Rev's blog: "WTF?"

Some of you already know this, but for those who don't:

I partly support myself financially from rental income. Yeah, I'm a landlord. This is NOT a job, it's money for nothing (well, if you discount the mortgages I'm still paying off on some of my properties it is). It is, however, a pain in the arse sometimes.

For example, I employ a handyman to look after my properties. If he can't fix something he has the authority to call an expert from a list of plumbers, electricians, joiners, etc, that I provide him with. My tenants are told that if anything goes wrong with the fabric of their place, or the fixtures and fittings, etc, that they should call him. They're also told that they should only contact me with regards to their ability to pay rent. Yet, I still get calls about fucked up plumbing, electrics, etc, when all I can really do about it is to call my handyman dude and get him to call the tenant.

But, let's be realistic. That isn't work. Far from it. Anyway, to get to the reason for this blog (I was going to put 'the point of this blog', but it has no point) - Earlier today I got a call from one of my tenants, a new tenant who only moved into their property at the beginning of September. Anyway, she called and said that she was putting Halloween decorations in the communal hallway. They said that their neighbour (also a tenant in one of my properties) came out and told them that it was against the terms of their lease to put anything in the communal hallway. The new tenant phoned me and asked me if that was true.

I told her that it was true, that it was indeed against the conditions of her rental agreement, and that it was clearly written and that she'd signed it. She asked me why. Personally, it's because I don't want any of my tenants decorating communal areas. I've seen how they decorate the inside of the apartments and I don't want that shit where everyone can see it. There's no accounting for taste. People don't like to hear that though, so it's written that it's for health and safety reasons since members of the public such as postmen and pizza delivery guys use the area. So that's what I told her.

She wasn't happy about it, but accepted it. Until. Until she asked if that meant that she would be unable to put Christmas decorations up come the festive season. I told her no, that NO decorations of any description could be put up in the communal hallways or starwells. Then she went a bit nuts on me. She said that I was interferring with her right to celebrate Christmas. She said that there were laws protecting those rights and that she would sue me for infringing upon them.

I explained to her that she was free to do what she wanted within her apartment, within reason and as per her rental agreement, and that the communal property was NOT an area she paid rent for, that she merely paid a proportion of the cost of upkeeping the area. She continued to threaten me with legal action, until I ended the conversation by saying "look, you do whatever the fuck you want to do, but if you breach your rental contract I'll put you out on your arse" then hung up on her. My wife has recently come home from work and accused me of not being very diplomatic about it, but fuck it, that's life sometimes. :D

Yeah, this is long and boring, but nothing particularly interesting or exciting has happened to me recently and I was bored and felt like sharing.