Renters

Rental House Roulette II

Rental House Roulette, yep here is yet another atrocity. The renters wanted their cleaning deposit back, but considering the mess (pictured below) that they left on the curb... I'm not sure that their deposit will even cover the cost to get this mess hauled off. Let's just say the neighbors were so happy to see them go that they didn't mind the mess, or so they said when we apologized for it. Note in the picture, the mailbox flag is missing... maybe they wanted a memento.

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Rental House Roulette

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I debated on what to title this post. It was either "Rental House Roulette"
or "WTF Were the Renters Thinking". The premise is that I want to
occasionally post a picture of something that the renters, in our Rogers
house, did incorrectly or flat out screwed up. Thus chronicling the
aftermath of renters-gone-bad.

Some of these examples are funny and some others, not so much. Most of you
have seen the post of the
UFO landing site in the back yard, and it is those
sorts of ridiculous things I would like to post in this series. Feel free to
ask yourself "WTF were they thinking?"

The first one I would like to show you is the cabinet hardware in the
kitchen. I guess they got the DIY bug and decided to replace the hardware
themselves. That would be all fine and dandy if they had replaced them with
one style of handle and not three. I guess they were going for the eclectic
look. WTF?



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Thinking of Starting Another House Blog

Kristin and I have another house in Rogers, Arkansas that serves as a rental property. It has pretty much been a carefree deal until recently. Our "neighbors" in Rogers called us a few weeks back to let us know that our renters were terrible and that they were destroying the house. We knew that the neighbors didn't get along with the renters, but we assumed there was an agenda on their part as well. Kristin and I discussed it and I told her that we should just boot the renters and sell the house and dump our earnings into the Williams House. Kristin agreed, so we ordered up an appraisal from the great guys down at Boston Mountain Appraisals.

Basically there was only one photo of the exterior and the appraiser didn't even go into the house. After I saw the exterior of the house in the photo, I knew why... I think he was scared. This house, that was a beautiful house, that Kristin and I fixed up and rented out was no longer so. First of all there were toys on the roof, a giant inflatable snowman thingy in the front yard that had been there for who-knows how long and a six foot rebel flag hanging from the front porch. Kristin and I gasped in horror as it had been about 4 months since the last time we had been up there. We followed up with the neighbors and apparently the husband had not one but FIVE pit-bulls chained up in the back yard (which has to be against some city code), and they also told us that the wife had been running a daycare out of the house. A DAYCARE (which also has to be against some city code)! As you can imagine grubby little hands touching EVERY single freshpainted wall in the house. My stomach churns thinking about it.

We evicted the renters almost immediately, which wasn't hard since they rarely paid rent every-other month or so. Then we went to survey the damage. Aside from the 5 billion flies in the house at first glance it didn't seem too bad, but as we looked closer it became apparent that the damage was extensive. They had put nails in almost every inch of the trim in the living room to hang baseball caps from, all the walls had handprints covering every inch up to about 4 feet, all of the door knobs had dented the walls even though there are doorstop springs, and for some reason had bubble gum stuffed in the holes like that was a suitable wall patch. I won't even go into bathroom detail, but trust me it'd make you sick. The back yard was destroyed and the dogs had ripped off the downspouts for the gutters, METAL GUTTERS mind you! I'll share this photo of the back yard with you because I find it strange, like a crop circle or a UFO landing site.
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Anyway, we surveyed the damage and it appears to be in the thousands, luckily we can do most of the repair work ourselves. But it will take a lot of work, almost enough work to justify doing another blog, hence the topic of this post.

Do you want to hear the REALLY funny part about the whole thing? (Every time I think about this, I have to refrain from physically laughing out loud.) Get this: The renters called yesterday and ASKED FOR THEIR DEPOSIT BACK... Hah hah hah hah hah.
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