A landlords story.

I decided to get into rental properties in 2005. Had to look that up.
It all started with a house I purchased at an repo auction. $15k.
The place was destroyed! After $25k went into new HVAC, electronic panel, appliances, kitchen, hardwood floors, etc, etc, we advertised for our first renter.

We settled on a single mom with two kids.
Sweet lady and sweet kids.
Never had a single problem with the family.
That was a very encouraging start to the endeavor.
Actually rented a house to the oldest kid for a few years.

A couple years later my main business was doing well so I bought another house that didn’t need much work. A coat of paint, some carpet cleaning and some new door hardware and on the market it went.
This time it was a couple with three kids.
Six months in and the rent check was always late... then later and later..
After talking to the renter and asking if they were having trouble they assured me everything was fine and it wouldn’t happen again.
The next month, no check...
I call and of course the phone is disconnected....
I stop at the property and the old next door neighbor says ,(they left last week)...
Ok.... so I open the door,, not locked and oh my holy hell!
Garbage piled everywhere...
Closets full of garbage...
And I mean garbage, food and everything.
Holes in the walls, unrecognizable stains...

A learning experience for sure... now my leases contains a clause for random home inspections with a 24hr notice.

I purchased a house about every six months or so until a few years back I had eleven rentals. For the most part the renters are good people. The best ones tend to be young people starting out or older folks winding down.
But there are people that will just never change. Bad life choices become a habit for some. For others it’s for lacking the ability to say no.

For example.
I had a small home that was rented by a old widow.
She was on a pension with a fixed income.
Wonderful lady that baked awesome cookies.
She had breathing issues and couldn’t exert herself to much so I agreed to mow the yard and shovel the snow. Not a bad trade for a reliable renter. And the cookies!
All was well until her son moved back to town.
He was a waste of oxygen..
Constantly pressuring her into giving him money. “They’ll take me to jail if I don’t pay it mom!”.. I can’t prove it but I will die believing he was hitting her.
About every other month she was short on rent money and wouldn’t come out and say why but I knew... then I finally got her to admit her son had moved in, (that’s a violation of the lease if his name is not on the occupancy line).
I told her I understood the situation and asked if she wanted me to get her son to move out and she happily said yes. I presented him with eviction papers and he reluctantly moved out and out of town. Come to find out he had some arrest warrants out with his name on them. Lol...

Now for the big ball of fun.
The final nail in the rental coffin..
One of my houses was rented to two young men.. early twenties.
Not an unusual occurrence, lots of girls do the same when they are young.
Less than a month later I get a call from the police that there are strange smells coming from the house.. strange? What’s that mean exactly?
So I attempt to contact the renter and get no answer. Go figure.
Then I call the police and ask them to meet me at the address.
They recognize the smell...

Want to guess?

Somebody was cooking meth in my fricken house!
The cops call for backup and then enter the house with protective gear.
I couldn’t even go inside because of the contamination.
$16k to clean that house.
I had to hire a certified company to take down the drywall and pull up the flooring.
Hazardous waste disposal is not cheap.

That was when I decided to ease out of the rental business.
To much risk to bother with.
And the expenses....ugh..

Mortgage payments are bad enough as everybody knows.
But most people don’t realize the property taxes are higher on rentals.
3% as opposed to 1% for a homestead.
Then the insurance for liability and damage...wow
I’m down to six houses now and will be down to four before 2021.

Well anyways, in the rental business it’s easy to become jaded towards the human race. You will encounter some sad individuals with a few wonderful ones.

a reply to: Bluntone22

People change. I was an awful tenant for a few years in my twenties. Now I'm a great one. Pay my rent and everything. Not sure I can even fathom what it'd be like to have the luxury of getting into the rental property game.

We were landlords for a while. Had a good renter, they moved when they said they were going to. Had another good renter, they wanted out early. Whatever. Then it was a string of bad renters until finally I said enough. It was costing me thousands a year. I will never, ever do that again. People suck.

I used to do house cleaning with my mother and we got calls to clean rentals sometimes. Made me lose much of what little faith I had left in humanity. People would have been living in conditions I wouldn't let my dog live in.

In my mother's case, the real estate agent was almost as bad. He was my step sisters husband and the SOB underpaid my widowed mother (stepfather had passed) and often took forever to get her money to her.

People suck. I'm not a 50+ year old cynic; I'm a 50+ a old realist.

a reply to: DictionaryOfExcuses

Not sure I would use the term luxury...

Maybe for some of the big investment companies but for an individual it can be a real mother.

originally posted by: HalWesten
We were landlords for a while. ... People suck.

HA! I see you're a realist, too.

a reply to: incoserv

There’s plenty of bad landlords too.
Some can be cold hearted bastards.

a reply to: Bluntone22

I saw some crazy stuff when I was renting in a small six plex. My landlord was great, even gave me a job as a sort of caretaker, 120 off a month for small stuff.

One summer some dude moved in, he was a mess, always getting delivered booze, went through probably three cars in less than two years. Then, all of a sudden he just went ghost, hardly came out, hardly spoke to anyone, and his like 70 year old father moved in to I'm guessing set him straight.
Near the end where the landlord forced a renoviction on him, I was ushering in paramedics into his unit to save his father while he was passed out drunk, and it was disgusting in there.
Not to mention the sketchy people he had in there as, subletters, this one guy who was there was running from the police.

My landlord had to gut the whole unit and go to court for his involvements with the people who were subletting.
The building wasn't even in a sketchy area either, just this one bad judgement by my landlord.

a reply to: strongfp

I hear ya...
Even checking references doesn’t always work.
You do get pretty good at reading between the lines.

a reply to: Bluntone22

I have been doing this half of my life.


I should send you picks of the last ones who left....it is a nightmare, I get it.

a reply to: DrumsRfun

Earlier today in another thread I was questioned about,,, well I took it as my moral compass was in doubt.
I marked it down as someone just now having any experience in the field.

It is truly very hard to not become a jaded cold hearted bastard.

a reply to: Bluntone22

I hate pig tenants that just abuse the home.
I try to be a model tenant, one of our family friends is a LL and we rented from him for years until we moved to MI. The previous tenant there was a mutual friend of him & my mother, and...she was a complete pig. Let the dog crap and pee all over the house and then didn't clean it up until someone pointed out the reeking messes probably days later, wadded up dryer lint in the walk-in closet/laundry room and just...left it all over the floor. Splattered food all over the stove and counters and let it crust up, I don't think she EVER scrubbed the toilet or tub, ugh.

We did the cleaning heavy lifting for him after she moved out so we could move in faster (I was about 8 months knocked up and we weren't having much luck finding an affordable new abode for 3) Eventually, I discussed with him (LL) the possibility of pulling up ALL the wrecked linoleum and carpet, and putting down maybe peel & stick out of our pocket, and he was very amiable to the idea. We also replaced the toilet (seal was bad anyway, and it was damn old, not water efficient) and the kitchen faucet (it was always loose no matter how tightened down, I don't know WTF that woman did in there...) The lighting fixture in the bathroom never worked right, so we put in a new one, too.
Since the friend TOOK the medicine cabinet above the sink with her when she left, we put a new one in (and left it, they're not expensive)

We felt all this was a VERY fair trade since he never asked for first/last/security, the least we could do was put a little elbow grease into the place in gratitude. So we did, and he was more than happy to agree. Part of his willingness had to do with a god-awful divorce that took up all his time back then, a lot of lawyer meetings & court dates, the ex didn't make it easy on him by any means.

Lately, I'm in the process of replacing all the blinds on the windows here.
I've already replaced the window screens with solar screening (makes a massive difference inside) recaulked the bathroom entirely, we painted the deck one spring (after much convincing that we were competent enough to do it, they were justifiably leery of letting tenants do that)
There isn't much left to replace or fix other than the blinds. I had a custom 2-inch set made for the two south-facing windows upstairs, since it BROILS in the summer in there (they helped immensely)

Now I'm making my way around the blinds on other windows with just 4 left to do. The original ones are old, very yellowed & brittle. Yeah, I could always call and say "Hey, Bob! How've you guys been? By the way, I need X number of window blinds sets, these need replaced"...but that just seems petty, these aren't expensive and the rental company has more pressing things to do with their time, IMO. The customs cost quite a bit, but they're a heat-reflecting wonder, so it's my donation to the place if we move out. We're hoping to buy it eventually, but if we don't, they can have a couple hundred worth of mini-blinds. They're just blinds, FFS. My mother is the kind of renter who'd remove everything she put in and leave it that way. I'm not that lowbrow.

a reply to: Nyiah

I'm always upgrading things like blinds...
That never ends.

They can hang their own damn curtains....lol

We are currently looking for a place, but more of a piece land with a shack on it or move a tiny home to it. Heck, even a fixer upper.

Been seeing alot more extra homes and land for sale, meaning not the owners residency, but hunting and vacation properties and rental places.

Just waiting on fixing my credit and saving money for the right time. Hopefully before this time next year.


Good luck and wise decision on your part during these times.

originally posted by: Bluntone22

There’s plenty of bad landlords too.
Some can be cold hearted bastards.

Lol!! Makes you wonder how come the bad landlords dont get the bad tenent's.

One thing I've learned in life is that people in general don't look after anything

they don't own......property, cars, tools, clothes .......

a reply to: Bluntone22

I feel for ya. I had a duplex I rented for about 13 years until I had enough, never again. Had mostly good renters but after a few bad tenants it just wasn’t for me.

I feel you. I generally just flip my properties. I had a few rentals for a while, but I ended up getting rid of them. There was just too many problems.

Regular inspections. Simple problem solved.

Did you expect easy money?


a reply to: Bluntone22

a reply to: hombero

I’ve owned multiple businesses over the last 30 years.
Never has it been easy.

But why would anyone expect a dumpster full of garbage or a meth lab?

Easy? No..
Is it worth it? Not really.