A small win-win for me and my client/tenant

[Max T.]

So I have this nice little duplex row home in Philly. One feature is a full depth basement that has bilco doors to the street. I've been stashing my junk down there for years.

Over the past year I've become friendly with a handyman contractor. He helped me on my first flip and has done a handful of small maintenance jobs on my rentals. Nice young guy.

He gets to the point where he's ready to buy his own place and what do you know, hires me as his agent - woohoo! So we get to work and I find him a nice little fixer upper and we get it under contract.

The problem is that this new house is small, and the old place that he was renting was big and had a garage for all of his tools. So..... time to get the creative juices flowing.

I offer him a deal he can't refuse - rent half of my basement from me for your tools for the low low price of $30/month... On top of that I'll give you the first year free! In exchange, you help me clear out all of my old junk!

So we spent 1/2 of a saturday loading up his truck with my junk and taking it to the dump... about a half ton if I remember correctly. He is a happy camper now that he has a place for his tools, and I am loving my new half basement now that it is clean and well organized. Still plenty of room for my tools. And the best part about it was that our closing was smooth sailing, partly due to this little deal we made on the basement!