As some of you know Jesse and I own a condo in Springville Utah and we currently have renters there. Over the 2 years they have lived there things have gone pretty smoothly; except for a few strange complaints. Things that are in the contract for them to maintain but still things come up and they make me laugh so I thought I would share them:
First call we ever had from them they'd been there 3 months we were just moving out to Iowa, it went something like this:
them : "Yes the lights in are front room have burned out"
us: "...and?"
them: "We need someone to come and change them."
us: "...That is not something we maintain, you have to provide your own light bulbs."
them: " But they are so high up we can't reach them"
us: "Go borrow a ladder"
Not word for word what was said but you get it. Everywhere I've ever lived, Jesse as well, you have to provide your own light bulbs, maybe they haven't?
Then things were pretty good. They paid their rent in advanced a few months and on time so there were no issues that came up until the next summer.
them: " So summer is starting and our Air Conditioner isn't cold enough"
us: "...Ok..well did you change the filter, like the contract says you need to do annually?"
them: "..yeah but its not working, you need to have somebody come out here and look at it"
us: "ok sure"
Legitimate complaint, a little entitled that its not cold enough for them, but I get it. So we talked to our friend who happens to work on AC and Heating units that happens to live in the next building what might cause something like that to happen. He tells us usually its the filter but every once in a while there is a fuse problem that can be fixed pretty easily. So we hire him to go and take a look at it. An $80 consult later guess what the problem was? The Filter. He said it was filthy and hadn't been changed in at least a year (when we changed it when they moved in!).
Then we talked to them about whether they wanted to renew their lease for another year. Because really we have a renter we live in another state why try to hunt for a new one when we can't be there in person? So lease renewed all the same rules apply and this is the call we get next:
(basically)
them: "Our fridge is too cold, the food in the back of the fridge keeps freezing"
us: "...turn the cold down"
them: "we did it is on the lowest setting, Its just too cold all of a sudden in the back"
us: "have you needed to defrost the freezer? Has there been anything leaking?"
them: "No the freezer works fine, the fridge is just too cold"
us: "...ok....well we'll research what may be wrong and see if we need a technician to check it out."
We did have someone check it out and guess what NOTHING was wrong with the fridge. Surprise. So at this point we are like ok we will just take these unnecessary calls out of the deposit no worries.
Then we begin to feel the pain of our renters not paying the full mortgage. We have been paying the difference for a while now and it is just getting to be too much to pay our rent here and half of theirs there. So we look into selling it, and we have lost value in the property due to economy like many others, so we decided on a short sale. (A short sale is basically we can't afford to make our payments anymore, we are using student loans to pay a mortgage at a place we don't live, and we will either foreclose or if we can find someone to buy for less than we owe we bring the offer to the bank. The bank looks to see if we have need to make this sale, and we do, then decides whether they would prefer to lose their full investment in us or take the deal of the other buyer.) Being nice landlords we let our tenants know that this is the direction we are going; and offer to let them make an offer if they want to buy the condo. As per our contract we do not need to do this we can give them 30 days notice to leave when we need them out, but we're nice. We made an agreement to lower their rent a few hundred dollars a month, cuz we're nice. Their response went a little like this:
them: "We aren't interested in purchasing the property, but since we are helping you sell your condo we would like our full deposit back. We take good care of the place and keep it very clean. We would like the deposit back in full and to have it go towards next the 2 months rent"
us: (WTF? aren't you the same tenants that can't change the ac filter? and have to cold a fridge and want me to change your light bulbs?) "No"
them: "We keep it very clean, and we are doing you a favor helping you sell your condo so we should get our deposit back."
us: "Your deposit is not like rent. If something is to get damaged while you are there or anything needs to be replaced the SECURITY deposit will be used to cover that loss. It is our Security to know that you will take care of our place. We can wave the 20% that we guaranteed we'd keep and if the place looks good when we're ready to sell you can have it all back then"
them: "but we keep things very nice and nothing needs to be replaced or fixed"
Eventually we decided we would give the deposit to a third party, our Realtor doing the short sale, and he can decide whether they deserve their money back after the move out.
Now they say the dishwasher doesn't clean the dishes well enough. We told them to buy some jet dry. What are we gonna do replace is because of the hard water spots left on your dishes? Thought nothing needed to be replaced or fixed? hahaha not the sharpest crayons in the box.
Craziness craziness. We wont be investing in real estate in the future :)
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