Indians in Alpha

In real estate and general business, you have to make your big mistakes early, and they can't be too big to sink you. Back when I bought Property Alpha in 2007, I was new to the people of Smalltown and tried different types of tenants.

I tried Charmaine, a ghetto-fabulous woman who had an equally ghetto-fab 9 year old daughter. They were my first and last Section 8 tenants. Charmaine was a terror in the neighborhood, calling code enforcement on neighbors and bringing her drug-dealing ex-con boyfriend around the house. She also had a problem with me living in the basement. I threw them all out. The next was a young couple that lived in the upstairs apartment, Adam and Shannon. I was very new to tenant/property management at the time, and I made some mistakes in handling them. They left. Then came the ghetto family with a mother, a daughter, and the daughter's FIVE kids (she was 22). I threw them out after reports surfaced of their loud parties while I was away at work and the daughter's boyfriend stealing $30 from my apartment while I was at work. After them came Matt Philly, and I already wrote about him in an earlier post, Karma. Then came Konnie and her two kids. Konnie was the sister of the boyfriend of my next door neighbor's daughter. She turned out to be a compulsive liar and I have to evict her and her two kids. And finally, Property Alpha got the Indians.

I decided to move in the Indians in early 2010 just to try them out. Usually, landlords move immigrants into bad neighborhoods. This is done because they don't cause trouble, keep to themselves, they appear too poor to steal from, and they are used to living in bad areas. Enough of them can even turn a bad neighborhood into a good one. Property Alpha, however, is in a nice quiet area but I wanted to try them out anyway. I moved them into the downstairs apartment and they have been amazing. Perfect tenants that barely bother me about anything. I liked them so much that I moved another Indian family into the upstairs apartment late last year.

On Saturday, the upstairs family said they had to move out. Their son got married and the apartment had become too small for them. I didn't mind them leaving, because it would give me the opportunity to rent that unit for $50 for the new tenants! I met with them Sunday to discuss the details, and they said they will be out by the 3rd week of August. Then they said that another Indian family will be moving in a day later. Wow!

While it sucks that I'd probably have to keep the rent the same, it was so cool that they had already found new tenants for me. I'll have to check them out first, of course, but this works out great. I have to meet with them, have them fill out and sign some stuff, then they move in with no interruption in rent payroll. I've grown up around Nigerians, Guyanese Indians and Guyanese blacks so I'm used to their culture, particularly their food and music. I like my precious Indians, and I'm glad that I get to hear the sounds of Indian music and smell spicy chicken curry for a while longer.