Dealing with a very expensive demanding new tenant - suggestions?

[Dean Attali]

Hi BP

I'm a new landlord after purchasing my first SFH in September, and my property manager placed a tenant in the house starting November 1. In the 7-8 weeks that the tenant has been there, there hasn't been a single week go by without the tenant requesting more fixes/additions to the house. Usually he makes the requests to the property manager, but on top of that he also texts/calls me at least once a week to complain about something.

The house itself is in great condition, and he saw it a few times before he moved in, so I find it a bit ridiculous that he's asking for so many things. He demanded a storm door, a railing installed on the outside stairs (after installing a railing he complained that it's not made of iron and asked me to redo it, but that's where I drew a line), he called a plumber in several times about silly issues that only happened because he consistently overflowed the bathtub, today he became convinced that all the windows in the house need to be replaced. Between these and all the small things he keeps asking, I've lost $1000's already just in a few weeks. And he has a tendency to be aggressive, and he even threatened to not pay rent on his second month because he thought his demands are being ignored.

I keep hoping that every time he makes a request and I comply, he'll eventually be happy and stop costing me so much. But after today's windows request, I'm starting to think that he might just be a perpetual complainer and will cost me money every single week as long as he lives in the unit. I'm wondering if someone has any suggestions on what I can do?

I don't think I should or even can evict him - that seems too extreme as he's not squatting and he's not destroying the house. Ideally I'd like to ask him something along the lines of "if you're so unhappy with the condition of the house, would you like to break out of the contract and leave at the end of this month or next month, no hard feelings?" but I'm afraid that if I say that he'll get aggressive and attacking and will become an even bigger nightmare because he'll think that now I'm against him.

Anyone have any suggestions or similar experiences?