

He strode purposely down the street. His pants hanging someone near his knees. Screaming in to his phone with every step forward he took.

I am thinking to myself...please, please, please don't notice my house is for rent, please, please, please. Pretend to me invisible. Think...I am invisible. Poof..you can't see me.

As he sees me, his stride waivers for a moment and then he changes direction and starts walking directly towards me.

Maybe pretending to be invisible wasn’t the best course of action.

"Yeah man, I needs to talk to you." he said.

In the last ten years of my life, no good conversation has ever started with that sentence.

Sometimes in life, you have moments of pure clarity...where you can see the next few minutes of your life as if you were reading a book. This was one of those moments. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, I was to find myself struggling to make sense out of the nonsense that would be the next few moments of my life.

The young man looked at me, looked at my FOR RENT sign and looked back at me. He said "Are you the landlord?"

"My God", I thought to myself, "Your powers of deduction and reasoning rival that of a young Sherlock Holmes or perhaps a thin Hercule Poirot. All it took for you to deduce I was the owner of the house was for me to be at the house and hammering a FOR RENT sign in to the ground. Your future is bright young man."

What came out of my mouth was "Yes, I am the landlord." (What the hell? Where did all those quick witted, snide comments go? I'll have to save them for later.)

"Yeah, see I needs you to come over to my house and fix the hole in the wall." he said, as he pointed to a house three doors down. A house that had nothing to do with me.

Slightly confused and unsure what to say. I decided to fill the moment with a standard Landlord question, "What happened to the wall?"

"Well, you know I always had problems wit that wall and, boom, one day that hole was there." He said.

Boom...the hole was there??? What the hell does that mean? Does this guy possess dangerous telekinetic powers?? Do I really want to be dealing with a screaming, hole-blowing with his mind superman? No, I certainly do not.

"But, I don't own that house. This is my house here." I quickly replied.

"I thought you said you were The Landlord?" He said.

Oh God...this idiot thinks there is only one Landlord in the world. And I am it.

Or perhaps I had underestimated this individual. He had correctly said THE Landlord, I had responded to him in a positive manner. Maybe he was a traveling wordsmith, preying on naive people, like myself.

He continued to scream into the phone and stare at me. I stood in awe at his multi-tasking ability.

"I'm the Landlord of this house, not your house. Who is your landlord?" I stammered. Hoping...praying...he would not unleash a verbal beating on me for my utter ignorance of the English language

"Howwhat now? I don't know my landlord." He said. Perhaps this was not the Rhodes Scholar I had feared.

At this stage, I realized this conversation was going to go down hill fast. So how could I extract myself from this conversation as quickly as possible? I used the mightiest of Landlord weapons against my confused adversary. Rent money.

"Well, who do you pay the rent to?" I asked.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa...man, I don’t know anything about the rent. My girlfriend pays that. I'll ask her and she can give you a call or something." With that, he continued on down the street and out of my life.

Things Tenants Leave Behind

The Landlord — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:23:00 GMT

Some people like to simplify their view of the world. They find it easier to view the world as binary (black and white, if you will). I am one of those people. I find that it is just easier to do away with all of the ambiguity, all the grays. Therefore, if you divide the world in to the Haves and the Have-Nots, I think it is safe to say that most Tenants fall in to the Have-Nots category.

You rent a house because you don’t have any other choice. If you can afford to buy a house, you buy.

Yes, yes... I know there is that 1% of Tenants that rent houses for some other reason, but they don’t fall in to my nice, neat A or B mental process. So I can ignore them.

So from my view, in the great financial pie, Tenants have a very, very small slice.

Think about it this way, have you ever had someone bring a pie in to work? It starts with 8 slices. Seven of those pieces disappear as soon as the pie hits the table. But that last piece...well that is a problem. You see all of our mothers raised us not to take the last piece of anything. So instead of disobeying our mothers, we keep cutting the last piece in half. So soon it is half a piece, then a quarter, then an eighth and so on. Until the last piece of pie is only one pie atom thick and any further division would trigger a nuclear explosion.

That is the slice of the financial pie that Tenants have.

I realize there are hundreds of reasons for that, but number one on that list is: Tenants make bad decisions when it comes to money.

Now, this isn’t a political rant. God forbid. If you earn your money, you can do whatever idiotically foolish thing you want with it. That’s your right. For more than 200 years, Americans have been fighting and dying so you can exercise the right to buy things from QVC. Hey, if you really think it is more important to collect Elvis Presley commemorative plates, than to pay your electric bill, more power to you.

But by the same token, it is my right to point out how God-awful stupid some of things you do are.

So here is the first financial lesson for Tenants:

WHEN YOU MOVE OUT OF MY HOUSE, TAKE ALL OF YOUR PROPERTY WITH YOU!!!

You paid for this stuff; it is yours. Put it in the car and take it.

Dozens and dozens of times, I have opened the front door of a house where a Tenant has just moved out and have been shocked. Stunned. No matter how many times I try to brace myself, to mental prepare myself for what I am about to see, I am still amazed. I just can not understand the stuff they leave behind. (Well, the rotting bags of garbage I understand. I don’t appreciate it and I will curse the Tenants very existence for leaving it, but I do understand.)

Why do they leave all this stuff for me?

They couldn’t be bothered to pay the rent on time; is this their way of making it up to me? Do they think that if they leave me a box of plates, it makes everything hunky-dory with us? Now they would never leave the Elvis plates, but I have to admit, these are some really nice plates. They don’t match, but they are really nice. Does that excuse the late payments? I’ll have to ponder that one.

But what’s the deal with the broom that they left? I just don’t get it. I realize that entire time they lived in my house, they never used it, so maybe they didn’t form the correct emotional bond with it, but don’t they think it could be useful in their next house?

I think most people think of cleaning as something that is a requirement. Sort of like breathing or eating. But not them. Cleaning appears to be an optional activity. But you never know, maybe they will take up cleaning as a hobby. In that case, they are really going to miss that broom.

And while I could perhaps understand the occasional broom or missed box being left behind, I’m not clear on all the other items.

The chairs, beds, tables, TVs, stereos, blankets, towels, clothes....

I can’t get my head around clothes. Over the years, I have found closet after closet, full of clothes....sometimes in the same house every bedroom closet is full. Did the fact that you can’t walk around naked just slip their mind? Did they move to a nudist colony? Even if they did, doesn’t it still get cold once and a while?

....tires, hoses, tools....

OK, to be fully honest here, they can leave all tools behind they want. I will always keep them. I think I currently own around 35 hammers, so I don’t need anymore hammers. But, I really have my eye on this Dewalt Miter Box, so if the next Tenant could buy one of those and leave it behind, I would be thrilled.

....walkers, crutches, canes, boxes of photos....

Look....I have my own family, so I too have boxes full of bad school photos, lopsided vacation shots and closed eyed family portraits and, frankly, I understand you might want to leave this stuff behind. Truthfully, it just fills space in the moving van that could instead by filled with their beer can collection. But I can 100% guarantee you that if my house was burning to the ground, my wife would demand that I charge back in to the fully engulfed structure to save those priceless memories. And trust me, I would greatly prefer to perish in the blaze then to live with the repercussion of not achieving that task. How did they get away with leaving them? Teach me.

....dishes, forks, knives, food....

Goddamnit....of all the things I can pretty much guarantee someone is going to use again, food ranks pretty high. Do they seriously think they are never going to eat again? Or is it that they don’t think they’ll get a hankering for a can of Chunky soup? Wasn’t there enough room in the back of the car/truck to shove in ten cans of soup?

What is going through their minds?

....bikes, kid’s toys.....

My God, just think about that. They literally leave their kids toys.

I’ve had to stop a family vacation, turn the car around and drive 100 miles BACK to my house, when we left Mr. Snuggles behind. Mr. Snuggles isn’t even human; he’s a stuffed bear. But my kid wouldn’t stop crying.

My guess is the sounds emanating from a Turkish Prison would sound peaceful compared to the screams of anguish coming from the backseat of their car when they told their kids they weren’t bringing their toys to the new house.

But forget about the irreparable emotional damage they have done to their children. Really, that’s going to be the job of some well paid therapist or parole officer to fix, anyway. What about the money?

All of this stuff, all of those mountains of discarded items....all of those COST money.

Somewhere, sometime they spent THEIR money to buy this stuff. At one time, they thought it was so important to own these things that they opened their wallets, took money out and handed it someone.

They brought their newly purchased item home and they were so proud....so very happy with it.

What happened? Did they fall out of love with it? Did their love fade in to resentment and then finally hatred? I think we have the shared experience of a love affair with a toaster gone bad.

But at this stage, I don’t care what happened. Just stop leaving the stuff in my house. Isn’t that an easy concept?

Here’s an idea to help remember that lesson. You know all that money that tenants spend on tattoos?

As a side note, did you know tattoos cost money? (Remember what I said about making bad monetary decisions?)

Well, here is an idea for a new tattoo. You know how Tenants have all those really cool military sounding ones, like “Death from Above” and “Leave No Man Behind”. They could get a new one and it could say “Leave Nothing Behind”. See, that’s a really neat twist on a classic. And then they could just look at their arm when they are moving out and they could remember to take their children (Leave No Man Behind) and all their toys (Leave Nothing Behind).

And I wouldn’t have to load all this crap in to my truck and take it to the dump.

That’s a win-win situation.

Why I hate being a Landlord, part 1

The Landlord — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:43:00 GMT

Today’s houses are pretty amazing things.

In regards to our personal comfort, and the ease at which we achieve that comfort, never in the history of the world has life been better.

Thank about this. If two hundred years ago your wife said “I think it is a little cold in here”, you had to get up, leave your log cabin, trek through unknown wilderness, broker a land deal with a group of Indians, cut down a tree, maybe kill a bear, drag the tree back to your house and chop it in to firewood.

In the mean time, your whole family had died due to bubonic plague or something.

All and all not a happy time.

Now days, you have to get up from your recliner, walk five feet to the wall and slide a little bar on a thermostat half an inch. And somewhere in the bowels of your house there is a whooshing sound and hot air pours out of vents strategically located throughout your house. For most people, this is where their involvement stops. As far as you know or care, that lovely warm air is being produced by families of little elves shoveling pixie dust in to giant bubbling cauldrons.

That is unless the little elves are on strike and when you slide the bar on the thermostat, hot air doesn’t pour out of the vents. In that case, you call THE MAN to come fix it. I don’t know who THE MAN is, or where he lives, but when something is broken everybody always says “I’ll call THE MAN to come fix that”.

Well, it turns out that for Tenants, THE MAN is me. When a Tenant calls THE MAN my phone rings. Imagine my surprise when I found out that little gem.

So take a second and imagine everything that breaks in your house.

Don’t only think about the big stuff, like if the house is disappearing in to a sinkhole, but including all the little things that you just live with.

Think about all those little things.

Are you thinking about that one faucet that drips, the toilet that will sometimes run, the pane of glass that has a crack in it, the door handle that is a little loose, and all the other little minor things that you have wrong with your houses. Now imagine every time you find something wrong with your house, the free repair man is just one phone call away.

Regardless of time.

Day or night.

Do you have the number in your head? Now multiply that by 12 (the number of houses I own). Because Tenants expect EVERYTHING in the house to be 100% perfect 100% of the time.

If a Tenant gets home at 3:00 in the morning and his front door hinges creak a little bit, my phone starts ringing.

I guess in the Tenant’s minds, I just drive around all night waiting for crap to break, so I can rush in like a tool-belt wearing Superman to fix it.

The truth is I want to spend my time watching TV or sleeping and I don’t look very good in red spandex.

The real irony is I have no idea how the furnace or the water heater or the faucet in the sink works. I’m just like everybody else, I turn a knob and something happens. If it doesn’t work, I try it again. If nothing happens, I am pretty much out of ideas.

When a Tenant calls me up and says the doorbell isn’t working, my only solution is to say “Have you tried pressing the button? Oh...you already tried that. Did you press really hard? You did that. Well, I’m stumped. Ask people to knock on the door instead. That’ll work.”

Now some people ask “Why don’t you get someone else to fix it?” And I guess that is a reasonable question. The simple answer is the rent money can pay the mortgage or pay a repairman. Not both. Repairman or mortgage. Mortgage or repairman. Every time mortgage wins.

So the Tenant calls me. I schlep myself over to the house. I bang around a lot to give the impression that I know what I am doing; all the while, desperately searching for the giant On/Off switch that has somehow been set to Off.

Surprisingly, I sometimes find the metaphoric On/Off switch and fix the problem.

But most of the time, I can’t figure out why when someone presses the doorbell the garbage disposal comes on.

Really....I mean really super-seriously really....who the hell knows this stuff? And why does anyone think I know it?

If I had gone to MIT or, maybe, Bob’s School of Home Repair (MIT’s smaller sister school), maybe then I would know it. But I didn’t.

So I have to come up with some creative excuse as to why you can’t use a toaster and talk on the phone at the same time. Something to do with radio waves or electronic interference or something.

So now I loath the sound of my ringing phone. The sound of BBBBRRRRING BBBBRRRING BBBBRRRRING makes me convulse like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

I spend my time staring at my phone....willing it not to ring.

BBBBRRRRING BBBBRRRING BBBBRRRRING

Damn....

A Tenant’s Guide to Painting

The Landlord — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:54:00 GMT

Over the years, I have spoken to hundreds of people who want to rent houses from me. Most of them say the exact same kind of things. Once it a while someone will surprise me with a “I just got out of jail today, so I don’t have the full deposit. But I am pretty sure I’ll have the whole thing by tomorrow morning” (really happened) statement, but most prospective Tenants appear to have a standard repertoire of comments to make a Landlord feel better about them.

I am convinced there is a super, secret adult education class somewhere on how to be a Tenant. It teaches people all the things that newbie, inexperienced Landlords want to hear.

For example, “I love to garden, can I plant some bushes?” Now in reality, that translates to “I don’t own a lawnmower and the city will be fining you before I even think about cutting the grass.” (Come to think of it, I should create a Tenant to English dictionary. I need to write that idea down.) The idea of this class is to get the Landlord to lower their guard by filling their heads with wishful thinking.

The class must be free because Tenants would not pay for it, so I don’t know how the presenters make any money. Maybe they gain sustenance from the pain they inflect on Landlord’s.

But in any event, the first lesson on the first day of class is how to paint like a tenant. This process starts with the innocently enough sounding question of “Oh, is it okay if I change the color of this room. I really like a light yellow.” Well that sounds harmless enough doesn’t it; what smart business person (Landlord) could possible pass up free labor? You would be a complete idiot NOT to rent to this person, they care so much about your house that they are willing to do work for free. FREE!!! You are the luckiest of Landlords that this individual has wandered in to your life. Grab them before someone else does. The brilliance of this single question can not be overstated.

The more advanced class teaches the slight, but very important, twist to that question “I’m a professional painter and if I paint your house, will you reduce the rent?”

So lets look at the advanced class question first.

Well folks, maybe in some perfect, dream world legions of professional house painters are just lining up to rent houses, but I have never meet any. In my world, Tenants lack the skills needed to hang a picture without smashing through the wall, breaking a pipe, and flooding the house (yes that really did happen to me).

Painting is a skill. There is a reason that it costs several thousand dollars to paint a house. And if a Tenant had those skills, they would be earning all that money. They then could afford to buy a house and not rent one of mine. See the gaping hole in the “I am a professional painter” story.

On the off chance that a Tenant actually WANTS to paint, here is a condensed version of the Tenants Guide to Painting:

1) Cleaning the walls is a waste of time; your time can better be spent coming up with creative excuses for why the rent is late. Anyway, paint will cover grease, crayon, mud, nails, screws, small rocks, big rocks, banana peels and food.

2) Drop cloths are a waste of money; carpet can absorb most paint spills very effectively. The small amount that is spread around the floor adds a great degree of flair and originality to your decorating theme.

3) Removing paintings or other objects from the walls before painting takes away from valuable TV watching time. Paint around them. No one can see the wall anyway.

4) Drips add valuable texture to your walls.

5) Applying paint to windows and mirrors is a cheap way to create stained glass. The fact that churches spend thousands and thousands of dollars on the stuff is ridiculous.

6) Never, ever use more than one coat of paint. The idea of painting the same wall twice is just an excuse to get you to spend more money. Beer isn’t going to buy itself.

7) Painting the ENTIRE room is not as important as thinking about finishing the entire room. Half or three-quarters of the room having the same color is good enough. If you really think about it, you can only see two or three walls at the same time anyway.

8) Paint cans are like gold; never throw away paint cans. Full of paint, half empty, empty, crushed in to small metal discs, whatever…never throw away paint cans. If there are lids on the cans, even better. Paint cans with lids are like…um...beer.

9) Rooms have floors and ceiling for one reason, to show you where to stop painting on a wall. Roll the paint on to the wall until it hits the ceiling, then go the other way until you hit the floor. Not only does this allow you to paint in complete darkness, but when you are finished you will have an impressive strip on the ceiling and the floor. Just like racing strips on a car. Most likely, the Landlord will give you extra money for this improvement to the property.

Next week, we can review A Tenants Guide to Home Repairs.

Welcome

The Landlord — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:53:02 GMT

Hi, I'm a Landlord.

I didn't always want to be a Landlord. When I was a small boy I didn't dream of renting out 3 bedroom houses. My G.I. Joes did not try to convince my Big Jims to sign an 18 month lease purchase on a slightly distressed fortress.

No, I dreamed of being filthy, stinking rich guy. If that had worked out, my website would be HappyFilthyStinkingRichGuy.Com, but apparently something went wrong along the way.

In 2004, Real Estate seemed to be a sure-fire, can miss, only work a few hours a week path to easy wealth and prosperity. So I decided to start investing in Real Estate. I’m not sure, but I think some other people had the same idea.

I started buying houses. Generally speaking, I didn’t go crazy. I bought houses that needed work done to them. I bought them relatively cheap.

By early 2006, I owned 11 houses.

In March of 2006, I bought twelfth and last house. As I sat in the Closing Attorney’s office, with my signature still drying on the last page of the contract, a huge rumble occurred outside his office. The windows shook; the pens rattled on the desks; my chair moved. I looked up and said “What was that?” The attorney responded, “I think the real estate bubble just burst”.

Damn.

My 12 houses sat completely rehabbed and ready for new owners to hand me stacks of cash and take them off my hands. The FOR SALE signs sat gleaming in the front yards. And I waited. And waited. And waited. And then waited a little more. Then I made a sandwich. The sandwich was bit dry but still very nice. I waited some more. After 6 months of mortgage payments flying out of my pockets, my money ran out. I made the fateful decision to rent the houses out.

That is how I became a Landlord or, more accurately, a Landlord in Hell.

Why, in Hell you ask?

Having 12 houses is the tipping point between a part time job and a full time job, but I have a full time job. If the houses are all rented out, the mortgages are paid but that leaves nothing to pay for any repairs. So if something goes wrong, I have to go out and fix it.

And lastly, being a Landlord is a horrible job. Tenants do nothing but complain about the smallest problem and then give you a hundred reasons why the rent will be late this month. Now multiple that by 12. Every month. Month in and month out. With no hope of it changing in the near future.

Now, while tenants do not pay their rent, they do provide a never ending series of interesting stories. They are the perpetual motion machines of oddities, confusion, humor, varying levels of disgust and head scratching ‘you must be kidding me” moments.

These are the stories that I will share with you