Tag Archives: rental

The right one…

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Knowing I wanted to be out of my current rental by the time this year’s lease expired, I started driving around the county and nosing through open houses a few months ago. I was even more or less settled on the areas and type of house I wanted to end up with. I wanted more than an acre, something mid-century, and well outside town limits. For the record, December and January are probably not a great time to be out poking around looking at houses – there just isn’t that much of a supply on the market and no sane person wants to move in the middle of winter. Even so there were some contenders, but nothing that screamed “buy me now.” I bided Woodholmmy time, assuming that more inventory would arrive on the market with warmer weather. I even toyed with the idea of buying a big lot and then building a small house to suit, before realizing that I house built to my own crackpot specs would be damned near impossible to sell to anyone else.

The funny thing is I thought I knew exactly what I wanted. I’d only been working with my realtor a week when she casually mentioned that I should look at a house down on Elk Neck. It was an eyebrow raiser. Sure the pictures looked nice enough, but the house barely ticked off half of the things on my list. It was one story, on slightly less than an acre, and (terror of terrors) ruled by the covenants and restrictions of a very active home owners association. In fact I almost passed on even looking at it for those reasons until curiosity got the better of me. A house in that neighborhood rarely stays on the market long – and this one had been on the market for almost eight months and $100,000 in price reductions. Honestly, I assumed it was a murder house, or infested with mold, or possibly built on some kind of ancient Indian burial ground.

After the first showing, we were both utterly confused by why this house was still on the market. It was only during my second pass through the master bathroom that it occurred to me – uh, why isn’t there a shower in here? So there it was. The reason the typical yuppie buyers in that neighborhood had been taking a pass on what was otherwise a tremendous home. I proclaimed the design choice “very weird,” and moved on.

Three hours later the seller’s agent called my realtor using phrases like “extremely motivated,” “willing to negotiate,” and “credit for bathroom renovation.”

That conversation let to three days of back and forth discussion, deep research on bathroom renovation costs, another showing, and by the end of the week an offer I was sure would test the depth of the seller’s motivation to be finished with the property and move on with his life. There was a counter offer, a counter counter offer, and finally agreement of nearly all the substantive terms I asked for. I’m still a little shocked they agreed to all the concessions written into the contract.

It wasn’t the house I started out looking for a few months ago, but assuming it passes through the gates of inspection and financing it’s the right one.

What Jeff Likes this Week

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For the final offering of this six-post series, you might think I would have planned to end on a high note. Given that the week just past featured all manner of goodness and joy in the spirit of the Christmas season, the list of likely targets is extraordinarily large. However, since this is me we’re talking about and not some nancy-boy, cry at the drop of a hat, sensitive, new age man, all I can tell you is this: What I like this week is mostly the fact that I’m back at the rental house, two dogs are happily snoring in their beds, and that I am fully in control of the television, thermostat, and meal preperation.

Be it every so humble, temporary, ill designed, and poorly insulated, there’s no place like wherever it is you happen to hang your hat. It may not be “home” but it’s at least filled will all your own stuff and sometimes that’s just as good.

Note: This is the 6th and final entry in a six-part series appearing on jeffreytharp.com by request.

The end of an error…

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Having gotten the final call from my realtor a few minutes ago I can state for the record that as of 5PM EDT today I am no longer a property owner in Memphis, Tennessee. I send the new owners good tidings and best wishes and hope that they have better luck with the place than I did over the last four years… but I’m super glad they didn’t call from the closing table wondering what I was going to do about a dripping gutter on the patio roof. Honest to God after the concessions I gave those two already I would have torpedoed the deal at closing just as a matter of principle. I’m glad that between their relator, mine, and the closing attorney they were able to talk them out of that particular course of action.

What I can tell you tonight with certainty is if there’s anything harder than selling a house long distance, it’s probably being an absentee landlord. Like grad school, though, I suppose it’s only a lot of work if you actually do it. God knows I did the work… an entirely new driveway, rerun sewer pipe from the house to the street, every painted surface inside and out redone, tile, backsplashes, tripled the size of the patio and roofed over the whole thing, and more work on the interior than I want to mention or even think about at this point. It’s all their egg to suck now.

Although I’m not quite out of the landlord business, the one that kept me awake at night is now a thing of the past. Let it stay there, ending the longest running and most expensive error of my life to date. Consider that lesson well learned.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Meeting prep. My feelings about meetings are fairly well known and not at all surprising. As wonderful as the average meeting is, the time wasted just sitting in them isn’t the only thing that fuels my discontent. The real problem is everyone – and I mean everyone – seems to look for excuses to have a call a meeting. It’s like what alleged professions do to kill time when they’re bored or lonely. Add to that people’s natural tendency to take Mondays and Fridays off and most meetings stack up like cordwood on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The issue then becomes the inordinate amount of time a poor simple soul then needs to spend just to find and reserve an empty room that has all the required audio/visual bells and whistles. Getting that process done from start to finish usually takes two or three times as long as the meeting itself. To add insult to injury about 30% of the time once you’ve wasted half the day just getting the room itself, the crazy bastards that set up the meeting in the first place cancel it – or worse – they change the time, which leads directly into an endless cycle of wash, rinse, and repeat. The whole thing is maddening.

2. It could be worse. People who comment “it could be worse” as a response when situations go bad clearly miss the point. Of course it could be worse. You can always hit rock bottom and then start digging. Just because you can, however, doesn’t mean you should. Just because it’s not as bad as the worst possible scenario doesn’t mean it’s good and it sure as hell not something to be chipper about. Asshat.

3. Bad investments. I bought a house in December 2007. A month later the bottom fell out of the real estate market… and then proceeded to keep falling for the next four years before leveling off. You might have heard something about it on the news for the better part of the last decade. It’s only been in the last year that there’s been any progress towards clawing back a little of that value. It’s too little, too late. Even with the barking dog neighbors on one side and the regularly evicted neighbors on the other, I liked my house. I wish I could have boxed it up and moved it north with me. Instead it’s just sitting down there being a bad investment, bleeding me a few hundred dollars at a time. As much as I hate to admit the mistake – and making permanent the loss incurred – I’m ready to call it what it is, take my lumps, and move on expeditiously. What I lose in cash flow surely will be offset by the removal of the damed albatross from around my neck.

Rent me…

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One of the really problematic bits of no career being able to keep my attention for more than two or three years is the resulting tendency towards collecting former addresses. As part of my collection, two of these addresses are more than just memories since I’m still nominally responsible for their care, maintenance, and upkeep. I wish I could tell you that being a small time land baron is a profitable endeavor, but as anyone who’s ever done it will probably confirm, most years you’re lucky if you break even.

Which is what leads to posts like this one…

You see, I’m currently in the position of having an unoccupied one bedroom, one bath condo available for rent in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. It’s a 800 square foot, ground level walkout unit featuring a wide covered patio area and a walk in closet/pantry for all you extra storage needs. Your $850 monthly rent includes water, sewer, and trash pick up. With an additional deposit, this unit is both cat and dog friendly.

Centrally located in the Wildewood community, this condo offers easy access to the Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Solomons Island, Leonardtown and all the natural beauty of St. Mary’s County. Our Nation’s capital is within reach if you’re a power commuter. You’re within walking distance of groceries and a less than five minute drive from BJs, Target, and other shopping amenities. Better still, you’ll have ready access to the exciting southern Maryland nightlight offered at the Brass Rail, the Green Door, and Solomons’ historic Tiki Bar.

This opportunity won’t last forever, so act now before it passed you by and someone else is living the life you want in the condo you deserve.

For want of a knob…

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Last year I was fastidious about winterizing the rental house. Since I’ve been waiting two weeks now to get the go ahead for a simple repair of the faucet/knob assembly in the bathroom, my level of interest in doing anything over and above the basics is pretty slim this time around. That translates into adding some weatherstripping and insulation and a few other odds and ends to save on the winter’s electric bill. Anything over and above that is just not going to happen. For the last 18 months I’ve been doing my best to treat the place like it was mine. Since that doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere, well, if it’s not a hazard to life and welfare I guess I’ll just go ahead and let it fall apart. It’s a pity that it’s got to be that way, but I can’t see myself expecting any less from my landlord than I expect from myself as a landlord. Silly expectations.

The rites of spring…

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It’s the time of year again. The neighborhood is full of whirring lawnmowers (except the house behind mine of course), the plants are blooming, and everyone seems more or less ready to get on with the warm weather. Being completely anal retentive, I’ve been planning for this moment for the last two months. The lawn equipment has had its oil changed, blades sharpened, and a supply of premium fuel laid on. Spring isn’t so much about enjoying nature as bringing it to heel after it’s months long free for all during the cold season.

Since it’s been nice enough to live with the windows open in the evening, I haven’t started fiddling with bringing the air conditioners back to life… that was until I started to “un-winterize” the a/c unit the cools the entire downstairs. When I wrapped things up for the winter, I was pretty confident that I had killed off the mold that had been growing inside the unit. Sadly, I was wrong. This wasn’t a new fight, of course. I had waged holy war on this mold almost since the day I moved in, kicked on the air, and wondered “what’s that God-awful smell?” But I thought I had finally struck on the right combination of vinegar, bleach, and random HVAC cleaning supplies from Home Depot to set things right. As I mentioned before, yeah, I was most definitely wrong.

To help set the stage, you need to know that this is the single biggest window-mounted air conditioner that I have every personally seen. It’s so large that it’s actually permanently bolted and caulked into the window. Sure, technically it’s a window unit, but it’s basically like having a central air condenser bolted directly to the window. Seriously. It’s big. If I had to bet, I’d guess it’s 300 pounds easy. And that’s really where the problem starts.

You see, every website on earth tells you that to properly clean mold out of a window air conditioner, the first thing to do is take the unit out of the window and remove the metal housing so you can access the interior spaces where the nastiness is building up. Since this beast is bolted to the house, something tells me these particular directions are not going to apply. Even if I could do any of that without demolishing the window itself, there’s not a chance that I could pull it off as a one man job, which brings us to my point… It’s time for yet another awkward conversation with the landlord about appliances and the need for regular preventative maintenance.

I foresee our talk going something like this:

Me: The air conditioner in the living room is full of mold.

Landlord: Did you clean it?

Me: *rolls eyes* Of course. The mold is inside the housing. It needs to be disassembled and cleaned properly.

Landlord: You can’t do that?

Me: No.

Landlord: That’s going to be expensive.

Me: Probably, but less expensive than me buying a new air conditioner for the living room and deducting it from next month’s rent.

Landlord: %$#*

Me: *smirk*

That conversation should be taking place any time now. It happens less and less often these days, but it’s one of those friendly reminders that living in someone else’s house still sucks.

Thanks old dude…

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I spent most of Saturday morning outside laying siege to the trees, bushes, and random foliage that kept smacking me in the face while I was cutting the grass. Sure, I could just duck, but that’s nowhere near as fulfilling as chopping off branches and making nature look you want it to look. While I was standing hip deep in the ditch obliterating a tree that had no business growing there in the first place, I heard a car pull up behind me and a door open. It’s my experience that random people stopping by for anything usually doesn’t end well and I expected a pitch about why I should come to their church or at the very least who I needed to make a donation to some cause or another.

What I ended up with was an introduction to the old dude and his wife who live diagonally across the street from me – nice people who just wanted to stop and say thanks for making the outside of the place not look like crap. Not surprisingly, he brought up the previous tenants who apparently were every bit as worthless as I imagined them to be. Not like that’s a surprise, but it’s always nice to have confirmation. Other than keeping things mowed at a reasonable length and laying down plenty of weed killer, I haven’t actually done much. I should probably be grateful to the last guy for setting the bar so low.

The old dude would be less impressed if he saw the inside of the place with its god awful drywall patches, cut-ins done but walls not painted, doorknobs missing latches, and general lack of even the most basic maintenance. I’m fixing the things I can with the tools and supplies I have on hand, but lord knows I’m not sinking a dime of my own money into this place. I just need to nurse it through the next year or two and then it will be someone else’s problem. There’s very little I can do to remedy a cheapskate landlord or lazy property management, so the least I can do while I’m here is try to prevent this place from being that house that drags down everyone else’s property values by having that nice abandoned look about it. But seriously, thanks for noticing.

Rolling boil…

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I got an email on Monday night from the property manager (after talking to the actual homeowner) stating emphatically that he would be in on Wednesday (that would be today) to address the laundry list of things that were broken in the house and/or to haul away junk left by the previous tenant. Being 7:30 here in the east coast, I think it’s now officially safe to say that he isn’t coming today. What has been a low simmer most of the week is now a rolling boil. That small bit of sympathy I had yesterday? Yeah, that’s pretty well gone. The good will of being new to the neighborhood and not wanting the first thing I do to be make waves is worn off completely. Now I pretty much want to be a pain in the ass until everything is resolved to my satisfaction. I wonder how many phone calls a day I get before it’s technically harassment?

Tenancy…

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The transition from homeowner to tenent hasn’t been what I would call smooth. As a homeowner, I probably established what most would consider slightly exagerated expectations for service and reliability. When things broke, they went to the top of my list of things to fix, I either went to Lowe’s for the appropriate equipment and supplies or called in the trades to get the job done. As a tenant, obviously the process is a little different. I call the property manager and leave a voicemail. I wait a day. Then I call again and follow up with an email. Then I wait a day. Then I call again and usually manage to talk to him on this third attempt where he says “oh yeah, I’m working on that. I’ll be over tomorrow.” And then we wait some more.

As it stands as of this morning, I’m waiting on six different things to happen: 1) The former tenant’s junked Ford Expedition is still sitting in the driveway. That was supposed to be moved out sometime around June 6th; 2) The 19 inch television sitting on the deck that the property manager says he wants to take to his hunting camp. It’s been rained on three times in the last two weeks. Yeah, that will probably still be sitting there a month from now; 3) The wire dog run was supposed to go at the same time he picked up the Expedition; 4) The garbage disposal went out early this week. He still hasn’t acknowledged the messages I’ve sent about that; and 5) The $100 washing machine that he said had been rebuilt will do everything a washing machine is supposed to do… except drain the water once the tub is filled. I left a voicemail about that yesterday, but when I drove by the manager’s place on my way to the laundromat yesterday afternoon his truck and boat were gone, so there’s not much chance he was paying attention to that; 6) The moldy wall has been nicely cut and hauled away – but that leaves the small matter of having a large part of the basement I can’t do anything with until, you know, it has actual walls again.

The actual owner lives in Germany now, so once I dig up his address Monday  morning I’ll get a message off to him. I’ve tried being the good neighbor, but since that doesn’t seem to get results worth a tinker’s damn, I’ll have to start being the sonofabitch neighbor who beats on the letter of the lease. This should be fun.