My tenant’s grumpy neighbor
So today I got a call from the older lady who lives across the street from one of our rental houses. She was calling to ask me to please do something with the yard at the rental because it’s getting very overgrown, etc. and it’s “breaking her heart and she has to look at it everyday.”
I should explain that this rental house used to be the home of some good friends of hers, who we bought the house from because they were getting too old to deal with it. Back in 2004, a hurricane had just blown through and took some roof shingles and siding off the house and they didn’t want to fix the damage.
I should also explain that these people bought these houses back in the 1970′s when they had just retired from their single company careers up north (railroad, IBM, etc.). I know that there is more pride-in-ownership when you own a home as opposed to rent it, but I think that these people were just anal-retentive about maintenance and appearance.
Apparently, back in the day, they used to rush out and do stuff like cut the grass when it got to 1.25 inches tall, trim shrubs when they started looking just a little bit scraggly and paint the house every year. Because that’s what you did when you were Beaver Cleaver’s parents.
Well, what I’ve been doing is trying to get the yard in line with the rest of our rentals in that, the ground covering of the entire yard is basically weeds. When we get torrential rains in the summertime, the yard gets really green and lush “looking.” When the weather gets really hot and we have near drought conditions, the yard turns brown. And then at the slightest hint of humidity, the yard turns back green again.
What was covering the ground at this house was what is called St. Augustine grass which is a strain of grass that thrives in saltier environments (like near the beach) and generally damp environments. It grows thick and green when a) there is plenty of water b) it is not stressed by drought or bugs and c) it is fertilized regularly. Now what happened in the past was that the people that owned the house would irrigate the lawn 3 times a week and hired a lawn treatment service to spray all kinds of chemicals to keep bugs away so as a result the lawn was perfect.
What happened when we put tenants in the house was that they parked cars on the grass and the wonderful lawn-maintenance people, who we pay, destroyed the irrigation system with their huge lawnmowers, so the grass died! Duh!
All it needs now is for a different lawn guy (because the regular ones don’t trim shrubs) to go in there and clean it up. In time, it will be in line and all will be fine. However, I had to listen to this neighbor whine to me on the phone this morning about how the yard is “breaking her heart” whenever she looks at it. But I need to listen to this because when the tenants start shooting off fireworks INSIDE THE HOUSE, I need her to call me, so we have to stay friendly.
