Children, Children!

My day started with a call from one of our tenants. She has lived in one of our apartment buildings for about four months. She called to complain about the downstairs tenant who has been throwing left-over food into the back yard. She claims that the discarded food is causing her dog to get sick.

I called the downstairs tenant and politely asked him to refrain from throwing food into the yard (you would think that this would be common sense). He said that he only throws food into the yard when they have a roast or similar food. I'm not sure how that makes sense, but a lot of tenants do things that aren't logical to me. At any rate, he agreed not to do this anymore.

About five minutes after I talked to the downstairs tenant, he called me back to complain about the upstairs tenant. It seems that she had yelled at him a week earlier because of the food in the yard. He wanted me to talk to her about her attitude. DEALING WITH TENANTS IS A LOT LIKE HAVING A BUNCH OF THREE YEAR OLD CHILDREN!

I arrived in town at about noon. My first project was to change the kitchen faucet in the apartment of our newest Section 8 tenant. When she moved in a week ago, the water was shut off. After finally having the water turned on, she discovered that her faucet was partially clogged. I thought the problem was probably the strainer, but discovered that the faucet didn't even have a strainer. While I was changing the faucet, the tenant asked me if I received a letter about the inspection tomorrow. I had not received any letter and the duplex was just inspected on the 2nd and passed. I read her letter and it seems that HUD is doing an audit type inspection to check on the work of their inspector. Ugh! So, tomorrow morning we will have a SECOND inspection on this property. I am NOT happy about that!

Shortly after installing the new sink, I received a call from the police. It was the nuisance officer calling to talk about one of our new properties. This is the same property where I met the same nuisance officer and the tenant earlier this week. The tenant is a pack-rat and his front porch is a mess. When we met earlier this week, the officer said that the tenant had done a good job cleaning up the porch and that everything was ok. However, today the officer received a call from the Mayor's office who had received a letter and pictures from a neighbor of the tenant. The neighbor and the tenant do no get along and thus the complaint. I discussed the issue with the officer and he was going to work out the problem with the tenant. Have I mentioned that dealing with tenants is a lot like taking care of children???

Next, I went to the post office to pick up the mail. In today's mail was a letter from the city declaring another of our properties a nuisance. Uggghhhhh! It seems that one of our long-term tenants, living in one of our SFHs, has a pile of tree limbs in her back yard near the alley. I called this tenant who said she had already talked to the nuisance officer directly and has taken care of the problem. Finally, a tenant that can take care of her own problems!!!

That was enough nonsense for one day and I decided to call it a day.

When I arrived home, I checked the weather channel one more time for our camping trip which was supposed to start tomorrow. I have been checking the weather all week long and every single time I checked, they were predicting temperatures in the 60's this weekend and sunny skies! As of this morning, the weatherman suddenly changed his mind and is now calling for a high both Saturday and Sunday of 40! That is cold enough to take all the fun out of camping. Therefore, we've have changed our camping trip from tomorrow to Monday or Tuesday. Fortunately, owning a rental property business means that I can go camping any day I like. If the weather is better during the week, that's when we'll go!