19th December 2008

How Tenants Show Their True Colors

posted in Care and Feeding of Tenants |

Now here’s a good one: So, as I mentioned in a recent post, we have had one unit vacant for some months now due to repairs that were needed because the previous tenants didn’t understand how to use the phone when they saw a problem with a shower stall needing repair.

Now, the unit is ready for rent and we priced it under market to move it quickly. I had three different sets of potential tenants interested. I was sure to tell all of them that we are accepting applications until we get a deposit.

One set of potential tenants wanted to move in 5 weeks from now and kept putting off getting the deposit to me. In the meantime, I had an application come in that was W-A-Y better then theirs. They have a more stable profile, no evictions, two earners and both make more than is required to qualify, none of which the other people have. So, I chose them.

The aforementioned potential tenants called to put the deposit down so I called them back to let them know that the unit was no longer available. I spoke with the wife and she sounded disappointed (understandably) but was polite enough. She even said “thank you” at the end of the call.

Five minutes later I got a voicemail from the husband literally cursing me out and calling me every name in the book. REAL NICE!! If I had actually gotten to speak with him, I would have thanked him for verifying my decision not to rent to them.

When oh when, will these people learn? My bet is on “NEVER.”

This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Care and Feeding of Tenants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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  1. 1 On January 7th, 2009, Minnesota Certificate of Rent Paid said:

    I have had that exact same experience. I called to confirm an appointment to show the apartment in 1 hour (which is what I told the applicant I would do). The thug boyfriend that answered the phone proceeded to cuss me out saying: how is his “woman” going to call me back when she is at work.

    He then threatened me several times and proceeded to call my cell phone every 2 minutes for the next hour.

    Priceless.

  2. 2 On March 5th, 2009, Julia Curran said:

    We have recently been the target of negative apartment reviews. All of these reviews have been from tenants who were the source of the problem they’re complaining about.
    1. complained about unsanitary carpet…from her dogs that urinated on them. She couldn’t afford the upgrade, wanted her old apt back which was not available and then wanted new carpet (with dogs still as residents) I let her out of the lease, I returned her deposit…knew she needed it to move and BAM! our place got trashed on the review site.
    2. Mr. bigot moved because he didn’t like African Americans and Latinos who moved into his building…who paid their rent on time and were good tenants. He moves out, I go to mail his deposit back and find he put a stop payment on his last rent check. Trashes us for stealing peoples deposits!
    3. Mr. passive aggressive, moves out trashes us for the Law being on property “all the time.” Law was called on him by neighbors for his loud music…police come and idiot turns up the music. Then he gets two friends to go to site and write simular reviews about the Law always being here!

    Has anyone else had these problems with reviews? and what have you done about them?
    We just did a tenant survey which showed great reviews and we have a web site…but you see these bad reviews HEADLINED “unsanitary” “Welcome to the Getto” if we direct people to our web site, folks see these headlines before they even click into our site!

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