High class troubles...

Don’t you just hate a whiner?

For the record, there is a difference between whining (or whinging, if you prefer) and complaining. Complaining has a legitimacy to it, like when your soup is cold and your drink is warm and your waiter cannot be found to rectify the situation. But whining…well, that has an air of petulance, peevishness, and self-interest above all else.

I cruise several sites for interesting blogs to read and this morning, on a new (to me) site, I came across what I consider to be one of the championship whiners of all time:

Ok... I'm in Hawai'i... the island of paradise... right?

Or... am I just bored to tears, waiting to waste my day away playing cards with my sick mother, sipping ginger in water to keep myself from getting sick... and wondering when the rest of my family is going to come home from the beach at Mauna'Lani so that we can go eat at Cafe Pesto... where the only thing that I can eat (being a food allergic vegan) is the salad with oil and vinegar and their pizza crust. Erg...

I'm actually happy to be coming home to the snow... at least I'll be spending a few days in Santa Cruz WITHOUT my family - my hair is whittled down to the roots... I need to come home.

But what is home, really? Growing up, it was where I lived. But, now, since I've moved out and have never really had a very stable home base for three years now... living in one place or another for no longer than one year or so... where am I? I feel like I've found a home now... but it's still not my own. It's in St. Louis... the place a couple hours away from homey ole' Columbia, MO. I'm uprooted, it seems. I just want to go to the bar down the way in that restaurant, I think it's called the Beach House or something, and have a friggin' Black Russian... or a Mind Eraser... hmm... Kahlua and vodka... yummy... Erg.

It's 4:22 here in Hawai'i time... wow, I've really wasted my day away.

I got a new pair of sneakers from my aunt that she bought from Wal Mart or something - her *favorite* store... erg again... granted, I'm guilty of shopping there sometimes... but still... it's covered in Leather, and I may just sell them on eBay if I don't get coerced into using them, so that I can buy a pair of vegan friendly sneakers to go running in. Hmm... and... I HAVE NO MONEY... AND NO CAR INSURANCE... AND I HAVE TO ... agh... okay *breathe* *breathe*

*whoo*

Where's that Black Russian...

(can anybody tell me where that guy is with the obnoxious mai tai with the umbrella and the Swingline stapler on the reclining chair on the beach? Because he has my brain...)

I've become addicted to Macadamia nuts and Papaya since I've come to Hawai'i for the 4th time in my life... oh wait... 5th time... I think... Whatever...

Mmmm.. Macadamia nuts are sooo good! but so bad for my *svelte* figure that I have to maintain for this dancy thing... and my mental health... uh oh... Lily.... Oh, whatever... I like them...

So... what else was I thinking... *purge, Lily! purge!* Well, I guess that's it... you know... feeling like I should be having more fun here in Hawai'i, but instead, I'm nervous about how much I'm changing... but one must welcome change to be a better person, right?

MM... Macadamia nuts...

So, sorry folks, not much of a tan becoming here... I wasn't into the beach thing that much... don't really know why... just wasn't into it.. exploring Hawai'ian villages? All about it, Baby! But beaching every day? Not so much... so, oh well.. my skin is one step further behind skin cancer than everybody else... and swimming in a pool in the condo complex is just Pointless, when you're in Hawai'i. It is a salt water pool tho... that's pretty cool... easier to float!!

Lots of stray cats here... that's pretty cool... I Like to make eye contact with them when they pass by - as If I'm making mild conversation with another being...

I just had a craving for chestnuts... hmm, I wonder what that means? I wonder where I can find chestnuts...?

Some people and their houses!

Hubby and I are considering buying another investment property. The property market is sluggish here with prices either stagnant or declining, which makes it the best time to buy, whether for a personal dwelling or an investment.

There are several kinds of investment buyers…some want to buy the property and “flip” it for a profit: these buyers need an undervalued or distressed property that they can buy, wait a few months for property values to rise, then sell at a profit. Other investment buyers specialize in fixer-uppers: they buy properties in need of repair, fix them up and then sell the property at a profit. These investors need in increasing property market in order to profit from their purchase. We, on the other hand, are landlords: we buy a property and rent it out, using the rental income to pay the monthly payments on the property. To make this kind of purchase work, the price and the condition of the property must be such that it can be rented out as soon as possible and at an amount that will pay the mortgage. Pretty much a no-brainer in my eyes, but I am constantly amazed at people who simply don’t get it…especially estate agents!

We were supposed to go look at a possible investment property last night, but at the last minute, the estate agent had to cancel our appointment. Seems the property is occupied by a renter who decided she had better things to do and was not going to let us in to see the property. I wonder if Judy, the agent, has any idea how bad that looks to a potential buyer? Why didn’t the owner show up with keys to let us in? Why is a tenant being allowed to determine when…and if…a potential buyer will be allowed to see the property? I own rental property and if I was keen to sell it, I’d be there with keys in hand if it was inconvenient for my tenant to admit potential buyers...I certainly wouldn’t allow my tenant to control whether or not potential buyers would see the property!

After our experiences with Lynda, who couldn’t seem to wrap her head around the concept that landlords trump tenants, Hubby and I no longer want to see this property because it is apparent that if we do, we will inherit a tenant who thinks she is in control of things, not the owner. Sorry, been there, done that, and don’t have any desire to do it again!

I am astounded at some of these properties…and at Judy’s attitude. I saw four properties yesterday and three of them were appalling. One required a huge investment in repairs, another one was grossly overpriced and inhabited by messy tenants, the third was an absolute pig sty, with things strewn about and washing hanging everywhere, dirty dishes in the sink, even a chunk missing out of a corner of a masonry wall!…the kind of place that “Clean House” moves in and makes over. Amazingly, the estate agent defended not only some outrageous prices, but the filthy, rundown conditions of the properties as well! She knew full well that if we buy it will be an investment property…maybe she doesn’t know what that means in practical terms.

You see, the whole purpose of owning investment property is to make money on it. If you are a landlord, to make a new investment property pay it has to get rented out as quickly as possible because every month the house is unoccupied is a month that the owner makes the payments out of his own pocket. This means the more work the property needs, the longer it will be off the market, which effectively means the buyer’s cost for the property is increased…not to mention the cash outlay for fixing the property in the first place. There is nothing emotional in an investment property purchase (or at least there shouldn’t be), the whole thing is driven by the numbers.

What are those numbers? Well, the first one is “How much rent can I get for this place?” The second one is “What are my monthly payments going to be?” (If you don’t have an idea of what interest rates are and how to calculate your monthly repayment, then you should not be looking at buying rental property!). Now, if the discrepancy is small and something you can make up out of your own pocket without too much pain, then you ask the rest of the questions: how quickly can I have this ready to rent out? How long can I make the entire payment out of my own pocket? How much is it going to cost to make it ready to rent?

These last are the questions that make or break a deal. If you can assume the estimated rental is approximately the same as the estimated monthly house payment, it looks like a good deal, right? But suppose the house, like a house I saw yesterday, has a garage conversion that was so badly done that it now has a leaking roof, sodden ceilings, and the only access is through the master bedroom. And, to add to the trouble, the main bathroom has badly broken tiles and the toilet has had a serious leak in the past which was very amateurishly repaired. Now what?

Well, the first thing you have to do is come up with a rough estimate of the cost of the repairs. Will you do the work yourself? How much time will it take? Each month the building is under repair is a month without rental income, so you are actually adding to your acquisition cost.

Look at it this way: let’s suppose you feel you can afford R800,000 for a rental property:

Cost of property (including fees ): R800,000
Monthly repayment: R7,000
Three months to repair: 3
Cost of repairs: R50,000
Actual cost of property: R871,000

Why R871,000? Because that it what it is going to cost you before you can rent it out to the first tenant: R800K for the house, R21K out of pocket for the house payments, and R50K to fix what is wrong with it. So, to limit your investment in the property to R800K, you’ll have to buy it for R730K or thereabouts…That way, when the property is ready to be rented out, your property investment is actually the R800K you figured you could afford.

Now Judy tried to convince me that the house was priced at its fair market value, but it had been on the market for months and it was vacant and the sellers were getting desperate. If it was truly at its fair market value, wouldn’t it have sold already? Obviously, those who had viewed the property were not inspired by the obvious work that was needed. What the estate agent was refusing to face is that when a buyer is quoted a price, s/he expects to have a property ready for occupation at that price, not a property needing further investment in order to be habitable. “It’s a fair price,” she kept telling me. Yah…if it was ready to move into, I might agree…but not if it is going to cost me another R70K before I can put up a for rent sign!

Investment buyers are, by definition, people who seek to acquire property with the least expense to themselves and then profit from their purchase. We look for properties that are ready to be rented out very quickly or that are priced low enough that a month or two off the market for repairs won’t be deadly to the pocket. And the properties have to be in neighbourhoods that will attract renters who have pockets deep enough to pay a rent that will cover the majority of the monthly bond payment. Over time rents go up and eventually the property will go into a positive cash flow mode, but if you’ve paid too much for the property, either through extensive repairs and off-market time, or by failing to resist an agent’s platitudes, you’ll never get into profit.

One of the things a potential landlord looks at is the condition of the property at the time of showing. A lot can be inferred by the way people are living in the house. I viewed one place where I could not see the bathroom fixtures and floors because they were strewn with clothing. I could not see the condition of the carpets in the bedrooms because the rooms were dark and there was junk and clothing strewn all over the floors. I could not see the condition of the kitchen counters, sink surround, or anything else in the kitchen because it was jammed with dirty dishes and clutter and stuff strewn around. We entered through a patio door…was there something wrong with the front door? The resident’s dog was busily digging a hole in the back garden while the resident ignored him (he couldn’t’ have been shut in the garage for the short time we were there to view the house?).

So, as a possible new owner for this place, what was my impression? I had no way of determining the condition of the property because the place was a pig sty and I couldn’t see the windows or the lights or the walls or the carpets or the floors or the kitchen or bath fixtures. Were the tiles in the bathrooms intact? Was the shower grout in need of replacing? Did the kitchen drains work well? Did the cupboard doors close properly? Was there water damage under the sink? I couldn’t get to these areas, they were blocked by the clutter and mess of the resident. But, when you consider that these people obviously have no interest in cleaning up after themselves, what is the likelihood that they made any efforts to keep the place in good repair? I did notice a big chunk out of a masonry wall and when I pointed it out to Judy she just shrugged and said “Oh, it’s just cosmetic.” Excuse me? A pyramid-shaped chunk of cement nearly two inches across gouged out of the corner of a stud wall is just cosmetic? And who is supposed to pay for that fix and the painting of the room that will inevitably follow?

Judy hasn’t called me back to see any more properties. I think she thinks I’m too picky. But not being picky when you buy a property, unless you can get it at a low enough price to make up for the deficiencies, is just stupid.

Which I, of course, am not.

Rainy days and warm, homey smells...

My house smells wonderful! The bread machine has been churning out fragrant loves since this morning and today Thandiswe reminded me that I wanted to make chocolate chip cookies with the chocolate chips I found at the market last week.

Believe it or not, it has been five whole years since I’ve had chocolate chip cookies. It’s one of those odd little things that you don’t notice are missing from the shelves until you get a craving for choccy chip something and discover nobody has a clue what you are talking about!

But last week I saw Chips Ahoy! cookies in the biscuit aisle (cookies are known as biscuits here) and suddenly I was on my way to the baking goods aisle to see if South Africa had discovered chocolate chips yet. YES!

I suppose I shall have to wait a few more years for milk chocolate chips and white chocolate chips, but that’s ok…my cookie recipe originated with only dark chocolate chips, so although I’ll be stepping back in time a bit, the cookies will be fabulous.

Thandiswe has never tasted chocolate chip cookies, so I guided her through making them and left her to bake the last two batches. Sixty cookies later, the house smells divine, the cookie jar is full, and Thandiswe is grinning from ear to ear…I gave her a bag of cookies to take home for herself and her kids. She thinks everything I cook is “American food”…except for the curries, of course…and after tasting the cookies, she declared she very much liked American food!

It is raining again, but the wind has died down.

It’s a good day to stay snug inside.

Tenant from Hell, Redux

On 6 June I wrote that our attorneys had informed us that they had “received a call from Lynda’s attorney earlier today requesting the full outstanding balance and our banking details to attend to payment by no later than close of business on Monday, 9 June 2008.” Lynda, you will remember, was our tenant who owes us a boatload of money in past due rent, late penalties, and damages to the flat she rented for two years.

One of the key elements in our battle with Lynda is that she is a hopeless liar. By the time I posted the 6 June blog entry she had promised to pay at least part of the debt we claimed no less than a dozen times, at least twice in writing. Finally, just before we were to go to court, Lynda’s attorney faxed our attorney the above commitment to pay the debt in full.

Well, it was no surprise that 9 June came and went and we didn’t see a centavo. Wise to Lynda’s ways, we didn’t hold much hope of payment and so did not suspend our legal journey. Prior to our next court date Lynda’s attorney, with no explanation or apology for Lynda’s failure to pay on 9 June, again communicated with our attorneys, this time claiming that she could not afford to pay a single lump sum and offering a payment scheme. Lynda was offering to pay a sum weekly until the debt was paid.

Knowing that magistrates often frown on a refusal to accept a reasonable offer of settlement, we declined the offer with the explanation that Lynda had failed to make good on offers of payment in the past and, absent any kind of onerous penalty for failure to make her payments, we had no confidence in her promise to pay. We heard nothing back from Lynda’s attorney and so, after waiting a respectable time, our attorneys filed what is called a “Demand for Plea.” This gave Lynda five working days to submit her plea to the court and should she fail to do so, we could then apply for a default judgement after which her assets could be seized and sold to satisfy the debt.

We waited for ten days for her to submit her plea…basically her refutation of our claims…to the court. After all, this was her very last chance to have a judge look at the claim and maybe—just maybe—let her off the hook. If I was in Lynda’s place, you can bet I would submit a detailed and eloquent rebuttal to the claims, hoping to minimize the amount I would be ordered to pay. To fail to respond at all is to just give the judgement to the opposition.

But that is exactly what Lynda did. We gave her ten days instead of the obligatory five, and still she did not respond. And so, on 14 July our attorneys filed for a Judgement in Default of Plea. Yesterday we received, via our attorneys, a fax from Lynda’s lawyer containing yet another offer of settlement: “…2 monthly instalments of R10 000 as from 01 August 2008 and 01 September 2008 provided that the amount be capped at R20 000 and no further interest, costs, etc. are levied.”

I nearly laughed out loud! What on earth makes that woman think we have any interest in accepting any kind of deal from her? It’s over! Only the formalities are left to attend to. She defaulted, we won, so now it is just a question of getting the paperwork signed and her BMW hauled away by the Sheriff for auction. Yes…she drives a late model Beemer and she is a 35% owner of a lucrative employment agency…it’s not like we are trying to take bread out of the mouths of starving babes, here!

And so we countered with an offer of our own: We are in receipt of Lynda’s…offer to settle. In view of the fact that Lynda’s history is one of making agreements to pay and then failing to do so, we are unable to accept this offer. We will counter with an offer of our own: full payment of all amounts owed in a single lump sum. Interest, costs, penalties, etc. to stop at the moment her payment clears the bank.

The more I thought about the offer, the more incensed I became. This has been a power struggle with Lynda almost from the day she moved into the flat. She actually expected us to cut down a tree, demolish a significant part of the garden and build a garage for her where the front patio stands! When we demurred, reminding her that she leased the flat knowing it had no garage (but secure parking nonetheless), she darkly hinted that she would remember this when it came time to renew her lease. The fact that it would cost a full year’s worth of her rent to build the bloody thing was apparently unimportant…she wanted a garage and we were somehow remiss in not providing it for her.

She ignored the conditions of her lease that were not to her liking, from confining her dogs to smoking to paying her rent on time to watering the garden. When we pressed her to abide by the terms of her lease she responded with indignation and hostility, as if we were overstepping our bounds! Even on the day she finally left, she determined to do so on her terms, refusing to set an appointment for a final inspection of the flat and even refusing to give the keys to us…she gave them instead to the new tenants!

After she moved out and we sent her the results of our final inspection, she had the audacity to substitute her own thumb-sucked figures for the quotes we had carefully and painstakingly gathered. She stole a down lighter from the dining room ceiling and damaged two electrical outlets in the kitchen, which a certified electrician repaired for us at a cost of R1100: Lynda’s offer of reimbursement was R80…less than the cost of a replacement down lighter kit! She damaged a carpet that was in new condition when she moved in…when she moved out there was a circular water stain at least 20”(50 cm) in diameter and the carpet fibre had rotted. Because there is no spare carpet to make a patch and the damage is highly visible, we must replace the entire carpet at a cost of nearly R2000: Lynda’s offer of compensation for this damage was R80 to have the carpet shampooed!

If we had any concern that her blatant flouting of our legitimate authority was based in some kind of personal animosity, it was laid to rest when she treated the court system in the same manner. Lynda has apparently decided that the courts hold no legitimate authority over her either, and so she simply ignores the rules of litigation. She made commitments to pay us both directly to our attorneys and in writing through her own attorney which she failed to keep and she failed to submit documents to the court by the deadlines. She seems to think she doesn’t have to abide by the rules, that she will make up the rules as she goes along and do things her way.

So, after ruminating about this for a while, I sent an email to Hubby: It occurs to me that Lynda is still trying to run things. She is trying to set the terms of settlement…“2 monthly instalments of R10 000 as from 01 August 2008 and 01 September 2008 provided that the amount be capped at R20 000 and no further interest, costs, etc. are levied.”

“I’ll give you this money but on the following conditions…” is basically what she is saying. What makes her think WE have to bend to her conditions? The court is going to take her car away from her and attach her wages if she doesn’t pay the debt, and every month that this drags on is more court costs and legal fees, both hers and ours. There’s no question now that the judgment will be in our favour and for the full amount we claim because she defaulted.

Does she think we are stupid? Or maybe greedy? If we agree to cap it at R20K and we run up another R10K in legal expenses because she again fails to pay (which I suspect is her plan), we would have to go to court to invalidate the agreement because of her failure to perform, and then we have to start the whole process all over again. Why would she think we would want to stop now when we are now just about at the end of it, and we are winning?

I am sure she is trying to minimize the monthly increase in this debt, but what makes her think we would even consider such an offer? Why would she think, after a dozen or more defaulted promises to pay, we would accept a deal with her, especially one that provides no onerous penalty for her default? She could have been off the hook for half this amount if she had just paid up in the first place. The longer she drags it out, the more it costs her…she is racking up R600/mo in late penalties, plus our lawyer bills and hers as well.

We are still waiting to see if she accepts our counter offer…whether she admits it or not, she doesn’t have much choice in the matter because whether she forks over the cash or the Sheriff seizes her assets and sells them at auction to satisfy the debt, she going to have to pay. The only control she has left is whether or not to allow the debt to continue to grow due to her delaying tactics. Her debt to us, including our attorney’s fees, is now at least R20,000. Additionally, she has her own attorney’s fees to pay.

Does being a control freak feel so good that it is worth this kind of money?

The Beatification of John McCain

And so it begins…the supposedly liberal US media has begun its escort of John McCain into the White House with this morning’s headlines: “McCain attends church, visits VA hospital.”

I kid you not…my husband thinks it must have been a very slow news day in America, but if that was the case, why was there no corresponding headline regarding the activities of McCain’s chief rival for the job, Mr. Obama? Where was the “Obama attends church, visits Eternal Flame” or similarly unsubtle attempt to show him as a man of the people?

My distance from America and her daily political angst seems to have afforded me a clarity, an objectivity, that is just impossible when immersed in it. It has been interesting to witness the Right Wing’s continued demonisation of Hillary Clinton, a woman of strength and intelligence and more experience in White House intrigue than all the other presidential hopefuls put together, and its attempts to characterize Obama as anything other than what he is: an educated, well-spoken Christian American male of black and white ancestry. If you believe the Right’s lunatic fringe, he is a black Muslim intent upon paving the way for Islam to dominate America…something I can’t see as being any worse, in the long run, than allowing these lunatic über-Christians to force their antediluvian notions upon the entire populace.

And so the media grooming of John McCain as a political saint has begun. Never mind that he plans to keep feeding young American men to the war machine, never mind that the economy is at its lowest ebb since the Shrub’s daddy held the throne and McCain has no recovery strategy…the media is now more about big business than critical analysis and hard reporting, and the Republicans are more about servicing big business than anything else. Even Jayzus.

Neither McCain nor Obama have White House-worthy credentials…that lone jewel sits firmly in Hillary’s crown. But Americans, ever eager to avoid anything that smacks of hard work…including the work of firing up the brain cells and actually making them think…have chosen to reject the only person with the experience and knowledge in favour of the smooth orator, the glad-hander, he of the polished charm and photogenic smile. It will be interesting to see if the media campaign to buff McCain into an American Saviour. With the media deeming McCain’s venture into a church to be a headline-worthy event, I’ll be waiting with bated breath to see what other kind of saintly behaviours the media chooses to showcase.

But one thing is for certain…you won’t be seeing the media shining up Obama’s halo.

Winter wet and windy

It’s the Fourth of July. Today, all over America, people are preparing picnics and cookouts, planning trips to the park or the beach, and looking forward to firework displays. Tomorrow they will b nursing sunburns and hangovers, traditional legacies of America’s celebration of her independence from Britain more than 200 years past.

It is almost 10 in the morning here in Cape Town and it is the dead of winter. The rain alternates between downpour and deluge and, with no central heating, the doggies and I are tucked up in the bed with the mattress pad heater beneath us and a duvet topped by a boutis quilt, weighty and warm, on top of us.

The light is dim, more like immediate post-dawn than approaching noon, and the best news is the infamous Cape Doctor…that stiff and bracing wind so characteristic of these parts…has not decided to pay us a visit concurrent with the monsoon. I’ve never been fond of extreme weather, and one form or another at any given time is all my nerve will take with equanimity. I especially dislike heavy winds and coupling them with a torrential rain is my particular idea of hell.

But, ever the seeker of the silver lining, I will say this for today’s dim and soggy state: the wind is tolerable, there is no thunder, no lightning, and if I go outside for a bit of a stroll, I won’t get sunburned, only damp…and between the clothes dryer and a cupboard full of fat, fluffy towels, that is quickly and easily remedied…and without lasting ill effect.

But the doggies seem to have the right of it, tucked up warmly in the bed, snoozing the foul weather away. Perhaps I should join them…

The Tenant from Hell

So, we had this tenant from hell, whom I shall call Lynda.

After blatantly violating several provisions of her lease…and even arguing with us about abiding by her lease!...she decided to move out rather than renew her lease when it expired. We were relieved, as we had planned to refuse to renew it, she being such a pain in the butt. Her decision to move, we felt, was saving us the wrangle of prying her out of the place at the end of her tenancy.

Well, we traded one agony for another because she stopped paying her rent two months before the end of her lease. In January she called us and tried to get us to accept her security deposit in lieu of the month’s rent but we declined: not only were we pretty sure we were going to need that money to remedy some problems she had caused in the flat…most especially to replace plants in the once-beautiful garden that had died due to her neglect…such a thing was prohibited by her lease. Contentiously, she then informed us that she was not going to paint her flat, making vague references to a previous tenant who had painted before she left (that tenant had damaged the paint in several rooms and voluntarily repainted so she could get her deposit back). If we weren’t willing to cancel her debt for January’s rent by accepting her deposit in its place, Lynda obviously expected to get her deposit back and had no intention of doing anything save moving out in order to do so.

We had a new tenant ready to rent Lynda’s flat before the end of the lease. Lynda’s lease specified she should be out on 29 February and the new tenant was prepared to move in on March 1. At 08h00 on the morning of March 1, the new tenant’s van arrived and disgorged her furniture onto the main patio because Lynda was still in the flat. She adamantly refused to remove so much as a stick of furniture to the other patio or the enclosed, gated driveway to allow Mary to move in, despite her lease having expired and the flat legally belonging to Mary as of that morning. She had earlier communicated to us her intention of remaining in the flat an extra day and when we told her she could not do so…that the flat had already been rented out…her reply was a terse “tough!” By way of response, we immediately hand-delivered a letter to her informing her that her lease terminated on 29 Feb and if she stayed past that date, she would be charged the daily/holiday rate for the flat (which is less than a 5 minute drive to the beach) of R1200 per day for each day she overstayed.

Eventually Lynda got out and we, accompanied by Mary, her boyfriend Tom, and my trusty digital camera, inspected the flat. We had sent an SMS to Lynda asking her to name a time for a joint inspection, but she declined to reply, so we set about inspecting it ourselves along with the new tenants as witnesses. It was worse than we thought. The place was filthy, the paint in every room damaged well beyond what could be considered “normal wear and tear.” A large stain on one wall indicated a spilled (or thrown) cup of coffee or glass of cola, nicotine stains on the walls and ceilings (our leases prohibit smoking inside the flats), and paint actually ripped off the wall where something had been glued to it. The garden, which has an irrigation system, was nearly dead from lack of watering. Holes and cracks in walls. Huge (50 cm!) stain in a previously perfect carpet, patio furniture warped and peeling from being left out in the rain and not oiled, electrical outlets broken…and a black scorch mark on one of them…ceiling downlighters missing, cigarette burns on the Oregon pine bathroom cabinet, and she left with a complete set of keys, which meant we had to get a locksmith out to replace all of the security locks. All in all, the damages added up to nearly R8000…much of which we had to get repaired out of our own pockets as her deposit was less than R4500. Those costs coupled with the past due rents and penalties, brought Lynda’s debt to nearly R15000.

We sent Lynda an itemized statement. We duly noted that we were aware of her new address (she had lied to us about her new address, giving us a location in a downmarket suburb when, in fact, she moved into a posh district in our own upmarket suburb), and specifically inquired as to our missing rent for January and February…did she, we asked, use the rent she owed us to pay for the deposit and first month’s rent on her new digs? Had she spent our money to finance her move to house in a neighbourhood even we cannot afford to live in? In January and February, when we had to delve into our personal funds to make the bond payment on the rental property because she had failed to pay her rent, she had cried poverty to us, claiming that her clients had failed to pay her due to the holidays, and when we pressed her for the rent each week, she became increasingly hostile and resentful of our demands. It was obvious to us, on 1 March when we followed the removal van to her new place, that she had had the money all along, but declined to pay her rent with it. We ended up having to cash in some of our retirement investments in order to pay the bond on the rental property, something we would not have been obliged to do if she has just paid her rent.

So, we sent her an itemized accounting of the damages and outstanding amounts and she fired back an outraged and bombastic reply, denying responsibility for virtually everything. She claimed our expectation that she pay for repainting the flat to be motivated by “greed,” failing to acknowledge the brown nicotine spots on the ceilings, the paint stripped off the wall in one bedroom, the grimy streaks on the walls of the other bedroom, the brown splash stain on the walls. She offered to pay R80 to replace the missing downlighter…less than the cost of the kit to replace it and not even remotely close to the charge of an electrician to install it. She claimed the electrical outlets were broken when she moved in, but the flat was newly renovated when she took possession and her lease gave her seven days to report such flaws…she lived there for two years and never made mention. She even had the cheek to suggest that we pay her for things she left behind: a shower curtain, some broken bamboo blinds and light globes! And, to top it all off, she actually threatened to sue us for defamation for impugning her character! We have yet to figure out how expecting a person to abide by the terms of her lease and pay her rent on time constitutes defamation… Hubby asked, in his reply to her threat, if she was attempting to intimidate us into dropping our claim by threatening to bring a frivolous lawsuit against us, a question to which she gave no reply.

All in all, at the end of her three page diatribe she agreed she owed us one month’s rent plus a few bucks…the total being below R4500…and that she would pay it by 31 March. That gave me a hearty laugh because this was only the umpteenth promise to pay, and if she hadn’t honoured any of the previous ones, why would she be bothered to honour this one? Since our claim was three times what she claimed to owe (and we had no confidence in her paying even that reduced amount), we instructed our lawyers, specialists in debt collection…and rent collections in particular…to begin the process of squeezing Lynda to pay her debt.

True to form, Lynda took umbrage at our audacity…how dare we hold her feet to the fire and demand payment through the legal system? Our attorneys sent her our claim (a copy of the final inspection report we had sent Lynda a month before) and she said she needed some time to respond. Weeks later our attorneys received her response…the same three page diatribe she had previously faxed to us. And when our attorneys telephoned her to request payment, Lynda screamed at her and slammed down the phone! It was at that juncture it became clear that she was simply playing for time, probably hoping that if she dragged it out long enough we would just give up and go away. Obviously, Lynda is unaware of the American reputation for litigiousness…

We pressed the issue and last week our legal fees…which Lynda will have to pay due to the terms of the lease…surpassed R2500. Lynda was served by the Sheriff that we were taking her to court and, once we received confirmation that she had been served, we had to make a decision: apply for Summary Judgement or wait…yet again…for Lynda to respond. We opted for the Summary Judgment.

Now, here is one of the places where American law and South African law differ: in America you just wait for the court date and go to trial. In South Africa you have an option not available in America: the Application for Summary Judgment. In this situation, your case is presented to a magistrate and the defendant submits a synopsis of their defence, and the Magistrate decides if the situation is worthy of spending the resources for a full hearing. If the claim is clear-cut…either for the complainant or the defendant…the magistrate can enter a judgment on the spot and safe time and money on taking the case to a full hearing. Believing our case to be particularly strong…especially since Lynda admitted to owing the past due rent and offered to pay for certain claims (although at laughably reduced amounts)…we told our attorneys to apply for the Summary Judgment. And yesterday we received the following email from

The Application for Summary Judgment has been set down for Wednesday, 11 June 2008.

I received a call from Lynda’s attorney earlier today requesting the full outstanding balance and our banking details to attend to payment by no later than close of business on Monday, 9 June 2008.

This whole thing, including her attorney's and our legal fees, is going to cost Lynda around R20,000. That's a pretty expensive tantrum...