The pitfalls of being a landlord.

I think every landlord has a horror story. Mr. F and I have owned rental properties for over 36 years. We’ve been incredibly fortunate that all this time, we haven’t had a truly terrible experience. That said, we’ve had some idiots living in our places and our share of ups and downs, but this one takes the grand prize as worst tenant ever in Fiala Properties. It could have been worse, for sure and there were times we worried we’d go in to see this tenant and find him dead, luckily that wasn’t the case. He’s now sober, though he’s in jail for a few years for theft and drugs, but he’s alive and we have our property back and I’m thrilled to say, a new tenant living there as of today.

I’ve taken a few pictures, though there are some I didn’t take and wish I would have. The basement was just as junky as the garage if you can believe that. Mr. F and our boys took 1,650 pounds of junk to the dump so we could begin cleaning this place out. That’s a lot of beer cans and debris! I wish I would have taken pictures of all the crap, but, I didn’t. When I first saw everything I was so dazed and confused as to what had happened to our nice little property my mind didn’t want to comprehend it all.

Tenants, just like any other group of people, can be good and bad. We have some fantastic tenants who keep the property they live in in such great shape. And, why wouldn’t they? If they are living there, shouldn’t they take pride in their home? But, tenants like the one that just left our place, no thank you, not interested!

What do you think? I’m proud of how it turned out and I’m so excited that our new tenant is thrilled to have a nice place to live. We aren’t quite finished with this property, we have to have the windows replaced and we’re working on getting pricing and finding an installer to help us with this. By spring, this property will have all new windows and will be in perfect condition.

2 thoughts on “The pitfalls of being a landlord.”

  1. Could have got a decent amount of money for metal at the recycling. But I’d give anything to find a nice place that didn’t raise the rent on me every year. This year I won’t be able to afford my place anymore and will have to move, which I cannot afford to do either.

  2. My folks bought a lake cottage in the late 50’s or early 60’s. They rented in the summer by the week. We would go and clean it afterwards. One time, it was rented to an USAF officer from a near by base. He decided to not clean the grill and instead used a rack from the fridge. So after, I think Mom and Dad decided that we kids were old enough to be around water with less supervision (gimlet eyes not constantly on us) and we were spending summers there. It was only a mile from our home in town. But my parents were in real estate and I can sympathize with you on tenants. You have a good idea of the conditions some people’s homes when they are ready to sell it.

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