Ugh, what a weekend.
It all started Friday night while I was at the shipping depot. I started receiving texts from one of the Africans of property Chi: Stutter Man...
Stutter Man (6:26pm): When does the lease expire?
Me (6:27pm): It expired last year… you guys are living month to month now
Stutter Man (6:28pm): Just send me the copy the soon you can (Earlier, he had asked if I can send them a copy of their lease because they lost theirs. I initially agreed.)
Me (6:28pm): Sent it in the mail today
Stutter Man (6:29pm): Ok
Stutter Man (6:30pm): Well we need our deposit to make the down payment of our new house
Me (6:32pm): You are entitled to the deposit once everything is out of the house
Stutter Man (6:33pm): That’s not gona happen. Don’t expect us to pay you for the rest of the time we are here.
Stutter Man (6:35pm): You kick us out we need our deposit to make payment for our new house. If you we not paying at the end of this month
See? See why I wanted to beat their asses? And not just because he doesn’t know proper grammar, but because he’s an asshole to boot. Whenever a tenant wants their security deposit back, it should only be given back AFTER they’ve moved all their shit out of the apartment. Then both the landlord and the tenant go through the place to see if they caused any damage to be paid for, and then the deposit is returned. Those are the rules, and they know this because they saw me do it with the Homos who used to live upstairs?! I never forgot when I had to learn this lesson the hard way with Stan. So I was pissed for about an hour, and then calmed down and continued working at the shipping depot. I haven’t had communication with them since, and I don’t plan to send them a copy of the lease. Why do favors to animals who tell me flat out that they’re not gonna pay anything? I'll keep the lines of communications open, but fuck ‘em. I’ll let the courts handle them. This was the start of an extremely bad weekend in my property management career.
On Saturday and Sunday, I had a total of 7 appointments. These are people who have seen the honest pictures I put on there and have jobs. Guess how many of them actually showed up. 5? 3? 1? ZERO. Not one of the prospectives showed up, and I was really confused. This has never happened to me before and I didn’t understand why. They saw the pictures so they knew the place wasn’t Shangri-La. The neighborhood is okay, about as good as property Alpha’s neighborhood. I was able to get more people for property Chi’s apartments whenever I posted an ad, so what the hell was going on? There was even a woman who lived in A LAUNDRY ROOM, and even she never showed up. I stood there in the apartment defeated, and wondered what the next move was. It got so bad that I didn't even shower on Sunday morning to show the property, because I had a feeling no one would show. If I can’t even get people to look at the place, how will I get it rented out? Did I misjudge the neighborhood when I first bought property Charlie? Must I start the renovations early just to get someone in there? Was it wise to get the Jeep Cherokee and add $339 to my monthly expenses with this place still vacant and a presumed war with the Africans on the horizon? I had a ton of questions like these and it took a couple of hours to get my head clear.
I had two more tenants that cancelled on me today, so I’m trying a new strategy. For the rest of February, I’ll tell prospectives to drive by the area to see if they’re interested, and then call back. At the end of this week, I’ll simply put up a “For Rent” sign on property Charlie. I figure that I’ll have better luck renting out to passer-bys that are familiar with the neighborhood. But that’s about all I’m gonna do. It’ll get rented out as it is, and I’m not gonna sweat it too much. The important thing is to put the right tenant in there. I remember having a Public Assistance pig call and ask if the apartment was available to her. For a split second I was tempted. Then I heard the baby crying in the background and someone telling the baby to shut the fuck up. If I moved that mongrel tenant into property Charlie, the other tenants would assuredly jump ship, leaving me with 3 empty apartments and a piece of shit in the only occupied unit. The question she asked me was simple: Would you rather have one apartment vacant or three? So I declined her and that was that. Another guy just called and said that he had just "come home", and was looking for an apartment. "Come home" is code for coming home FROM PRISON! How fucking desperate do they think I am? I may have inherited one convicted felon in property Charlie, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna choose one of my own.
I don’t care if that place is empty for the rest of this year. Quality control is so damned important—a lesson I’ve learned several times over. Whether it’s the Africans or the vacant unit, I’m sticking to both the legal rules and my rules to handle the situations. No matter how bad it gets, it can only get worse if I break the rules for the wrong tenant. I won’t need to learn that lesson again.
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