Let the Games Begin!

I had the closing for my last 11 rentals on Friday! I'm glad that's done, but now the real work begins. I went around Friday afternoon to meet as many tenants as I could, and left notices of the change of management to the others (NEVER tell the tenants that you own anything). One of the tenants in my new 7 unit apartment building has a significant criminal history and is allowing another drunk and serious criminal to live with him. I looked the criminals up on the internet. One of them has been arrested 110 times (yes, I said one hundred and ten times). The police have been to the building 95 times in the previous several months and were there the night before I took over the building, regarding a crack party in the apartment of my two criminal tenants. There were NO leases for anyone in this building.

I gave the criminals the news that I would tolerate NO further illegal activity and that they would be promptely evicted if there were further incidents (and arrested if I could arrange that). As you can imagine, they weren't too happy about having a new landlord. As I met the other tenants, one of them told me that there was a court order that one of the criminals was banned from the property. I thought that she meant she had a restraining order. She had a copy and I was surprised that the CITY had gotten a court order banning him from the property! I didn't even know that this was possible. At any rate, I confronted the criminal with the court order and told him to leave IMMEDIATELY and never return or he would be arrested. I then went to tell the other tenants to call the police, followed by calling me, if they see the criminal on the property in the future. The very next morning, I got a call from one of the tenants who had called the police at 3am, when the criminal arrived for his nightly crack party. He was arrested and charged with criminal trespass and other charges. He is still in jail, where he belongs.

As I was meeting the tenants, I noticed that none of the apartments had smoke detectors and fire extinguishers. Therefore, on Saturday, I spent about two hours installing smoke detectors and fire extinguishers. I even got leases signed with a couple of my new tenants.

I took today off for Church and relaxation. The games will continue tomorrow!