One of the first people that wanted to look at our house had a section 8 voucher for $2,900 (per month). We decided we would let them take a look and we would see what type of people they are, hoping for the best of course. What a mistake, like the government would actually act responsible when they give my tax money away. The realtor came over in sandals, boobs hanging out the front and side of her shirt, and hairy armpits. She stood at the door and gave Natalie a blank stare when she answered. Eventually she handed Natalie a card. I thought she was deaf for a minute until she finally started to talk. Completely awkward moment. So we take them around the house and find out the mom has nine kids, from different daddies of course, and no husband. Great. Then before she left she saw all Natalie's shoes in the closest and said "That is a lot of shoes, but I could fill your whole living room with mine". That was it for Natalie, she closed the door, turned to me, and said "Hell no". Left us completely disgusted that our tax money funds this garbage. Money I earn gets taken to fund this trash.
For an average person they would have to make about 100K to rent our house. But this lady can keep sleeping around, having kids and she gets a $2,900 housing voucher, food stamps, and an Obama phone. Welcome to Obama's America. Why would someone like this even try to get an education and a better job when the government gives her far more than she needs or deserves for being irresponsible? This viewing left me disgusted not just with her, but with our ridiculous government that promotes this garbage. Needless to say we told the next two people with section 8 vouchers they can't even view our house.
Well after this we had some people ready to rent our house the day we moved out. That ended up falling through and we left with an empty house. Our realtor, Heather, was doing a really bad job. This is the same realtor that sold us the house. She did a good job getting us into the house, became a friend, and then thought she was entitled to the job of renting our house out. She did a really bad job taking the pictures for MLS because she was in a hurry to get home to her Patriots game and when I took new pictures and asked her to update them she wasn't doing it. Simply put, she's lazy and didn't want to do the work.
When I asked her to drop the price she waited 2 weeks to do it. Her attitude was probably what's the rush? I get my cut either way. Meanwhile we were losing money, nearly $100 every day having an empty house. She had a horrible dreary looking picture on MLS of the front of the house. I had my dead palms removed and put in a new live oak tree and took a picture and she couldn't even be bothered to upload it. On top of that she wasn't showing up for viewings and she wasn't trying to sell the best part of the house, my yard, because she wasn't interested. When I told her everything I had and viewers' responses to it her response was "People might just act interested because they don't want to tell you they don't like your stupid fruit trees". She tried to make it sound like that was their opinion but I knew that was her expressing how she felt. How can she sell my house if she has an attitude like that and won't point out what I consider to be the selling point? I just don't understand her attitude. If she doesn't like my trees, great. But to think that someone else out there wouldn't be interested and looking for a yard like mine, full of exotic plants and tropical fruit trees, is insane. To think that everyone is an alcoholic like her and only cares about the inside of the house is insane. The alcoholic comment isn't random. While she couldn't update my MLS pictures she had plenty of time to post pictures on Facebook while at happy hour. Everyone is different. She likes drinking every day other people like fruit trees and nature. Not a hard concept to understand.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to notice this picture looks better than the one below. I couldn't find the actual one I sent Heather without the car and the landscaping trash but you get the idea. So real quick a little detour of my rant for a funny story about the tree. My gardener wanted a lot of money to take out the five palms. Like 700 bucks or something. So against his advice I borrowed a chainsaw from my neighbor and Natalie's uncles and I took them all down with a rope and a chainsaw, closing off the street for a minute or two while each tree fell. The whole tree at once, not in sections. While we were doing this Natalie was inside cooking and set off the smoke detector. She didn't pick up the phone when ADT called so the fire department showed up. I thought we were all in trouble for taking down the trees. Luckily that wasn't the case. We got all the trees out without injury, a close call because someone wasn't paying attention, and I only had to pay my gardener to remove the one root ball in the center, 100 bucks.
And the old picture she kept up on MLS
Natalie sent her this picture of the house empty and she never put it up.
So eventually this got old. In November we had another person that was almost ready to sign the lease and they bailed out. Right before bailing out she brought her whole family over without telling my realtor and had 11 people in the backyard being loud for an hour checking out my house. Reports from the neighbors were that one of her grandkids was a little on the ghetto side and didn't know how to wear his pants. We were beyond mad about what was going on. We decided we were done and Natalie fired her right before Thanksgiving. At first she was fine about it and Natalie said she sounded relieved like she knew she failed us and now she was out of it. Well a couple days later Natalie got a crazy e-mail from Heather not understanding why she was fired and talking about how good of a job she was doing. Maybe she was drinking again? On top of all the other issues we had with her when we signed with her she gets a full month's rent to renew the lease ever year. That is insane. To do what? Natalie told her that is crazy and negotiated it down to 1/2 month's rent every year. I later found out that even that is high. A lot of realtors do it for 1/4 rent!
Well once we fired her we hired a guy from church, one of my former boyscout's dad. I had started to talk to him a few days before we fired Heather to make sure we had everything lined up for the firing. He went on a rant about realtors that charge crazy fees to do a little paperwork every year and then want 6% when they eventually sell the house. Exactly what Heather did! Our new realtor, Richard, said we only pay some small fees to renew the paperwork every year, probably less than $500. It was obvious at this point that Heather was trying to rip us off, trying to make easy money for doing nothing.
Well from the start with Richard things were completely different. After a walk through he told us things that need to be fixed right away if we want to get this house rented out quickly. A couple days after hiring him he was over there to take some pictures and noticed water on the floor in the bathroom and on the patio. I had noticed the water on the patio before leaving, the water in the bathroom was new. The water on the patio was coming from the corner where the front door was so I thought it was the neighbor's cat peeing there and I poured vinegar on it. The next day it was wet but later dried in the hot sun. I just keep thinking it was the neighbor's cat since it was only wet when the sun was down. Well Richard was convinced I had a leak under my slab. I wasn't so sure. I started thinking maybe it was coming through the flower bed or from outside. Eventually a week later Richard had me convinced to get a plumber out there. Turns out Richard was right, we had a leak under the slab.
I opted out of tearing up the slab to find the leak. According to my plumber a lot of pipes leak in this area because the contractors dug the trench in the limestone, put the pipe in, and poured concrete right over it without putting sand as a buffer like they're suppose to. Eventually the houses settle, push the pipes into the limestone, and they burst. So instead of finding the leak I had my plumber rerun my lines through my attic. That way I don't have to worry about this happening again in the future. Damage, about $2,500. Fun way to end the year right?
I have to say I'm glad we fired Heather and hired Richard before all this happened though. He was there every day taking pictures and keeping me updated on the situation. I doubt Heather would have taken time away from happy hour to make sure our house was getting fixed and ready to rent.
After that two week mess we started getting viewers again but it was now just a couple weeks before Christmas so getting a renter wasn't too likely. To our surprise though we got a call from Richard and he told us he had someone that wanted to move in within a week. We were so excited, all for nothing but this gave us the most bizarre and funny story to tell.
This guy claimed he was a broker for a trucker company and his girlfriend works at Tootsies in "entertainment". Combined income, $130,000. They were qualified to rent our house and they even passed the background check by a third party Richard used. But I found something on their background check I didn't like. The guy had been arrested for 2oz or less of marijuana in Texas a few years back. Not a huge deal but it made me want to look into it a little. Now his girlfriend had been arrested for prostitution around the same time in Texas and was held in jail overnight. And the final thing that made me question everything was that he is in his 30's and she is early 20's. Something just seemed off and I didn't feel comfortable about it.
So this is when I did my own investigation . I googled his e-mail address and found an ad that said something about escorts and two is better than one. So I put his e-mail address in Facebook and found his profile. He isn't a broker, he's a pimp and his girlfriend is his whore! No joke. He had pictures of his two year old with stacks of money all around him, pictures (titled "hand full of money") of him groping two girl's with their butt's hanging out their skirts, pictures of all his "pimped out rides", and the best of all, a picture of a big bag of weed.
My investigation brought up a big dilemma. We were suppose to have this guy moving in our house in two days. All these stupid investors that buy up houses in the area would have rented it out without thinking twice about it. I was working a lot of overtime to pay both our rent in Arizona and our mortgage in Florida and we had no other offers in place. On the other hand I didn't want someone like that living in my house. The pimping bothered me a lot more than the prostitution. I can careless what two adults do, it's their business not mine. But pimping is the real crime, a real serious crime. It involves abuse, trafficking, kidnapping, ransom, murder, and all kinds of stuff. And then I had to think about my neighbors and their teenage daughters. I also thought about the parties they would have, the neighbors they would annoy, and how it could bring down the entire neighborhood. I quickly called up Richard and told him to pull the plug on this one. I would take a second job to pay the mortgage before I rent my house out to this thug.
So we pulled the plug and heard nothing for a couple weeks. January 2nd, as we were getting up early in the morning to go back to Arizona, I got a call from Richard who had another guy that was interested and needed to be in within a week. This was the morning we decided to go to Knott's Berry Farm (previous post). Well a couple days later this fell through as well when his company decided they weren't going to move him down to South Florida.
Just when things were really starting to look bad we got the offer we wanted. We had a family of four put in an offer. The guy was getting stationed at one of my previous jobs and expected to be there 3.5 years. Government clearance, no criminal record, nice family, it was exactly what we were hoping to find all along. Of course with all the stuff that happened in the past we were just waiting for something to go wrong but it didn't. They singed the lease on the condition we put a fence in the backyard (offered $100 more a month than asking price) and moved in January 16th. Unfortunately our problems didn't end here....
I flew out in late January to meet with the guy putting in the fence, meet the tenants, fix some stuff in the house, move a mango tree, and do a little work on the yard. My tenants are great people. They invited me to go out to dinner with them and after talking to them and I feel like we got some really good people living there. I was telling them that I think we had a couple people pass simply because we didn't have a fence. They said that they had originally passed because we didn't have a fence, thinking there's no way I would put one in for them, and they kept looking around. They couldn't find anyone with a decent yard though and no fence so they eventually came back to us with an offer. So now we were set. We had good tenants that wanted to stay there for 3.5 years. What could go wrong.
Well how about a broken shower valve for starters? $450 to fix that and then patch the hole.
Then my oven died. I couldn't figure out why one coil wouldn't turn on when I was out there so I called Flamingo Appliance. Big ripoff. $85 for them to come out and tell me I need a new oven and they won't install it. So I ordered a new oven and arranged for Natalie's uncle to install it. So what else could go wrong?
Well next our master suite air conditioner died. I called Air Around The Clock expecting honest business. Instead they charged me $250 to tell me I need a new unit which would cost me $3,500. They didn't bother to tell me the part is under warranty and I'm only paying labor if I just fix the condenser. Completely dishonest. My tenant, out of concern, was questioning how much it's going to cost to replace and if it's necessary. The guy's answer was "Don't worry about it the home owner is probably a millionaire". My tenant put the guy in line and told him the reality of the situation and said he quickly put him head down feeling like the jerk that he is. Well I just happened to have my plumber out there again that morning fixing a valve in the laundry room and he overheard what was going on. He gave me a call and reminded me that he has been doing HVAC for 35 years. I quickly cancelled my plans with Air Around The Clock and had my plumber take over. I'll never do business with them again.
Then there's the pool. I just can't get a break. My tenant told me he was filling up my pool 45 minutes a day. I had to call my pool guy out to fix three leaks.
So nothing else can break now right? How about my new washer? At least it was under warranty but some Sears employees are really incompetent and it took 4 phone calls and three weeks to get someone out there to fix it.
Just when I think it's all over I find out my neighbor is starting more problems. I have a couple other post about my issues with an inconsiderate white trash neighbor who even though he is a chiropractor, completely lacks common sense. Well right before my trip in January he pulled out my high range sprinkler head. I paid my gardener to fix it along with other sprinkler heads. Damage, $100. Well a couple weeks later it was dug out again. Happened to be the same time I had issues with the oven and the air conditioner. So I was going to have my tenant go over and talk to my neighbor but the next day the sprinkler was put back. So I thought the light bulb finally turned on in my neighbor's head, it didn't. Last week I got a call from my gardener saying that my sprinkler is missing. You can only imagine how angry I am at this point.
I don't have my neighbor's personal phone number and I wanted to put an end to this. So I called him up at work and told him to leave my sprinkler alone. The stupidity of this guy never ceases to amaze me. First he had a hard time understanding who I am. I told him "Your neighbor on 105th"(he's on a cul-de-sac so he only has one neighbor on 105th). Finally, "Oh, the neighbor that moved". So then I explained what was going on and I told him it's my sprinkler and it's on my side. I let him know that the one 2 feet away, the one he also dug a hole around, was his. He started going off about how he's having sprinkler issues and mine isn't going up so he keeps trying to get it to work. I told him you're not going to get it to work because it's mine. Put it back and focus on yours. "Are you sure it's yours, I've never seen it work". "You've never seen it work because it's mine and I run it at 3am. Trust me, it's mine. I've seen it go up 100 times. My uncle was just out testing it and my gardener just fixed it and tested it. It's mine". I eventually got him to replace it and leave it alone! My tenant talked to him afterwards and noticed the same stupidity talking to the guy. But he's a chiropractor, he fixes people's spines. It's scary!
So for now things are quiet. Hopefully it stays that way.
Hole on left where he removed my sprinkler, on my side of the yard. On right side is his sprinkler. I don't know why it's so hard for him to understand. Why on earth would he have two sprinklers so close together? Anyone with a room temperature IQ could tell you that it's my sprinkler without turning it on.
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