Dear Readers,

 

How are you all today? Well I hope! Today, I want to write to you about Difficult Tenants. Now, I know I’ve written a little bit about this before, but I’ve been hearing some stories about this recently, and I thought “why not pass on another story…? That’s the raison d’être of the blog really…”

 

(Using these words just makes you look like a snob mate..)

 

I’m sorry if it seems like I’m a snob. Actually, I use the words so that I can learn/remember them better. 

 

(Replace snob with geek then…)

 

 Why must I be a snob or a geek? Why can’t I just be me? Why won’t my conscience just leave me alone?

 

(Put the violin away already…)

 

Sigh. I give up. I am what I am… 

 

Difficult tenants! That’s today’s subject! 

Ask any Landlord with some experience, and they will happily go off on a rant about this one difficult tenant they had, and all the crap (pardon my French) they had to go through. 

 

From a landlord’s perspective, the  main difference between good tenants and difficult tenants is money. Plain and simple! A good tenant will pay his rent on time, and take reasonably good care of the house (so less money needed to spend when he vacates the property). A not-so-good tenant, will not pay on time, will not take good care of the house, or might even carry out illegal activities there. One can be left out of pocket in all sorts of ways. However, why hypothesize when you’ve got real cases…?

In our example, the landlord was in a hurry to get some (difficult?) tenants in. At least that’s the excuse we’re going with! He took shortcuts, and did not vet his applicant (Miss R) properly. She was a 45 year old woman that a neighbour recommended. The neighhour said that she was on disability, and got her money from the state every month. He assured our landlord, that there was no chance that he would not get paid. The landlord thought “yeah, that’ll do”. He agreed a price with the neighbour (imagine that..!), who brought Miss R to the property to sign the contract. 

 

Imagine that Miss R had not even seen the property before agreeing to take it. When it was time to actually physically sign the contract, Miss R said “I’ll just initial it, since I can’t read… All I know are my initials!”. The landlord thought this was a bit unusual, but went ahead all the same. He did not take the time to talk to her a little, to see what kind of person she was. If he had, he’d have known that she was a little unusual to say the least. Still though, she had a boyfriend (of 15 years), who moved in with her when the time came. 

At first, when Miss R and her boyfriend moved in, all seemed well. There were no initial complaints, no snags to take care of. The house had been renovated (to an extent). It didn’t have all the white goods, but it did come with a Fridge (not new, but fully functioning). The house was in a residential area, which, though not an upmarket suburban neighbourhood, was still a pleasant place to live. 

 

A month after moving in, Miss R called the landlord, and told him that the fridge was not working. He said he’d send someone over to look at it, to which she was not particularly receptive.

 

She said:

“I’ll buy a new one, and I’ll take it out of the rent”

“No, don’t do that. I’ll send someone to look at it”

“It’s not working though…”

“I understand, so I’ll send someone to fix it…”

“Ok. You’ll send someone.”

“Yes…”

 

The landlord took action, and a couple of days later, the technician went over to the flat, to look at the fridge. When he was there, he called the landlord from the property. What he said went something like this…

 

“Sir, this is brand new fully functioning fridge… what is it you wanted me to check?”

Yup. A brand new fully functioning fridge. Of course, you can guess what had happened. Miss R had gone and bought a new fridge. When the landlord asked why and how, she explained that “this is what we agreed, that I’d buy a new fridge, and take it off the rent…”

 

Miss R went on to explain that he needn’t worry, because the new fridge was great, and the old fridge, she didn’t throw away, in case the landlord wanted it (even though “it wasn’t working” – something Miss R repeated several times). It was at this point, that our landlord realised that he should have spent a little more time talking to the tenant, to see if she was a suitable tenant, BEFORE she moved in.

 

Needless to say, he ended up paying for the new fridge. As the years passed, it turned out that this was just the first of many, many “instances of miscommunication”.

Oh, and did I mention… when she left the property, a few years down the line, she took the fridge with her. To this day, every time our landlord hears the word fridge, he gets a little wound up.

 

Well, the obvious one is spend at least 10 minutes talking to the person that you’re going to have living in your house. It sounds so obvious, but it didn’t happen in this case. 

 

Additionally, I’d like to say that someone might read this post and say, “an illiterate 45 year old woman on disability…? How was it supposed to end?”. I mention this because I was talking about this story with someone and heard this comment verbally! But I disagree with that view. For me, these details are just circumstantial. The “lesson” though, is not related to these specific details.   

 

For me, the trick in choosing a tenant is choosing someone you can communicate with. Someone who at least appears to think the way that you do. Clearly, a tenant can appear to be one way, and then turn out to be another way. However, if you have trouble communicating with a potential tenant in the first 10 minutes, then that is not likely to end well, regardless of any other circumstances. 

Well, all this has got me thinking that it’s probably a good idea to write a post about how to choose a good tenant. So I will do that next!

 

(Please note though, that I’ll be away for a couple of weeks starting at the weekend, so my next post won’t be till Wednesday the 19th of July. I wish you all a great two weeks while I’m away!)

 

As always, if you have a few minutes to spare and are so inclined, do leave your comments below!

 

All the best,

SJ