Landlord Tales

Here is one of the reasons a person does not want to be a landlord. They don’t want the telephone to ring at 2 AM with a tenant telling them their toilet is overflowing.

My wife and I are members of a local real estate investors group, which has approximately 700 – 800 members. That question was brought up during a meeting several years ago. No one in the group had ever received a call like that in the "middle of the night". This is probably because they spell out everything in their lease.

We have, however, had the following things happen to us.

1. We found our house empty and completely trashed and stripped by tenants. We thought we had the proper insurance, but we didn’t. Here is our horror story.
2. Home Owners Associations ("HOAs")and Planned Unit Developments ("PUDs"): Both of these are as close to fiefdoms (the domain controlled by a feudal lord, or an organization that is controlled by a dominant person or group) as you can get. This is because they exercise absolute control. Read my dealings with them.
3. We received a call from one of our tenants a few years ago. She advised that the drains were not working properly. We never for a minute thought we would find this!

Perhaps you might want to contribute a story of your own. The bottom line is, the combination of some of our experiences might help pave the way for a future rental property owners to laugh at the problems they will encounter.



An Absent Landlord's Horror Story I was an absent landlord. Read what happened to my house.

HVAC Duct Problems? How do you determine you have hvac duct problems? See what we did to come to that conclusion.

Our Homeowners Association Against Me Homeowners Association vs. the homeowner. Victory to the homeowner.

The Pasta Story Pasta, pasta everywhere. Only a plumber could get rid of it.

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