The rental nightmare

If I could I would just walk away from this elephant, our old house. The current tenants are finding taking care of the yard an onurous task. They have been doing the spring weeding and trimming, creating enough debris to fill a pick up truck. So they wanted me to clean it all up. I passed the problem on to my property manager, who suggested that they just slowly dispose of it all in the large yard debris can provided over the coarse of weeks. Well, it is too much for the can.

Next thing I know I am billed $61 for yard work and disposal. It is in the contract that the renters maintain the yard. He even has a truck.I am not paying for yard service to maintain the yard. I am not happy with this outcome. Property taxes will be in the fall and it will have to come out of our pockets. Every little bit that gets put into the house means a loss for us.

My week got better with a nasty vulgar text from the evicted tenant. The Gas utility had caught up with her. She wanted to know why I hadn't paid her bill. She wanted me to pay it, as she was under the impression that I had paid all her late utilities. I informed her I had paid the city utilities; garbage, water, and sewer, and street, but the gas and electric would follow her. She sounded almost proud that all her utilities had gone unpaid for so long. I told her to contact the property manager. I am a little embarrassed to admit that I enjoyed the fact that someone had finally caught up with her. I wonder if her next credit report will be so easy to excuse away.

That woman really soured us on being in the rental business. She caused us no end of stress and several months of lost income. I would love to let her know how I feel when I receive her vitriolic texts on my phone, threatening me. Instead I pleasantly send her in the direction of my property manager. If the roperty manager  had done her job right in the first place and told the woman she didn't qualify, we would not have had any of this mess we are in now. She wouldn't even be in our lives at all. That woman was a leech. I feel so bad for the next rental she moved into. They didn't call us for a recommendation. I would have warned them away.  

These people are supposed to be contacting the property manager. I am paying the property manager to deal with all of this. Why they think that I can solve their problems I don't know. I threatened to terminate my property manager, if she doesn't start doing her job, checking in on the house, dealing with the tenants.

The tenants said a large tree fell over this winter.  Tom wanted to know if it fell over or was taken out for convenience, to make another parking space. One of my neighbors called me to ask how many people are living in the house as there is a large number of cars in the drive. Our tenant works for an auto dealership so he has a lot of vehicles available to him, but it does raise eyebrows. 

I went to see the house a month ago and everything looked fine, including the tree that supposedly had fallen over for that matter. Well, I could look at the bright side, the house will look good to sell next summer, with these tenants being so on top of the yard. It probably is cheaper to hire these  yard men just once, and less work for sure, than my doing this all myself.

We will see what happens next month. Law suit from the evicted tenant? Another problem with the house?. I just need to get to the end of the the lease next March, and then we will sell this huge problem. I am done. Tom was done a year ago. I stilll feel we had to make the effort, try to salvage something from the investment.

I heard that there are 300 forclosures in a high end neighborhood nearby our old neighborhood. These will be beautiful big glamorous houses. The worst may not be over yet. The country could wallow down here for years before the back log of dumped houses are finally caught up. In some cities they are bulldozing the abandoned homes to prevent vagrancy and the decline of the neighborhood. We are trying to do our part by not walking away, but I swear if this gets any more difficult, I will throw in the towel.