Gobsmacked landlord. I'm sure this'll be funny one day. . .

[Julia Latreille-Favre]

I stumbled into land lording with a duplex I bought right before getting laid off in 2009.  After a rocky couple of years, I finally had my SF Bay Area Victorian property cash flowing and my tenant screenings down pat.  So I thought.

The most recent move-out was expected to be a slam dunk.  Completely trouble-free 2.5 year tenancy.  The departing tenant is a University professor (meaning PhD educated. . .) who always paid his rent on time, owns his own place in SoCal, genuinely nice guy and was super well qualified as a tenant.  Dream scenario, right?

Well, the warning bell should’ve gone off when I saw a shop-vac in his living room.  You guessed it, his house cleaning method was to dump water onto the floors and then vacuum it up with the shop-vac!  For 2.5 years.

Yep, that would be the brand new laminate flooring in the bedroom, the brand new carpet in the living room, the vinyl tiles I stuck directly onto the new subflooring in the kitchen.  They weren't waterproof.  Ouch.

So, clearly Home Ec 101 isn't part of that PhD program. . .

Note to self: a new lease addendum spelling out how one should clean floors. . .