Posted on 12/19/2004 8:10:38 AM PST by MississippiMasterpiece
Man! Have they never heard of a credit bureau background check?
There ought to be legal recourse against the previous landlords who gave "glowing references" to these deadbeats just to get rid of them and pass them along to some other poor schmuck.
What amazes me the most about this story is that there are people out there who would do something like this. I could never imagine screwing somebody over like this. How do they sleep at night? Some people have absolutely no morals whatsoever.
btttttt
You answered your own question.
Of course this is just a fantasy and in point of fact, is a plot for a screenplay I am writing in my spare time...I would never advocate this course of action to anyone. That would be unlawful.
Heh. How do people sleep at night after placing a gas-filled tire around someone's neck and lighting it...or cutting off someone's head for not believing in a certain religion?
Great story. You have sand. I'll give you that.
While I agree with your thought, that would be deemed a constructive eviction. In NYC a landlord found guilty of a constructive eviction can be sentenced to prison time as it is a criminal offense.
I will tell you a story. My dad, when I was a kid, owned about 4 small frame houses which he rented out. Nothing extravagant, but nice, safe neighborhoods. My dad was so nice he hated to ask for the rent when people were late on payment. Many times after 10 days or so he went to the house to try to collect the rent only to find that the people had gone, the place was trashed, windows often knocked out and all sorts of problems. He got out of the buisness when he went over to one of the rent houses and the people who had rented had long gone. There was human excrement in 3 or 4 corners of rooms. They had urinated anywhere in the house the urge struck them. (The plumbing worked fine.) We shoveled the turds out, and wiped the crap up as best we could, and them went inside on the linoleum floor with a garden hose and after pouring lysol over the surface washed it out like you would a dirty garage floor. The carpeting, we ripped up had to have replaced. Several windows were knocked out and a door had a hole big enough to put your head thru. Somehow, this was not what being a landlord was all about in his mind. He sold all four houses at a very reasonable price and stuck the money in Humble Oil and Refinery (EXXON). Seems these renters spoken of in this article have become more sofisticated at gaming the system. I believe if most people do not own property, they will not respect anyones private property.
We threw G-d out of our classrooms circa 1962, and we have now bred entire generations of people like this. We reap what we sow.
In Massachusetts, we would have called those people good tenants.
After all, they left, no matter how much damage they did, and they didn't kill anyone in your family.
My God, that's a story to make a person dizzy with horror. That woman's lucky you didn't throw HER out the third story window. (If you had, of course, I'd think you deserved a good, stern talking to and perhaps a small fine for having endangered anyone she might have landed on.)
I hope their next place will be be rent free to them- the slammer!
I thought seriously of it.
Got out of the business almost in time to save my humanity.
The state of Texas is a little tougher on deadbeats! You can change locks and you have to make the keys available, but the keys can be in Lubbock and the property in Beaumont! You can also remove the front door! The tenant, if a professional crook can take as much as 7 months to evict! You have to be careful in the slum lord business! As far as trashing the place, you need to expect that! Make Ready is all a part of the slum lord business!
Not only would the landlord face prison, it would be the Hall's lucky day. Next thing you know, they would own the building. I know people who were paying $60 per month since the sixties under rent control. When the landlord started messing with them, they were awarded free rent for ten years.
Actually, I lied in my previous post, I still have one rental property, a tiny (800 sq ft) single family home. My tenant has been there about 15 years, he has a dog (it's very hard to find a place to rent where you can have a pet), he pays on time and takes very good care of the property, the yard is in FAR better condition than when he moved in.
He says he will stay there until he dies. When and if he leaves (and I hope and pray it's not in a box in the back of a hearse, he's a very nice man), I will sell the place.
To keep him there, I keep the rent miniscule, haven't raised it in three years, but last year, for the first time since I bought it (24 years), I actually broke even. This year I will make a profit of a few hundred dollars.
A tenant like this is worth his weight in gold and they are few and far between. The longer they stay the better your income. Every time a tenant moves out you're looking at about $3,000-$5,000 in fix up costs.
As a landlord, it took me a couple tenants worth to learn to do credit checks, they are a gold mine of information. It's also a good idea to drive by the place they're living in at the time they apply to rent.
However, my horrible experiences came from having rental properties in a poor town and poor area of town and I thought I HAD to get them rented out as they had been empty for months while I waited to find someone decent. I learned that the wrong tenants can cost far more than just letting the place sit vacant.
All in all, I don't think being a landlord is too hard to do (if you skip the learning curve), but it helps a lot if you can do most of the maintenance yourself, and you pick good tenants. It can be done, it's just not for me anymore.
I've never been faced with tenants like these in the article, ones who come into the place with a goal to pay nothing and stay for years, and ones who know the system as well as these do.
I love the story about Judy from the freeper above. Having been through hell, I take a great deal of vicarious pleasure from his/her story.
Oh my! Your poor father. He sounds like such a nice person and completely undeserving of such treatment.
You have, unfortunately, made me wonder if the carpet in my place was soaked from doggie urine or if it was from the tenants themselves. I pulled that carpet out all by myself, too. Yikes. Thanks for putting that thought in my head.
(I'm just teasing you--whatever it was it's over and done with.)
I still feel bad for lying to the new landlord about my tenants from hell, but it was a property management company and hopefully they got them out quickly once they figured out how awful they were. Truly, I was at my wit's end.
"stuck the money in Humble Oil and Refinery (EXXON)"
Then he did okay, very okay, didn't he? Sheesh, he's probably a millionnaire by now.
It must have been a message from God.
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