Landlording is not for the faint of heart!

My husband has never been a landlord before. When I was in my teens, my mother and stepfather were landlords and I learned a lot…too much!...from their experiences.

One of the tenants we ejected last month has come back to haunt us. They moved out on August 11 and, despite my written request for a forwarding address, we have no idea where they went. Neither one of them provided an address so, when we finished our inspection of the property, there was no place for us to send the report. So, I wrote the report, noted there was no forwarding address, and stored it in my computer.

Today we received a letter from a lawyer. The letter is dated August 17…24 days ago and less than a week after they moved out. The letter gives us 14 days to refund the unused portion of their August rent…but the letter was not even posted until 19 days after it was written! It was sent via registered mail, so the date and time it was posted is on the sticker on the back of the envelope…that should sit well with a Magistrate, eh? Guarantee default by failing to post the demand until after the deadline has passed…cute.

We have no idea what this tenant told the lawyer, but based on the demand, the truth wasn’t part of it. First of all, there were two guys on the lease and this dude doesn’t just want his half of the money, he wants all of it. A real pal, eh? Pay half the rent but when you decide a refund is in order, demand the whole bundle for your own pocket. I’m guessing he neglected to mention his co-Lessee and flatmate to the attorney…

He also, obviously, neglected to mention that he never paid his security deposit, which was supposed to pay in monthly instalments…didn’t make even one payment! The amount he owes us for that security deposit is more than he claims we owe him in a rent refund…

Then there is the question of damages to the flat…if we keep the whole excess rent as a part of the arrears on the security deposit (which is what we did), the dude and his buddy still owe us 700 bucks in damages over and above the money his lawyer is trying to pry out of us. So, he wants R3000 from us (only half of which he paid) but he and his former flatmate owe us more than R3700 in damages. Do you think his lawyer would have sent us that letter if he knew?

Ya gotta wonder about people…did he think the cracked toilet would go unnoticed? How do you crack a toilet in four places so that it leaks all over the bathroom floor? Did he think I got a volunteer to work nine hours in that flat, carrying out rotting garbage, clearing the stench out, scrubbing nicotine off the walls, grease stains out of the wall-to-wall and the black slimy mould off the bathroom ceilings? Why was the recessed lighting fixture hanging out of the ceiling? How did the seat of the barstool get snapped in half? And why is one of the pine strips of the ceiling hanging half off? Does he think I have a magic wand that, with one wave, will fix all of that for free? The flat was in fine condition when he moved in…it was a sty when he moved out only four months later!

My husband is a kind hearted man. He wants to help people where he can, he wants to believe the best in them whenever possible. I’ve know all along that when given an inch, most people will take a mile…I remember some of the lulus my mother had for tenants and some of the incredibly lame excuses they could conjure for not having their rent or how something got broken or soiled or damaged or went missing. Forty years later and 12,000 miles away, it is no different.

Being a nice guy, my husband allowed these guys to take the flat without a security/cleaning deposit. We wrote into their lease that they would pay the deposit off in monthly instalments over the next six months. They didn’t pay a cent. And every month there was a sob story about how tight money was…even when it was obvious that they were spending a sh*tload of money on booze since, from the accounts of the neighbours, they were apparently seldom sober.

So, they paid their rent on the first of August and on the eleventh they moved out at our request. We applied the unused portion of the rent, about R3000, to the arrears security deposit…which was still about R700 short. Even if they had been up to date on their deposit payments, they would have gotten back less than R50, due to the filth and damage they left behind.

So, you have to wonder what prompted the letter. Did the guy really think he wouldn’t have to pay for the damages and dirt? What makes him think that even if we were inclined to refund the money, we would give all of it to him and none of it to his flatmate and co-Lessor?

So much of this makes no sense…he didn’t bother to give us an address to send a possible refund, but six days after moving out he sees a lawyer to demand a refund? What kind of sense does that make? Why did the letter take 24 days to get here? The lawyer’s office is less than two kilometres from our place, the post office is between here and there…19 days it sat in his office, unmailed, and it finally gets posted 5 days after the deadline had passed?

We wrote the lawyer back and told him that as soon as his client paid us his half of the damages…which amounted to about R1850…we would pay his client his half of the amount in question…about R1550. Or the man could just pay the additional R330 and we would keep the funds we already had.

And then we said that if he client decided to pursue his claim further, we would turn him over to our attorneys for collection, in which case he would be liable not only for damages, but for legal costs as well.

So, now we wait. Landlording is not a business for the faint of heart.

Corporate incest

I must have a naïve streak or something. Somehow, despite my years of experiencing the shaft from corporate misers and greed merchants, some little part of me really expects my next transaction to be done in the fullest flower of honesty and transparency. And invariably, I get shafted yet again.

We all know my hot water heater burst a week ago, sending 200 litres of steaming hot water into the guest wing of my house. The brand new hardwood floors were ruined and the ceilings were waterlogged and buckling from being saturated by the steam. Indeed, the entire suite…two small bedrooms and a bath…was like a steam room at a spa, water coursing down the walls and dripping off the doorframes, windows opaque with steam, water standing on the floor. My maid went up a ladder for me to inspect a particularly bulging bit of ceiling and when she touched it, her hand went right through the ceiling board!

We called our insurance company, the floor company, and our regular builder/renovator. Anthony the Builder showed up first and within hours had a quote to me for fixing the ceilings. The floor company arrived first thing the next morning and left me with instructions and the name of a company with dehumidifiers to extract the water; the insurance company’s inspector also came out the day after the incident to inspect the damage. He took a copy of Anthony the Builder’s quote for ceiling repair and asked us to have Anthony the Floor Guy call him as soon as he had a quote for repair/replace the floors.

Last night the insurance company called Hubby and offered to settle cash in the amount of Anthony the Floor Guy’s quote for replacing the floors…over the past week they have cupped, buckled and warped beyond any hope of repair. He was happy with that, but what about the ceilings, he asked. Seems that the inspector completely left the ceilings off his report!

So, last night Hubby emailed a copy of Anthony the Builder’s quote to the insurance lady, adding in his comment that the inspector had been given a copy of the quote at the time of his visit. Curiously, I received a call this morning from a woman from another company wanting to set up an appointment to come out to the house to inspect the ceilings!

“Wait!” I interrupted her babbling. “Wait! The ceilings have already been inspected! We gave a quote from our builder to the inspector who was here a week ago!”

The insurance company had called her just that morning, she said, and told her our ceilings needed to be inspected. Now this made no sense to me at all. First of all, an entire week has passed, a week in which extractors and dehumidifiers have been running 24/7 in those rooms. The ceilings are pretty well dried out now, with only about 25% of the actual damage visible to the naked eye. The original inspector was here while the water was running down the walls and dripping out of the ceilings. There’s not much to see now, even though the integrity of the ceiling panels are now thoroughly compromised. (We all know what happens to sheetrock when it gets saturated with water, don’t we?)

She insisted that the insurance company wanted her to come out to inspect. I again argued that there is little for her to see, that the man who came out a week ago saw the damage and the saturated ceiling panels, and that the insurance company should be speaking with him, not sending out a new inspector a week after the damage occurred. She said she would call the insurance company and get back to me.

I immediately called Hubby and told him what was going on. He called the insurance company and when he got back to me, the story was a very different one. Apparently the guy who was coming out was not an inspector from the insurance company, coming to assess the damage and submit a report, the guy was a contractor coming out to look at the ceilings and submit a quote for repairs! Why hadn’t that woman said so? I get competitive quotes…I do not get a second, clueless inspector being sent out a week after the fact to assess damage that is no longer clearly visible to the naked eye. Just because the sheetrock is no longer grey and swollen with water doesn’t mean it isn’t damaged. “Let the guy in,” Hubby said. “He is just supposed to look at the ceilings for a quote to repair.”

Mollified, I agreed and a bit later the phone rang and it was the woman again, wanting to set an appointment for an inspection. What?? I don’t know about you, but to me, an “inspection” for an insurance company…which is what she said she was trying to make an appointment for…is a far cry from a contractor coming out to take a look at a problem so he can prepare a quote for repairs. I asked for clarification of just what it is they wanted to do here.

She kept invoking the insurance company, saying they had been contacted to come out and inspect the ceilings. I told her that had already been done, the man was here on the day the ceilings were still wet, he took pictures, we gave him a copy of the repair quote. I suggested that she refer the insurance company to that inspector and find out why he didn’t include that in his report.

“Oh,” she said. “He was only there for the floors.”

What?? If that was the case why did he ask for the quote for the ceilings and take pictures of them?

I was a little non-plussed by this revelation, so I changed tactics. “Tell me,” I said. “Exactly what is it you want to do here? Are you coming out to inspect the damage and write a report for the insurance company? Or are you coming out to do a quote for repairs to the ceilings?”

“Both,” she said.

The light in my head finally went on.

“Both?” I asked. “Are you a contractor, a construction company that actually does this kind of repair work?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“But you also come out and assess damage and submit inspection reports to the insurance company?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t get it,” I said, thinking about the requirement for arm’s length transactions to avoid the even the appearance of fraud.

“We’re on the insurance company’s board for inspection and assessing damages…”

YOW! Could the relationship be more incestuous? Shouldn’t the entity doing the damage assessment be one that cannot benefit from its own assessment? I mean, this company is going to come out and give an “objective” assessment of the damage to my home and then turn around and submit a quote to the insurance company in a bid to do the work and get the money? If that’s an arm’s length transaction, those arms are pretty damned short!

I let long silence develop between us and she finally broke it by asking when they could come out. Obviously she had not used the time to reflect on the inappropriateness of what she had just told me.

“I’m home all day,” I told her. “They can come anytime today.”

It will be interesting to see how this plays out because, come hell or high water, Anthony the Builder is going to replace those ceilings, not the insurance company’s pet contractor.

WE WON! Tenant from Hell Update

The magistrate has found in our favour with regard to Lynda's destruction of our property and her back rent. At this point, a judgment has been issued in our favour and we have instructed our attorneys to proceed with collection.

Unlike America, where you can get a judgment but are your own when it comes time to collect, the law here provides for the sheriff to immediately seize the movable assets of the debtor. Lynda has dragged her feet for almost ten months...we've been in litigation for five months...and during this entire time she has paid only R5000, an amount slightly more than what she claims her her total indebtedness to us, never mind that just her past-due rent is almost twice that amount!

So, we have instructed our attorneys to instruct the sheriff to get on with his business...with the roofing and water heater disasters of the past two months...not to mention both cars breaking down...we need that money! Her damages to the property we covered out of our own pockets and now it is time to get it back.

I wonder how much the sheriff is going to get for that pretty lavender BMW of hers?