The Dark Side of Real Estate

[Joe Splitrock]

Share your darkest experiences in real estate. List your five worst experiences. Here is mine to get started:

- Kitchen fire due to tenant frying chicken on the stove top. Over $10K in damage. It was my first property and first tenant.

- Seller covering up cat pee soaked carpet. Candles during showings and at my walk through masked the smell. Carpet needed to be replaced plus odor blocking primer on the floor. 

- Water in a basement due to a bad sump pump. Wrecked the carpet and took hours of time. 

- Saw a professional tenant on the news that had trashed another landlords property. They applied at my property and I denied their application. This "close call" still leaves me freaked out every time I screened someone.

- Verbally threatened by a tenants boyfriend over a security deposit deduction dispute. It was a series of texts, calls and in person encounters. I caved on most of the cost, because some battles are not worth fighting over a couple hundred dollars.