Another Month in Our Landlording Life

Bruce always says to leave tenants alone, that it costs us money when we interact with them. It’s certainly true that things surface when we talk to tenants, but I’m still a proponent of staying involved. The RototRooter bill as a result of asking a tenant how things were going amounted to $245. And when I sent a letter to a tenant about high water sewer garbage bills, we got a call that the washing machine hasn’t been working. Another service call.

The puppy saga continues. Our tenants who want to get a dog found golden lab puppy. I have mixed feelings about a puppy in our unit. I would never approve a new tenant with a puppy, but feel it is harder to tell a good tenant that they can’t get one. We need to get to breeders when they get a little older.

Since my two last update, the following things have happened:

Our local non-profit who has been paying the rent for one of our tenants notified us that they discovered and error and now the tenant needs to start paying $34/month of his rent. They offered to find him a cheaper place to live, but with the rising rental market, he’d be looking at a much worse place to move to. Time will tell if he can pay the difference.

We also received a violation notice for contamination of the recycling bin at one of the duplexes. We decided to bring the recycling can to our house to store rather than try to reform the tenant.

We’ve now gone four months with no turnover. We’ll probably make it to five, but we know that our problem tenant is moving out the end of April. Because we gave her notice. She paid for March, but fell apart again in April. She avoided us, forcing her dad to pay again. He’s done, we’re done. So, now to sort out if we will handle the turnover ourselves or hire a property manager.