The other side of owning real estate....a crisis

[Justin B.]

So we got a call that our tenants were without water in a recently purchased apartment complex.  My first thought was oh lord, this isn't good, I wonder what happened and what kind of repair bill we're going to have here.  Fortunately, there wasn't a problem with our property, but unfortunately, the 36" pipe that feeds water to the ENTIRE city of 30,000 people broke and on top of that, because of flooding from the nearby river, the part where the pipe busted is underwater (it usually is not underwater).  They can't get to the pipe until the water recedes.  They also have to build a 500-foot levy before they can restore services.  After 2-3 days, the city said it could be as much as a week before the water is restored.  On top of that, they will have to boil water after restoration.  No idea for how long, but I'm sure for a while.  Also, within hours, the entire city had been bought out of bottled water.  Any new bottled water that comes in, they are just offloading it directly from the truck to a never ending line of people.

So, what did we do?  Technically, we didn't have to do anything.  It's not our problem.  It's the city's problem.  However, that's just not the way we view things.  Before owning real estate, other than donating some money to a cause, we've never really had a chance to do anything of significance for anyone in a crisis.  So we drove to the nearest city with plenty of water (about an hour away to be sure it was clean).  We filled up 3 55-gallon drums of water for things like flushing toilets, washing dishes, cleaning themselves, etc.  We also took 3 cases of water to each tenant for drinking, brushing teeth, and anything else they need.  We told some of the tenants to let us know if they ran out of anything so we can replenish.  Hopefully, they will have the issue fixed in the next couple of days, but it was probably the worst case scenario for the city.

I didn't post this for a pat on the back or anything like that.  I see lots of posts where people face similar situations and want to encourage everyone else whenever you have a chance to do right by your tenants, do it.  It's the least we can do.  And we'll do more if the situation dictates.  A few of the tenants have kids and not having water for them was just not something we were going to allow.  Probably the best part about this story is my Dad (who I invest with) had already put this into motion before calling me.  I didn't even have to ask him what we could do, he was on it.  If anyone wants to follow the story, just google Vicksburg water and the stories will come up.