Landlord/Tenant Good and Bad Stories.

[Grace]

This is an offshoot thread from the Black Friday thread and being landlords.

I inherited the whole landlord/tenant thing when I got married, as my husband had a rental house before we were married. Over the years we have had some really good tenants, and some really bad ones. An example of one of our recent “good” tenants was a do-it-yourselfer who was very adept in renovating. The apartment is part of a hundred-year-old house. He made some major upgrades, and all we did was pay for the materials. One notable thing was that he stripped the old painted stair steps of the several coats of paint, exposing the beautiful old wood and then coating them with an Oil-based polyurethane. They turned out beautiful. He also repainted the whole apartment. We had a young woman tenant who whenever she had a problem, she would call her handyman dad, instead of us, which was great for us.

Then there were the bad tenants. I could write a book. We had a tenant who left a huge amount of junk and then sent us a bill for everything left behind! One summer when our son was around 14, I recruited him and some of his friends to help clean out a very junky apartment. They appreciated the extra cash. We had a Ford F-350 small dump truck which they loaded with the junk. I took a total of 7 loads from that apartment into the Lancaster Waste Authority. When I put the dump up to unload at the Waste Authority, the stuff didn’t slide off very easily on the one load. So, I put the dump down and climbed up on the dump bed and pushed the junk to the back, so it would slide off easier. Interestingly a Mennonite woman in a dress climbing up on the dump truck bed, trying to be modest, did garner some strange looks from the workers at the waste authority.

Then there was the little boy who wanted to see if the fire extinguisher worked, while his single mother was at the neighborhood bar, and lit a fire in the closet. Fortunately, a firefighter lived in the same building and got the fire out before any serious damage was done.

[QuietlyListening]

We rented our poultry farm just 2x and then sold it. First was someone we were trying to help after he came out of prison- that ended up not too well. My husband had visited him in prison for over a year and he did well till his father came back into the picture and it was all downhill- thankfully it wasn't difficult to get rid of him. The next family started out good, they did well with the chickens but the husband started having anger control issues and did some damage and the wife was into cats- 16+ - and took better care of them then her children who were 'homeschooled'. Basically just left to their own devices - the mom worked across the street, did chickens and cared for her cats. It wasn't easy to get them to leave- thankfully he decided he needed to move. Cleaning the place was a nightmare with the cat smell everywhere. All carpet had to go, repainted the whole house etc. We then sold it. Had been trying thus the rentals.

My husband had a rental before we were married but sold it before we were married and wasn't into renting because of it but we were hard pressed with the poultry farm so rented it and finally it sold.

[barnhart]

My wife and have had two landlord/tenant relationships in the last 25 years and they were both wonderful.

[JohnL]

When we got married I had a small house west of Richmond. My new job was back in NC but the housing market slowed and I knew it wouldn’t sell. So I rented it out to cover the mortgage payment. Those folks stayed 3 years and were good tenants. By the time they moved the market was back on the upswing and the house sold in 6 weeks.

[QuietlyListening]

We also experience having a landlord. My husband went back to grad school and we were fortunate enough to find a house vs an apt- had 3 young children. We lived next door to our landlord and they treated us like family. Couldn't have been better landlords and when my husband graduated and we moved away we kept in touch for years, even after the wife passed away.

[Valerie]

Our first home we “owned” was a 1957 small ranch in Medina OH. Had a nice size yard for a city lot.
When Neil lost his career at 44 (list his vision to do his job as a Mechanical Designer for aerospace) then his health turned for worse- God provided in many ways.
We bought a home in a new development & our ranch became part of our retirement plan- we became landlords!
We prayed about each & every potential tenant & I gave to say God was faithful. We had many tenants in 20 years. We did all the blood sweat and tears work between each new tenant.
After one single parent and her children left having rented for several years, we had a lot to do, but that was understandable. We got it looking pretty good before the last family moved in. Neil couldn’t drive due to lack of vision so I worked full-time and spent a lot of time running him back-and-forth to Home depot and we did the best we could.
Two years ago we had to tell the family it was time to sell the house. We just couldn’t maintain the expensive two homes with our new house now being 20 years old. We had a lot less money to live on as well and still owed a mortgage on both homes. To our delight, they wanted to buy the house! We gave them a good deal on the house since they had been good tenants and had two young children. We wanted to help them. We always looked at it that way. It wasn’t just our business. It was a chance to be a Christian witness to our tenants.
With the sale of the ranch, we were able to pay off our current home 10 years early. Our tenants were happy and we praise God for his faithfulness through 20 years of being landlords. We always had a good relationship with tenants and having heard horror stories, we are SO thankful.

[ken_sylvania]

Our first home we “owned” was a 1957 small ranch in Medina OH. Had a nice size yard for a city lot.
When Neil lost his career at 44 (list his vision to do his job as a Mechanical Designer for aerospace) then his health turned for worse- God provided in many ways.
We bought a home in a new development & our ranch became part of our retirement plan- we became landlords!
We prayed about each & every potential tenant & I gave to say God was faithful. We had many tenants in 20 years. We did all the blood sweat and tears work between each new tenant.
After one single parent and her children left having rented for several years, we had a lot to do, but that was understandable. We got it looking pretty good before the last family moved in. Neil couldn’t drive due to lack of vision so I worked full-time and spent a lot of time running him back-and-forth to Home depot and we did the best we could.
Two years ago we had to tell the family it was time to sell the house. We just couldn’t maintain the expensive two homes with our new house now being 20 years old. We had a lot less money to live on as well and still owed a mortgage on both homes. To our delight, they wanted to buy the house! We gave them a good deal on the house since they had been good tenants and had two young children. We wanted to help them. We always looked at it that way. It wasn’t just our business. It was a chance to be a Christian witness to our tenants.
With the sale of the ranch, we were able to pay off our current home 10 years early. Our tenants were happy and we praise God for his faithfulness through 20 years of being landlords. We always had a good relationship with tenants and having heard horror stories, we are SO thankful.

I had no idea you were a rancher!

[Valerie]

Our first home we “owned” was a 1957 small ranch in Medina OH. Had a nice size yard for a city lot.
When Neil lost his career at 44 (list his vision to do his job as a Mechanical Designer for aerospace) then his health turned for worse- God provided in many ways.
We bought a home in a new development & our ranch became part of our retirement plan- we became landlords!
We prayed about each & every potential tenant & I gave to say God was faithful. We had many tenants in 20 years. We did all the blood sweat and tears work between each new tenant.
After one single parent and her children left having rented for several years, we had a lot to do, but that was understandable. We got it looking pretty good before the last family moved in. Neil couldn’t drive due to lack of vision so I worked full-time and spent a lot of time running him back-and-forth to Home depot and we did the best we could.
Two years ago we had to tell the family it was time to sell the house. We just couldn’t maintain the expensive two homes with our new house now being 20 years old. We had a lot less money to live on as well and still owed a mortgage on both homes. To our delight, they wanted to buy the house! We gave them a good deal on the house since they had been good tenants and had two young children. We wanted to help them. We always looked at it that way. It wasn’t just our business. It was a chance to be a Christian witness to our tenants.
With the sale of the ranch, we were able to pay off our current home 10 years early. Our tenants were happy and we praise God for his faithfulness through 20 years of being landlords. We always had a good relationship with tenants and having heard horror stories, we are SO thankful.

I had no idea you were a rancher!

I was waiting for some comment like that- it’s a real common word for one story houses here. They didn’t use it in southern CA where I’m from so I had similar thoughts- ranch? Where’s the cattle?

[Thomas_muntzer]

This is an offshoot thread from the Black Friday thread and being landlords.

I inherited the whole landlord/tenant thing when I got married, as my husband had a rental house before we were married. Over the years we have had some really good tenants, and some really bad ones. An example of one of our recent “good” tenants was a do-it-yourselfer who was very adept in renovating. The apartment is part of a hundred-year-old house. He made some major upgrades, and all we did was pay for the materials. One notable thing was that he stripped the old painted stair steps of the several coats of paint, exposing the beautiful old wood and then coating them with an Oil-based polyurethane. They turned out beautiful. He also repainted the whole apartment. We had a young woman tenant who whenever she had a problem, she would call her handyman dad, instead of us, which was great for us.

Then there were the bad tenants. I could write a book. We had a tenant who left a huge amount of junk and then sent us a bill for everything left behind! One summer when our son was around 14, I recruited him and some of his friends to help clean out a very junky apartment. They appreciated the extra cash. We had a Ford F-350 small dump truck which they loaded with the junk. I took a total of 7 loads from that apartment into the Lancaster Waste Authority. When I put the dump up to unload at the Waste Authority, the stuff didn’t slide off very easily on the one load. So, I put the dump down and climbed up on the dump bed and pushed the junk to the back, so it would slide off easier. Interestingly a Mennonite woman in a dress climbing up on the dump truck bed, trying to be modest, did garner some strange looks from the workers at the waste authority.

Then there was the little boy who wanted to see if the fire extinguisher worked, while his single mother was at the neighborhood bar, and lit a fire in the closet. Fortunately, a firefighter lived in the same building and got the fire out before any serious damage was done.

Where I currently live (My own place) I rented it for 4 years, I had three landlords and thank God everything turned out well. The last one was a cousin to whom I gave permission to sublet rooms (With the money he obtained from the subletting he got 90% of the rent value)