Messy amd careless renters.

[Delton Witte]

I should probably wait to post until I'm settled a little bit, but I'm fairly anxious at this point. I have been a landlord for almost three months. My wife and I bought the other half of the twinhome we had been living in and moved to the newly puchased side. 

About 2 weeks into the lease my wife arrived home to fire trucks. One tenant was making onion rings and a grease fire started. The oil burst up onto the walls and ceiling leaving a residue covering a large area. They said that they would clean it. I talked with my agent and she said my deductible was $1,000.00 and if I felt the damage was less than that I could have them clean it. While I was there I wiped the wall with my finger and the residue came right off, so I thought it was no big deal. 

Within the first month they LOADED the garage with junk. I believe they inadvertently bent the garage door tracks, anyway the complained that the door wasn't working and I had to have it serviced. They also incessantly complained about the residue left on their dishes by the hard water. I suggested and tried multiple fixes for them, but ended up calling someone to service the water heater as well. That apparently fixed the issue as I hadn't heard anything from them for almost 2 months until tonight.

We have had close to 10 inches of rain in the last week. They text me and said that they had water in the basement and the washer wasn't working right. 

I went over and found lots of water there, they said that it had been like that for a couple of days, but they aren't down there much and didn't notice until it started smelling. 

My wife and I worked to mitigate the water troubles as best we could and actually that is not my greatest concern. While I was there they told me the washer is also leaking into the basement, but they thought "maybe that was normal." 

There was a dorm refrigerator box 3/4 full of trash that had been sitting in the area where the water was. It was pretty soggy...worse than I thought. While I was taking it out for them it broke open and my wife and I ended up cleaning the mess. 

I noticed a few drawers that don't have the faces on them in the kitchen (how does one break the face off a kitchen drawer? Never seen that before.) Nothing has been cleaned from the fire over 2 months ago. There was trash just generally about the kitchen.

What should I do about the disorder, lack of notification of needed repairs, etc., can I do anything? Keep in mind these folks are also my next door neighbors.