The Successful Landlord Blog

Ok, so here’s a good one. Today I received a survey in the mail from the City of Palm Bay (Florida) asking whether I would consider paying to connect to a reclaimed water source presumably to water the grass at one of my rental properties.

To be honest, I had to laugh. First off, I don’t water the grass at ANY of my properties. Thankfully, the lawn is really just weeds but they provide a good ground covering for the beach sand that is most of Florida.

Second, the City of Palm Bay, by law, orders that if you own property, even if it’s vacant, you MUST pay for garbage collection and water/sewer base charges.
Read the rest of this entry »

So, during the run-up to the supposed housing bubble, the local property taxing authorities have been totally taking advantage of rising property prices by jacking up the assessed property values and thereby collecting more money. Somewhat evil, but hey, it’s the government we’re talking about.

Actually what’s even more evil is that the county governments are threatening to raise the millage rate (thereby increasing the percentage of tax they collect) if the Florida state legislature passes a law forcing them to reduce property taxes due to screaming homeowners (see below), but I digress. Read the rest of this entry »

So, today I ran across an interesting article on Digg.com about how in one Chinese city the government will be installing some 20,000 cameras on the streets linked by a computer system programmed to recognize faces of “police suspects” and all supplied by a US company, no less. From the article:

Data on the chip will include not just the citizen’s name and address but also work history, educational background, religion, ethnicity, police record, medical insurance status and landlord’s phone number. Read the rest of this entry »

So, last Friday I got a lovely certified letter in the mail from the code enforcement department where one of our properties is located. Here are my favorite things about this situation.

1) The notice DOES NOT tell you what the problem is, just that there is a violation with an extremely brief specific description (i.e.- To Wit: Grey commercial vehicle in residential area.) How about a better description and a copy of the city ordinance? They probably just like to get phone calls inquiring what the problem is. Duh! Efficiency in city government? Hello?

2) When you DO call the code enforcement officer to find out what the problem is, he sounds like he’s ready for a fight. Very gruff and short so you have to sweeten him up by being extra polite.

3) In my opinion, if you’re going to pass a city ordinance, ENFORCE IT and do it CITY WIDE!! But no, they wait until somebody complains ( like a neighbor) to then take action. Upon informing the code enforcement officer that that vehicle had been parked there for about a year, he tells me “Well then it’s been in violation for a year.” WTF?!

In my opinion, it’s the owner of the house directly next door. He’s trying to sell it because he’s basically flipping it and probably needs to sell it right away as the housing market continues to tank. Granted, he bought it when there were some strange deadbeat tenants living there. Case in point, they were using a portable commode as a planter…..IN THE FRONT YARD! Did I call code enforcement when I was trying to rent my newly fixed-up place? No. Whatever, my tenant will move his truck and the sale next door will only increase my property value. Thanks! Next!

Oh THIS is going to be a good one……

So, last week I received two bills from the company that does trash collection and disposal for the City of Palm Bay where three of my properties are located. One was for about $41 which is the normal charge per property for 1 quarter (4 months) of service. The other bill was for about $260.

As a matter of background, The City of Palm Bay does not bill for trash collection on their water bills like EVERY OTHER CITY I have ever lived in. I had called Waste Management’s customer service department last year, upon receiving the first ever bills from them and asked them to send the bills directly to the rental properties, addressed to the tenants which they did.

After I received the bill for $260, I called Waste Management’s customer service department to find out what the deal was. They informed me that they had billed the tenants at the address in question and they had not paid……ever.

I then asked them to explain to me how was this my problem. The Waste Management customer service rep told me that ultimately, the property owner (me) was responsible for the bill and that a lien would be put on the property if it was not eventually paid.

Now, I can understand that if a company provides services under contract to a city, they need to be paid for their services. However, Waste Management continued to bill these tenants for 4 successive quarters and was never paid. They also never even tried to contact me to let me know about the situation.

As an aside, the tenants that were in this house were total dirt bags and stiffed a number of people including the city, the power company and me before they finally moved under threat of eviction.

Also, on a different property, they never transferred my name onto the account of that property and informed me that I was liable for the charges, including late charges, from the time that I purchased the house. WTF??!!

So basically, I called Waste Management to try to work something out on these accounts and to try to get some concession in the form of a discount or something.

I was told that no they could make no concessions on the account and I would have to pay all these bills within three months or I would again be accruing late charges. I asked the customer service rep to please explain to me how through a clerical error (not transferring a house into my name) and a collections department’s incompetency that I should have to pay all these charges.

She said, “I’m sorry Sir, that’s the policy.” I then asked to speak to her supervisor and after explaining the WHOLE story again, got them to cut one of the bills in half and they would attempt to collect the other amount from the tenants who didn’t pay. (I gave Waste Management the new address of the tenants)

City of Palm Bay, in their infinite wisdom, instead of putting trash collection services on the water bill, opted to pass an ordinance saying that trash collection by Waste Management of Melbourne is a mandatory service with the ultimate conflict resolution being to ability to place a lien on the property.

I’ll post the letter that I’m sending to all the members of the city council asking them what they were thinking at the time they passed this ordinance.