The Christmas Duplex: Defining the Landlord-Tenant relationship

[Jim K.]

I've just canceled a newly inherited tenant's month-to-month lease, something that doesn't happen frequently in the small number of C-class rental properties I run in my portfolio. But the tenant came to me in the first month of my inheriting her and told me she had sixty bucks to spare for January rent and I would have to wait a month for the rest of it, sorry. This particular inherited tenant has an eviction and #3K judgment against her from 8 years ago, and the previous LL of the duplex sold it to me in order to avoid dealing with her and the $5K she owed him. So her last two LLs have been financially screwed by this character, and she knows I know this, but she still pulled this stunt in her first month (and is willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN).

When we get started on talking about the landlord-tenant relationship here on BiggerPockets, we usually tend to compare it to other business relationships, usually the relationship between client and service provider. My problem with this is that it doesn't really make all that sense. The landlord-tenant relationship far predates any services sold in society except those offered by prostitutes or soldiers of fortune.

There's a certain romance and mythology around being a prostitute, no one could argue that. There's another variety of that around being a soldier of fortune. It should make sense that being a landlord is steeped in a kind of mythology as well (romance is laying it on thick), and it is. If you've never stood in a doorway and announced yourself as THE LANDLORD to a new tenant that doesn't know you, the reaction you'll get is memorable enough to be well beyond a simple business relationship, trust me.

So rather than defining the LL-tenant relationship in business terms, I tend to think and talk about it in biological ones. Biologically, a mutual symbiotic relationship is defined as a relationship that benefits both of the two organisms involved in it, a win-win situation. That's how I encourage my tenants to think about our relationship. They get a place to stay maintained by a decent handyman, I get rent money and growing equity to put toward my retirement.

However, there is another major form of symbiotic relationship, namely parasitic symbiosis. One organism benefits, the other organism does not. This is what happens when you have a tenant who doesn't pay or a landlord who does little to keep the property in good repair. Or when you have gotcha fees that significantly drive living costs up, or excessive complaints about inconsequential issues in a property. The relationship is unbalanced. There is a winner and a loser.

This works much better in discussing the LL-tenant relationship with my tenants. Do you see any major drawbacks in defining the relationship this way? It was certainly very useful to confront this particular tenant and tell her, "You're a parasite, and you need to understand I'm not going to be your host."