12.02.13 Rental News on Vacation

I’ve always said that the unfortunate part of owning and managing rentals is not having much control over the timing of vacancies and tenant issues.

Shortly after starting our landlording adventure, we got a call while on vacation in Chicago that our new tenants, placed for less than a month, were giving notice and moving closer to a hospital for medical reasons. Not much we could do, except be bummed out and implement a non-refundable fee to help reduce the sting of super short term tenants.

This summer we got a call while vacationing in Denver from the utility company that water usage was way up and we likely had a leak. On the same trip a tenant phoned to request a revision to her rental agreement. We worked the issues over the phone with the tenants not realizing that we weren’t close by.

Over Thanksgiving we were vacationing with a long weekend in Seattle. Two phone calls from the same duplex. One tenant is ready to pay rent, the other is calling about rats eating through their laundry room floor. We don’t get that many tenant calls, so it amazes me how many oddball calls we get while we're out of town.

On the flip side, thankful that cell phones allow us to work issues as if we were still in town, and very thankful that we were close to home when one unit caught fire a few years back.