I think the strangest story I have is a lady who called confused about the front door,
Lady"In the picture of the front of the house, the front door is in the middle of the house, but an inside picture shows the front door by a wall."
Me"That's because the inside of the house is split into separate rooms with walls."
Rinse and repeat 5x. Then I get a little impatient, tell the woman to have a nice day and I get off the phone. Later I find my ad on Craigslist has been ghosted, since she was insistent it must be a scam based on the front door being next to a wall inside the house, she said when we were on the phone that I must have been using pictures from two different houses.
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Someone texts our ad listing number and we start texting. She can't make the next rental open house because her huband will be working, and she wants me to show the property some other time. I say I need to ask some prequalification questions (income, credit, #occupants, pets), which launches her into a rant about credit scores,
Applicant"With all these questions I can tell u are looking for perfect credit which we don't have, that is just a number it doesn't define a person..."
Me "Asking about credit is not asking for perfect credit."
Her "Our credit scores are honestly low and we are walking away from are current home because we can no longer afford..."
Me "I'm sorry, but I can't make a special trip out to show the home to people who don't meet my prequalification questions; it appears you won't qualify due to credit. If it doesn't rent out this week there will be another open house sometime next weekend."
Her "Like I said a number does not define a whole person. I am very sorry you are so prejudice against families would fell on hard times and are trying to get there lives back..."
Me "This is a rental business. We have written criteria. If someone doesn't meet the criteria, we cannot rent to them. If someone doesn't meet the prequalification, I cannot make a special trip out to show them the house.”
Her " Again a number(credit score) does not and will NEVER define a person. A number of 700 to720 renting our home instead of a really honest hard working PERSON is beyond me.Good Luck finding that perfect credit score to rent this house.Why would you want a number is beyond me. Good Luck".
I never had a chance to say what our score was and it’s not 700! But at that point I didn't respond. Then 24 hrs later,
"I don't know if you are the person I was texting with last night but I showed these messages to my attorney and he said these remarks are slanderous, assaulting, discriminatory and none of what you said to me in text was representative of what was in the listing of this rental property. You MAY be hearing from my attorney this week regarding your actions."
Didn't respond, didn’t hear from an atty. I was able to google the number she was posting from and in two clicks find her Facebook page. About a week later the woman does attend a rental open house, without her husband incidentally. She doesn't identify herself as texting with anyone but after talking to her for a bit I recognize her, by the time I do, she fortunately didn't want to apply anyway because the application fee of $25/person would run them $100 for the 4 adults they have and that they,”Can’t keep applying places and paying application fees”.
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Got someone who was interested in renting through a realtor. Realtor said they wanted rent lowered $100/mo, for us to take care of cutting the grass, for us to reduce the security deposit.
We said no.
Several days later I am asked if their application is approved. I’m like, what are you talking about, I never got a paid for application and never got a response that they were even still interested after we denied their requests.
Realtor shares a dropbox with me with tons of documents in it and claims her applicants are preapproved to buy a 300k house (interestingly that doc is NOT in the dropbox) so they can afford it. I tell her based on what they put down as their income on the application they cannot afford to rent our rental (we require 3x and they were below), and I have never seen people underreport what they actually make.
She claims one of the two adults can afford the rent on her own based on the paystubs in the dropbox. The paystubs show that the applicant is not salaried like claimed on the application, but a substitute teacher who clearly gets paid by the actual days worked and I inform the agent of such, and because she get variable pay I will need a W2 for her.
Then she claims the other adult makes enough income on his own and his W2 is in the dropbox. The W2 shows 9k of income for the entire preceding year.
I tell the agent that at this point I will not be doing any more free forensic accounting and that I need application fees and proof of income.Then she asks if I can get the application processed by the next day. I reply again with what I need. She continues to try to bully me into accepting the docs she has provided which include a years worth of rent payment cancelled checks for rent that is about half what our property’s rent is. I restate what we need. A few days later she asks me if the app has been processed (I still never got the addl info or app fees). I restate what we need. Then she says that my actions have a discriminatory connotation and that she has advised her clients to not provide any additional documentation and that they are no longer interested.
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In most cities we rent in there are rental inspections and the city determines the occupancy. An applicant got really upset; kept insisting his 2 yr old shouldn't count, I'm like,"A child is a person and therefore counts towards the occupancy." He just gets more irate, I tell him I didn't make up the rule and that he is welcome to get in touch with the city to discuss the rental program and occupancy requirements. Rinse and repeat that conversation a few more times as he gets more irate, saying the city can’t do that, it’s illegal, etc. I just tell him he is welcome to discuss it with the city, I tell him what department to ask for, etc. Finally a new group of potential applicants walk in to our open house and I attend to them.
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Talking to a couple who right off the bat said they have no pets. Then they ask,"What rules do you have" and clearly seem upset that landlords even have rules and they want to know what they all are. In hindsight I should have asked,”Well, what types of things are you concerned about” but we mention if we find a pet you didn't say you have then XYZ happens, then they tell us they have a caged bird. Then they ask why we don’t allow a bird. I think,”Because birds smell” but that sounds rude and would then only get a, ”My bird doesn’t smell” response. My husband says it’s because people don’t keep them cages and they poop all over and peck and destroy the property. Seems like there is a lot of confusion out there on what a pet is. I think going forward we will ask,"Do you have any non-human animals living with you like a fish, bird, cat, dog, pony, hamster, snake, monkey...do you pet sit, pet foster, run an animal hospital, pet sanctuary…"
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Always amazed at the people who ask if we will be upgrading things or if we can for them, and they often turn out to be the people who have no prayer of qualifying. “I noticed that the windows on the front of the house are new, will you be replacing the ones on the back of the house?”Me ”They currently work and are not drafty, so no.”Just the other day a family comes in and the first thing they ask is if they can replace a dining room light fixture, the son says,”My dad likes fancy things.” They can’t qualify due to income and credit. Last year had a lady who wanted us to change out a bunch of carpet and paint before she moved in, she had a rap sheet of crimes going back 20 yrs…
