Nicky the Cyprus

Um… I may have a problem. For the past two days, I haven’t seen my new tenant Nicky’s car parked outside the house when I got home from work. Her mailbox still had the rubber band around it, and the bed that she was trying to move in is still on the front porch. I started to wonder: Did she pull a Cyprus?

Cyprus was a guy I wrote about in a post I did in July called No More Cyprus. Cyprus was a guy that I rented out the upstairs unit of property Chi to, but took only $100 as a deposit. He ended up not moving in and I was stuck with an empty apartment for 4 more days before I rented it out to Gary and Ira. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’ll find out on Saturday. Contacting her now would be a mistake. If she is actually just getting herself together and is having trouble moving stuff in and I call her asking her why her bed is still outside, she’ll feel as if she were being watched. No tenant likes to feel as if their landlord is watching them, so I’ll wait to see if she defaults on the payment due. If she doesn’t return my calls like Cyprus did, then I’ll know that she’s gone and I can put the ad back up on Monday to get it rented out.

Looking at it objectively, I still believe I made the right call. Nicky was the perfect choice for a tenant given my options. The mistake I made was not taking enough of a security deposit. $100 might seem like a lot to me, but for tenants moving it might not be a big deal. She may have found a better place and decided it was worth losing the $100 to jump ship. The next time I’m forced to take a tenant that is good for the apartment but doesn’t have all the money, I have to raise the price to hold the apartment to $300. I have to make it too expensive to jump ship. Had I done that, Nicky would not have the money, would not have been able to move in, and I would probably have a different tenant right now. I’ll have to wait to see what happens, but I have to admit that this feels like a step back. I should have learned my lesson from Cyprus and I didn’t. Well, I’m learning it now and it’s a lesson I don’t plan to forget… again.