Good News/Bad News

Apartment for rent

The good news is that at about 3:30 pm today I finished the last of my tasks on the rental unit. The prospective tenants who had put down a $500.00 deposit were suppose to move in tomorrow. That is the bad news: they had not called to make arrangements to sign the lease. So I called them to say the apartment was ready on schedule. And they called back to say they were not moving in and could they have their deposit back.

There are times in my life when a question or statement leaves me speechless. This was one of those times. They were scheduled to sign the lease in less than 24 hours and they think they should be able to get the deposit back? Probably no more crazy than the tenant I evicted for non-payment wanting a reference from me for another prospective landlord.

What are they thinking?

Obviously they are not thinking. 

Which is where the bad news becomes the good news. Always nice to know how irresponsible a person is going to be before they move in. It is hard to get a dead beat renter out. And the prospect of having a tenant got me motivated to do some long pondered refurbishing on the unit. The tile work is beautiful and the apartment is now ready to rent immediately. Well, as soon as I replace the upstairs light fixture.

I had just finished the vacuuming and was wrapping up the ShopVac to take back to my side and I swung the wand around carelessly and broke the globe on the ceiling light. It is an old fixture I have wanted to replace and I stood there debating rushing to the hardware store before it closed to buy a new one to install. And this voice said there was no rush. That was when I still believed I would have new tenants on Sunday.

But somewhere in the back of my head I think I had doubts for a while because yesterday I took careful pictures of all the changes in the rental so I would have them for Craig's list. And I had rewritten the ad for the newspaper and the bulletin boards in town. And I was regretting how low I had rented it for. Then there was the chihuahua and a pit bull cross. My sister believes I was not thinking when I agreed to rent to a couple with kids and those two dogs. Chihuahuas are like Coyote bait in my neighborhood.

I really would prefer a single tenant or a nice couple. But I lost almost two months of rent because of the last tenant . And when I got her out it was almost Christmas. January I had it held with the deposit. That is a lot of income to not have for almost a half of a year. Yes, maybe I was a bit desperate to have just anyone in there paying the heating bills in a way colder than normal winter. But I also keep thinking it might be easier to just get a part time job, put a bed or two in the rental and keep it as a guest house.

It isn't always easy when you are exhausted and broke and stressed from rushing to prepare the place for a tenant which will solve income issues to see it as a good thing they crapped out. To believe what looks like bad luck to actually be good luck. But I think I do believe it. Within minutes of getting off the telephone I had the Craig's list ad all updated with the higher rent and new pictures. I edited and printed the revised ads for the bulletin boards, posted on the two Facebook groups that cater to the area, re-figured my budget for the next month. Keeping the deposit will help.

But really what else could I do? You really have to let go when you have no control over the events in your life. And look at it this way - it wasn't a hurricane.

Comments

  1. The Blog of BeeFebruary 16, 2013 at 6:02 PM

    It wasn't meant to be! And this is a very upbeat post which makes me happy. Desperation or when we think we are desperate, makes us do things that we wouldn't normally do. I have learned even recently to sit on it for a while. This was taken out of your hands before it turned into a crisis. That's what sitting back, letting go and reflecting does for you! Well done - very well done! I'm proud of you!

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownFebruary 16, 2013 at 11:01 PM

    Hugs

    ReplyDelete

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