The Successful Landlord Blog

So this past week I had a sales representative from Sears (of all places) call me to ask my permission to come out to one of my rental properties to give the tenant an estimate to replace the central air-conditioning system in her unit.

Now, lets just pause a moment to think about this……

Ok, now. What in TARNATION is this tenant thinking?! I know she must obviously want a new air-conditioning system  but I don’t know how many tenants have a spare $2500 just lying around to pay for it. Well, it turns out that she wanted ME to pay for the replacement of course.  W-H-A-T-E-V-E-R  lady. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, it’s been a whole month since these people moved in to one of my rentals and they have called me no less than 8 times to complain about things, great and small, that are wrong with the unit.

Granted, some of the complaints were valid and I fixed them promptly. The other things consisted of  a dead battery in the garage opener remote, minuscule cracks in the bathroom tile and non-working light bulbs.

What’s probably going on here is that they probably don’t want to be charged for things that are wrong with the unit when they move out, which is understandable but that’s what the move-in/move-out inspection is for. Before a tenant moves into a unit, I require them to walk through the unit with a checklist and note the condition of major things such as cracked tile, non-working appliances, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

Like clockwork on Sunday evening at 7:30pm, I received a call from a tenant complaining that their air-conditioning unit was not working. I should mention that summer in central Florida is on its way and the temperature hit a sweltering 80°F that afternoon. For some people (mostly my tenants) that means freak-out time. God forbid a bead of sweat were to appear on their forehead.

I called the tenant back on Monday morning and let her know that I have no problem coming out to take a look at her air-conditioning unit but that I wanted to talk to her about paying her rent late…. Every. Single. Month.  It seems that this tenant thinks that as long as she pays the late fees, she can pay whenever she chooses. Oh, how mistaken she is. Read the rest of this entry »