Where the Wild Things Are

Having conducted a study examining the stupid things these birds say when looking for an apartment, we are happy to report that, after many years of careful observation, these species as well as varied sub-species, are thriving in the environment in and around Columbia County.  They can be seen flitting here and there, trying to settle in before winter.  Even though they have difficulty locating nesting places, they have been multiplying rapidly in recent years, and all indications are that they will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.

THE PREENING UPPER HANDER

“So how’s your credit?”  (I often ask this to save us all time & money).

“Not so hot.  I declared bankruptcy about 5 years ago.  If you’re asking can I afford the rent, definitely.  I’ve been a homeowner for 8 years.”

Me:  (thinking) nooo, I wasn’t asking if you could afford it, I was asking if you would pay it.

Him:  (sounding very knowledgeable) “I exempted my home mortgage from the bankruptcy proceedings.”

“I’m sorry, you won’t get the rental house with a bankruptcy on your credit report.”

Him:  (Shocked) “Really!  You mean you can deny renting on the basis of credit?”

Me:  duhhhh – okay, I only thought that last one.

THE WARBLING MISUNDERSTOODER

Grandma & granddaughter come to look at a 2 bedroom.  “So how many people will be in your family?”

“Only 3.  Myself, my boyfriend, and my granddaughter.”

Cut to seriously pregnant granddaughter.

“So there will actually be 4 of you?”

“Oh, no. You see, she [granddaughter] has a friend who’s away right now…”

“Away like at the mall, or away like ‘Away’?”

“Away in jail.”

“…who’s the father of this child…”

“Yes, but as soon as he’s out, my boyfriend and I are (claps her hands for emphasis) Out Of Here!”

“Nope, sorry.  I’m not knowingly renting to a convicted felon.”

“But you don’t understaannnd(!)  If they keep arresting people, there won’t be anywhere left for them to live!”

Say, wha? 

THE PSYCHO LOONEY BIRD

“I can’t make it this Friday, because I’m in the psych ward right now.  They got me locked up, but I’ll be getting out next week, so I can come look at the apartment next Friday.”

THE R-U-KIDDIN SAPSUCKER

“I’m looking for a house, not for me, for my brother.  He’s getting out of jail next month, and has to stay in New York for parole…”

THE SCRAMBLED EGGS AND HAMBRAIN

 “Oh, yes, my credit is excellent.  I own my home and everything.  Why am I relocating from Florida, leaving my house, uprooting my children, and renting an apartment?  Well, my new husband is getting out of jail next month…”

THE OUTTAOPTIONS ROADRUNNER

“You can reach me at the [welfare] motel, room 7”.

THE LOTSAPETS LOVEBIRDS

“The ad says ‘no dogs’.  I have litter-box trained rabbits."

“How many?”

“Four…three brothers…”

“Where do you keep FOUR rabbits?”

“We have a sleeping porch where I live now.” 

“Well, we have no sleeping porch in this rental”. 

“I can keep them in the extra bedroom.”

Yeah, right.  Four, no make that eight -- Oops! 16!  With litter boxes on my new rugs.  Bleech!

Maureen's Missing Rent Check

Maureen was one of our certified crazy tenants. I could usually deal with it. But once in a while, when she was off her meds, she’d start to frantically call me.  This was one of those times.

On June 4^th, she left me a message, asking if I got her rent check. She’d left it in the mailbox (as she’d done probably a hundred times before), and wanted to make sure I got it.  I returned her call and told her I had it.

June 5^th she called again, this time to see if I deposited it.  She called her bank and it hadn’t cleared.  She “just wanted to make sure”.  I returned her call again. 

June 7th:  "This is Maureen again.  The check still hasn’t cleared."  I ignore this message. 

I ignore messages 4 through 8, though she’s becoming increasingly agitated.  But I know Maureen in this state.  All I’ll be doing all day is returning her calls, and I know I made that deposit.

By June 10^th, the calls are frantic.  Her check apparently still hasn't cleared. I ignore these messages.

June 11th:  Calm:  "Hi.  This is Maureen.  Thank you so much for depositing my rent check.  The bank said it cleared." I think we’re done -- for this bout of insanity. 

June 17th.  I get a debit memo from the bank.  It says I made a deposit listing two checks, but only one was in the batch.  Guess whose check they say is missing? Only I know, without a doubt, this check, out of the thousands of checks I have received over the years, has cleared. Because Maureen may be crazy, but she’s not stupid. And she told me so. I call the bank. They can't find it.  They tell me I have to contact my tenant and get a copy of the check.

Are you crazy??? Call Maureen about the same check I just got 20 phone calls on? I don’t think so. But I have to: "Maureen, what bank is your checking account with?" 

"Hudson City Savings"

"Thank you."

Her bank is my bank. We can trace the snafu without her help. Thank God. 

Tales of Mr. Mac

Mr. Mac lived in one of our subsidized apartments on a small income.  His apartment was sparsely furnished, as expected of an old man whose social security check reflected a lifetime of low wages.  But he was clean, quiet, and his rent was always on time.   

One day I got a call from a friend who was an intake worker at the hospital.  Apparently Mr. Mac was hospitalized, told her I was his next-of-kin, and asked her to call me.  Ann was amused.  She knew this old black man wasn’t related to me.  But he insisted we were, so she called, and I went.

He told me the local reverend and his son had paid him a call while he was sick, and while the rev was "comforting" Mr. Mac in the living room, his son was rifling through his things in the bedroom.  He told me he thought they had stolen his coffee can of cash from the closet, and he wanted me to check it out.

Knowing Mr. Mac’s income, and since I was still young and dumb about life, I thought he was delusional because he was sick.  But I dutifully went to his apartment, checked his closet, and reported back to him that there was no money can there.  Now he was upset as well as sick, but I chalked it up to his illness and age.

As it turned out, this was Mr. Mac’s final journey, and in fact, he did have real kin.  I met his sister when she came up for his funeral, and she verified that Mr. Mac did indeed have a can of money. Not much, just coins as he could put them aside.

Rot in hell, Reverend.

The First Capital Improvement -- Almost!

Winter comes every year.  I know that statement elicits a "duh" and an eye roll.  But there's one group of homo-sapiens who annually have short term memory loss when it comes to this:  apartment hunters.  I have no idea why, but if I advertise a great apartment with heat between March and August, it languishes.  O, the denial.  In September the phone rings off the hook.  Of course, phones don't have hooks any more, but that's another story... 

On the other hand, furnaces, being alive, know full well when it's winter.  That's the only time they fail.  Not spring, not fall, just winter.  (One time I went to hunt for a furnace's serial number and found a union sticker on the back side.  I'm pretty sure a bunch of them rolled off the assembly line, congregated, and formed the United Furnaces union.  But I digress...)

So, it turned out that we did have a furnace in that first rental. But it was so old it only gave enough heat in July and August. The Man brought in another Man, and together they determined that there was nothing that could save the old behemoth. I would have to drive the ratty pickup an hour away to Albany during a snowstorm, and pick up a new furnace. So I did. And brought it back. And they told me that, while they were waiting for me to bring back the new furnace, they "messed around" some more with the old furnace, and, Good News! We didn't need a new one after all. We could baby this one along for at least this heating season. But in those days before cell phones, the bad news was I had to turn around and immediately return the new one, if I wanted to get our money back.

So I drove four hours in the snow that day, but that old furnace lasted another 10 years.

Our turn to pick

Long before "staging" was a decorator's term, we knew some things had to go before we could rent the roach tenant's apartment to someone with teeth.

So out went the '65 Buick Riviera bucket-seat lounge chairs. Out went the beer can collection. We watered the grass religiously, simultanously praying for rain.  We desperately needed the vegetation to cover the old tires that were still being used by the Darryls for patio tables. They were already pissed that we threw away their chairs.  Our haste was not due simply to industriousness. We still had under $1000 to our name, a vacant apartment to renovate, extermination costs, and don't forget that looming mortgage payment!  

Since all the remaining Darryls were at work during the day, I decided to show the apartment then, and hope the incomings didn't meet the outgoings. It worked pretty well, and our first tenant turned out to be a lady from Cos Cob, CT, a hoity-toity place compared to us.  When she finally got a good look at her neighbors, I was able to tell her truthfully that they were moving out within weeks. In the end we moved three out of the four families. Family #4 was actually pretty good, once they were viewed separately from the rest.  They turned out to be Darryl-in-Laws, and stayed for a few years afterwards.

First You Cry a Lot

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying: Never fall in love with real estate. Well, wish I were listening! Here we were, in love with the land, with the views, but we never checked to see if we had plumbing, a furnace, or a septic system. Meanwhile, we thought we bought a 4-family house plus two mobile homes that were on the property.

Oops! Make that two gutted mobile homes, still with loans against them from the manufacturer, compliments of the previous owner who sold everything removable, including the kitchen sinks. The only money we made off those trailers were the storage fees until the bank dragged them out of the field a few months later! Our expectation of 6 units quickly, nay, immediately,  became a reality of 4.

People don’t believe me when I say it’s harder to have 4 units than 140. When you only have a few, everything is on you. You have to do every repair yourself. Every bad tenant, every trashed apartment is a personal affront. Every late payment, every vacancy, every repair is a critical cash-flow problem.

When you have multiple units, no one problem, percentage-wise, is as important. One vacancy out of four is a critical 25%.  One out of 140 is negligible. You have better cash flow to work with. You can afford to employ others to help paint, clean, re-rent. You don’t know your tenants as well, so you can make decisions with a clearer head. You don’t take it personally when someone leaves an apartment in less-than-stellar condition.

So, at first, weary and just scraping by, until you build to that critical mass, that tipping point, you cry a lot.

Our First Tenants

"You’ve got roaches”. Those were the first words I ever heard, from the first tenant I ever had.

We had just closed on our first rental, a foreclosure with a 4-family building and two mobile homes and some 13 acres with beautiful views.  Back in those days, actual bank officers attended closings, and we had no idea that they usually weren't that jovial during the proceedings.  They were laughing at our naivete.  The house had peeling paint, bucket seats for lawn chairs, and beer cans for lawn ornaments.  But the views!  Ah, the views!  Of course, we had been so enamored of that view that we never got around to checking whether or not there was plumbing or a furnace in the house. 

That day, leaving the bank, we had just $1000 left to our name, the clock was ticking on our new mortgage payment, but we were going to collect our first rents! 

Soon I was gingerly perched at the top of a very narrow, winding stairway, simultanously collecting my first rent and giving my first eviction notice. Hoping I didn’t get pushed down the stairs.  My husband, who in the future will be known as “The Man”, was at the bottom of the stairs, providing “backup”, or maybe just preparing to break my fall. Meanwhile I was still trying to figure out how those roaches got from the bank to the house faster than we did.  

But that tenant was right. We did have roaches. And flies. And rats big enough to snack on the crumbs left between the sofa seats by their kids.  And she was loudly unhappy at my having snatched the rent money just before giving her the eviction notice.  But I survived that first tenant encounter.

Afterwards, we met the rest of the tenants. Apparently all four families were related, or as they’d call it in the back country, inbred. As in “Hi, my name is Darryl, this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl”. Except they weren’t that friendly. While we were checking to see if we had working plumbing, the Darryls were in the barn figuring out how to take out the new landlord. If we knew all that stuff, we might’ve been worried. But we didn’t find out till much later. So we weren’t – worried, that is. We should’ve been. For lots of reasons, not all having to do with this bunch of tenants. 

We were just 24. How the heck did we ever get ourselves into this?