I’ve rented, and I’ve owned; and I don’t know if the rest of the U.S. knows this, but in a lot of ways, renting is better.
Grass getting long? Furnace not furnace-ing? Concerned that the downstairs guy may be raising ferrets without a license? None of this is your problem! Call the landlord!
The only thing worse than owning your own home?
Renting one out.
That’s right. Take your shots! I’m a landlord.
Look at that word: landlord. Doesn’t that look romantic? I mean, you have land, you have lording, what’s not to love?
Would you believe the tenants?
I really should’ve thought this whole landlording thing over more carefully.
I’m tired, ladies and gentlemen. Tired of “I know we signed a lease in September, but we broke up and neither of us want to stay”. Tired of “I know my rent was due a week ago, but I had unexpected bills and don’t have enough money!” Tired of “Sorry to call so late, but our toilet hasn’t flushed for almost a week now…”
Clearly, I am being punished.
I’ve gone over, in my head, the list of offenses of which I am guilty and heretowith offer myself up for proper rebuke.
I didn’t pay for lunch for a full week in 12th grade due to an office error and never told them.
I have given away prescription pain pills to friends in pain.
I scowl more often than I intend to.
There’s more, but already I fear I’ve lost your respect.
So now what?
Is it too late to rent a place with me as the landlord?
About Bob Dylan
6 days ago
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39 comments:
the last place i ever rented was a house in santa barbara, where the landlord said the reason my dishwasher flooded the kitchen was because 'i did the dishes too many times'. the girlfriend of the man living in the MIL apartment in the back of the property would collect my dog's poop and leave it on my front porch. after that i said i'm buying. while i sometimes dislike the handcuff of being an owner, i don't have to worry about the sound of feet above my ceiling, someone stumbling home at 3am, or a girl playing Seal songs repetitively in the apt. next door, or if i want to play my clash record super loud when i'm making truffles, no complaints except the dirty look from the dog (she prefers hip hop). renting my house out is a terrifying thought...i think i'd just sell it rather than see someone in "MY" house that i'd have to revisit. eeenteresting.
EcoGrrl, lucky for me (!) I live upstairs from the unit described, and we run a pretty tight ship. But I hear you -- I once rented a place where the downstairs people's after-bar parties were legendary. I once woke to what may have been 30 people singing, in falsetto, You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman. While amusing now, it was 2:00 a.m. on a Wednesday morning...
My mom and bonus dad (stepdad) were also having troubles with renters. My mom bought a house just a few blocks from his right before the market crashed, and then they got married and wanted to combine households & sell their two little houses to buy one big one. But of course who wants to sell a home they've put a lot of money into for less than what they paid?
Luckily for them, my hubby & I are not ready to take the home ownership plunge so we were able to mutually help each other out by renting my mom's place. And they compromised with a remodel & addition to my stepdad's house.
And now I get to live just a few blocks from my momma. And she & Bonus Dad get to have peace of mind that their tenants will pay on time, and while they may get calls like "The basement is flooding!" they would probably get those calls even if we owned our own home :)
However, if you are serious about needing renters I may know a nice family looking to move. A young couple with two kids :)
I am a Landlord, too. I have had tenants from the bad place and tenants from the good place. Right now, I don't know where they are from, but they are late with the rent again. In general my tenants keep the house clean and the yard mowed and usually pay the rent on time. This is a first on the whole rent thing. I have a property manager who takes a 10% cut, but usually is pretty good at finding good tenants. About every 4 to 5 years one of my girlfriends who has a remodeling company and I get to spend a lot of time together redoing the place to rent again. Last year there was a tenant drought. Apparently everyone went to live with their parents, kids, or in a shelter, because my house was vacant for a year. That was a super drag.
I think you would be a pushover as a landlord :)
I've rented and I've owned. I have never lorded over land. I thunk about it one time and by God's great hand I ran into a friend who was renting out his place. Well renting would mean an exchange of funds in return for a roof. Seems the funds quit flowing and he was in month 3 of the eviction process.
While I have the tools to maintain a place I have not the patience.
Good Luck to you me lord.
We've rented, owned and rented out, with all the usual problems.
We were once called by the Home Owners Asscoiation about a complaint by a neigbor next to a condo we were renting out to a newly married couple. Apparently the newly married man was routinely flashing the neighbors, standing stark naked in front of the window facing them.
Unfortunately, the wife was the one on the lease only, so my husband had to go tell her that her husband was playing games.
There are times you'd rather deal with a broken toilet: You can call a plumber.
:-) So glad I chose to write about this. It's been weighing on me.
Having been on both sides of this coin, I am rather a pushover, but where money becomes an issue I am surprisingly linear. The money is owed, the lease is legal and binding, and I wish you luck; but don't tell ME about your problems. That's for your family and friends.
Sheesh!
I rent. And I'm a good renter. Always on time with rent - always early in fact. It's my landlord who is a dork. He's always trying to weasel his way out of fixing things and attempting to guilt me into helping with snow removal and lawn work. I'm always, "Dude. I rent so I don't have to do that crap. Your job." And then I flounce away.
I've oft said, "My next place, I'm renting. More wiggle room." For sure it will have 4-free-standing; knock wood the people behind the shared walls have been the quiet, normal kind for a good long time now (karma pays, after years of topless loud girl, straight outta Compton posse and guy who verbally abused his kid…and wife…and the squirrels), but it only takes one dumbass.
Snow removal and lawn work used to be part of our lease -- money off your rent if you did it. Never again. They never did it, and the place looked awful. Now we do it.
Oh, and Sarah? Send me some info on the young couple. :-) The place (two bedroom, 1300 sq ft, fantastic woodwork, colorfully painted) will be available Feb 1. E-mail address is in profile! (Goes for anyone else interested in living in Northeast Mpls as well...)
We rented more years than we owned.
While all that rent stuff is good, just call someone when something doesn't work, etc .. there is the downside that I hope never ever to return to.
The landlord who thinks he still belongs in your yard, or his demented (adult) daughter in her underwear, in a kiddy pool, outside of my teen sons bedroom .. A landlord who lets me park in the driveway of the house I am renting but then tries to get his truck past my car anyway and does terrible damage to my car .. then blames me for my parking.
A landlord who can keep my deposit because he is pissed because we bought a dream home and moved away.
I will take my chances owning and dealing with what I get .. at least I won't harrass myself .. or will I ?
Ah the joys of being a landlord.
I have often been that person singing drunk at 2am on a Wednesday.
I feel bad for our landlord whenever we call him about something that isn't working. I'm not surprised to hear this from the other side of renting. It's all about common courtesy though. Not like any of your demands are unreasonable, so they shouldn't have any either. :)
Perhaps it is here that I will add that our renters are warned that we have two big parties a year that go into the wee hours: our advice to them is to either have a party themselves or to take $50, on us, and head out of town. :-)
For so many reasons I'd rather rent than own. But YOU! That makes YOU "Pearl the Landlord," one of the best viral videos of all time!
This is your lucky day! We are having a special! Feed some squirrels and we'll forget all your past indiscretions. Give us lots of nuts and we might even help evict bad tenents.
I still respect you. We're renting these days and the neighbors tell us we keep the place nicer than the last two people who "owned" the house. That's easy enough - we used to own a house and developed those lawncare/landscaping habits that don't seem to go away. I may grumble about it, but I'm a whiz with the pushmower and the weed whacker.
Worst mistake I ever made was being a landlord, an absentee one at that. I rented out home in Atlanta while living in Florida, by the time I had threatened eviction it was too late. During the midnight drive to Atl, the bastards trashed the house - painted carpets, feces on the walls, etc...
Never again
I don't miss renting. I don't miss being a landlord either, but hubby does so he has been looking to buy another home ever since we paid off our mortgage 3 years ago.
I don't miss my mortgage payment either
Hubby and I had a brief stint as landlords back in the 70's. Then we got tired of "the other tenant is trying to poison my cat" "the other tenant's dog is pooing on my steps" "the pipes are frozen because we forgot to close the cellar bulkhead doors." We sold the house to the first to make an offer!
I own (well, technically, the bank owns but lets me live here for that exhorbitant ransom fee known as a mortgage payment) and I like it that way. The only excuses I have to listen to are my own. No more having absentee landlords tell me that I have to "expect some noise" when he should instead tell the downstairs tenants to stop slamming the apartment door (that is right under my bed) as hard as they can at 3:00 every night, followed by the TV on at full blast until 6:00 a.m., oh no. Mind you, we solved that by calling said landlord at 3:00 a.m. and holding the phone receiver to the floor. When he could clearly make out the words coming from the TV through the phone, he had to concede that perhaps we had a point about the noise level/timing.
Then there was the landlord who told us he was selling the house, actually had a number of potential "buyers" traipse through the place, one of whom insisted the linen closet be dismantled so they could view the attic crawl space and then, when I returned the key to him after we (and our two small chidren) had moved to another home in anticipation of the house being sold out from under us, told me that he "would never had considered selling if he thought we would stay there for a while." WTF??? How about just coming right out and asking, "So. Happy here? Plan on staying for a couple of years?"
To my credit, I didn't actually hit him, but judging by the look on his face, I think he was afraid I might.
So yes. Own own home. No tenants. Peace, blessed peace.
You're very brave to rent your home to people.
I think that's all I can say.
I think I was blessed to have wonderful landlords when I was renting. There was only one notable exception and that was the landlord from hell. He was an army officer and he actually brought a girlfriend to my rented house with no notification and was playing music on my stereo when I came home from work that day. (I was in the neighborhood and wanted to show her the place was his rationale.) He also refused to return our $3000 deposit, until we got a judgment against him in small claims court. We had failed to remove wire hangers in the closets and did not clean the fire extinguisher. That was his reason but the judge didn't see it his way. Owning a home is fine, but it is nice to pick up the phone and report problems to a reasonable landlord. We pay our rent on time, and you take care of the maintenance. Now we pay the house payment and do the maintenance. Oh well.
I rent and intend to rent for life. I was once an "owner" and it was not fun. Besides, I'm restless, so my soul was meant for renting ;-)
Good luck!
xoxo
I was going to make a semi-helpful comment about how I'm told that the most important part of landlording is to choose the right tenant or a near funny one about how maybe it's karma and you were Genghis Khan in a previous life, but then I saw that you are a scowler and I don't approve of that, little miss Scowly McScowlerson, and so you get no comment from me.
I was always a perfect tenant and a perfect landlord.
And I have some, uh, "waterfront property" down here in Florida for sale... if you are interested.
Renting is the way to go....
I miss having to never deal with anything that got broken. My only obligation as a renter was to write out a check each month.
Paradise!
wow some of the comments look longer than the post. I'll be short. I'm not the type of person for landlording. The whole scene would worry me too much. You're not a slum lord - right?
You know that week you spent eating all those free lunches in the 12th grade?...You are completely forgiven for the food you donate to charity. May your conscience be clean, dear girl!
=]
xx
You guys are killing me.
No, I am not a slum lord. :-) I am THE slum lord.
:-D
Oh, dear! I should not have read this just now! We've been trying to sell our home for the past five months, all to no avail. The idea has been presented that perhaps we should consider...RENTING! I'm thinking not, now!! Thanks! Hope it gets better soon!!
I never want to be a landlord. Getting my kid to pay her rent on time is hard enough. And I throw in utilities. She is so irresponsible.
Ah landlords and tenants. The story that seems to be common across the world !
Now..is blogger a landlord too !?!? :)
You may succeed at landlording, where I failed. After the third renter in four years, that puppy went on the market. Daddy was successful at the endeavor, but I guess my little heart wasn't hard enough.
"I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member" - Groucho Marx
I don't think I'd ever rent a house to myself. I'd be too picky about dirty carpets, loud neighbors and dripping faucets. And heck, if I buried bodies in the backyard you can be darn sure that the landlord would know about 'em, and that would put a big crimp into my weekend "hobby" ;-)
Hey, cool! Ive been looking for a place to rent and yours sounds perfect. Theres only me, Scar, Lefty and Lefty's Pit Bulls but we need four rooms so I can pull down the Harley without having to go out the back in the cold.
I'll pay rent, honest I will, just as soon as I get work and clear my Child Support backlog, and in the meantime you dont mind if we grow some pot under lights in the back room?
I am also a landlord.
It's not something that fills me with joy, I have to say. But, it always looks good on paper.
Hey Pearl! I rent, and love it. I'd never lease, as I'm not a people person. They're so untidy! Give me a dog, anyday. Indigo x
I just have to take a good analgesic as Vicodin to ease my chronic pain, but I am also aware that I must be careful when taking them because that is what I indicated the doctor.
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