Tenant Story of the Day: A Newsworthy Light Fixture
I wanted to start a column called “Tenant Story of the Day”, where I'd share some highlights from my experience as a landlord, so beginner investors can get a taste of what they are in for.
Here's today's installment...
The Story:
An elderly tenant moved into a low-priced studio apartment. The ceiling-light’s chain broke on the first day, and she called right away to complain. We contacted the on-site handyman right away. He was not available to replace the light fixture until the following day, so he took his own standing lamp and placed it outside the tenant’s door so she could use it for the night (for some reason she would not let him into her apartment). The tenant refused to take the replacement lamp, and instead proceeded to call all the local news stations to tell them about how this apartment doesn’t have a light and she could fall in the dark and hurt herself. The following day we get a voicemail from a 9News ivestigator wanting to know about the light fixture. At this point the fixture had already been replaced and the drama was over for the meantime (actually, the tenant had already found something new to complain about at this point).
The Lesson:
There really isn't much of a lesson in this story - you will always run into tenants who like drama in their lives and make a mountain out of every molehill. The best thing you can do as a landlord is to remain professional in this type of situation through all the angry phone calls and threats. By the way, according to someone I spoke to at the Denver Health Department, it is perfectly acceptable to provide a tenant with a temporary replacement for a broken fixture or appliance if it takes a little while to replace, order parts, etc..
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If you would like to get a taste of some of the issues you may run into when managing a rental property, try the Real Estate Investment Simulator at http://www.InvestorHeadStart.com.
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