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     I guess I should be flattered.  I put time into all my advertising materials.  I take pictures that flatter the property.  I give nice descriptions of what each property offers, etc.  Marketing 101. 

     As a normal course of business I keep an eye on the competition.  I look at what they are offering, the rents they are charging, what they charge, if anything, for background checks, etc.  I want to make sure my business is in line with the market.  Business 101.

     During my perusal of Craigslist ads this morning I read one that is for $50.00 higher than I am offering.  This property offers a deck in the rear of the property and a garage.  OK, sounds reasonable.  As I read through the ad I see all my descriptive keywords.  Spacious, beautiful, updated, oak, expanded, you get the idea.  As I read this ad I am thinking that it’s just my ad reworded to talk about another property.  Even the line for the background check was taken verbatim, except they charge $5.00 more. 

     I should be flattered.  I am this person’s mentor and he/she doesn’t even know it.

     We generally expect some things to be wrong when turning over tenants.  I know I expect painting to need to be done if it is more than 2 years since the tenant moved in.  This tenant was in the place just shy of 2 years and all the walls needed repainting.  They also needed a good scrubbing.

      There were some repairs that they had done such as a new bedroom door.  I was told that one of the tenants put their hand through the door because it had been sticking.  Either way, the new door is nice.  Unfortunately there are issues.  First, the casing around the door was damaged when they went to replace it.  Second, when they were removing the old door it looks like a chunk of the header was ripped off.  Nothing that would be structural to repair, but definitely cosmetic as the all the wood is stained and not painted.

      2 areas of rug had to be steam cleaned, the back bedroom and the upstairs hall.  The movers put a decent sized ding in the ceiling that needed repairing, etc.  The bulk of the items were small.

      One big issue I had was with holes in the wall from nails.  They were proactive in that they attempted to fill the holes.  Doing the final inspection I saw that the repairs needed to be sanded and I could have filled it better myself so it would not have needed sanding but they get an A for effort.  Long story short the A turned to an F when I went to sand the stuff.  Whatever they used never cured.  It remained pliable like chewing gum.  I ended up digging all the stuff out of the holes, sanding what was stuck on the walls with my orbital sander then refilling the holes.  What would have been a 20 minutes job if they left the holes turned into about 3 hours.  Not fun.

      The other big item I have had trouble with was deodorizing for a cat.  I know, I normally have a no pets policy.  This tenant was good and worth it that I decided to take the chance on pets.  The cat apparently liked the storage room…a lot.  It became the litter box from the smell of it.  Anyway, I have had success in the past with Odorcide 210 for pet odor removal.  One treatment didn’t get rid of the odor so I gave it another shot.  I’ll be heading back today to see how the smell is.

      All in all I ended up with more damages that I expected.  I am sure they will also be surprised by the number of charges on there.

To play catch-up on what is going on with the rental world, House #1 is back on the market.

The tenants gave notice they were moving and left at the end of February.  I had 1 day of showings for the property where I had 3 prospective groups come through.  Of those 1 wanted to "cut a deal" to do work for reduced rent.  He had a valid business but I’d be breaking my own rules to accept work done for reduced rent.  Especially since his landlord reference was also his boss, who was also his Uncle.  You can see where all the eggs are in one basket and that basket is biased.

The second and third sets of prospective tenants were nice but each had their own issues that caused me to reject them.  I can deal with low credit scores but when someone goes below 525 I just think "Wow".  In addition to the low scores both of these groups had addresses that didn’t match up to the credit reports.  Lastly, one of the applicants from the groups was someone who was 40+ and the only thing on his credit report, at all, was 1 parking ticket which was not paid.  There were’t even any inquiries for credit listed on the report at all.  The addresses he provided didn’t match to his credit report, just too much which seemed off.

The hunt continues for a good quality tenant.