Adventures in Property Management

[Cassandra]

(Preface)

Though I officially didn't start working in my current office until September 6 last year, my job really started a year ago today when Katrina blew through our town. You know, we never dreamed it would actually hit us like it did. We are hours from the gulf. Hurricanes in the past actually made our weather pleasant. We didn't get damaging winds and torrential rain. That was ridiculous.

But still, I kept my family close to me.

Schools were closed in anticipation of the big event. I couldn't get to work anyway because all roads were leading north away from the storm (and in the opposite direction of the animal hospital where I worked.) If I had been able to get to work, I might have been stuck there for days. The clinic was right on the evacuation route and running well over capacity. In the days before the storm I told countless evacuees over the phone, "In an emergency situation we WILL take the animals in whether we have room for them or not. Bring their own kennel and we will make room." The staff who did manage to stay there slept there for several days. There was round the clock work to be done.

As it would turn out, I'd never go back to the animal hospital. I was supposed to be working out the last week of my two week notice, but during that week following the storm, I was never able to get enough gasoline at once to drive that far. I stayed home.

If you've never been in such a storm before, let me tell you, it is beautiful and terrible. Peculiar bands of clouds roiled overhead and rain came down in sheets. Limbs from old pine trees dropped into our yard like leaves in the fall. From front door and back, we watched the tall, rickety trees sway round and round in eerie circles. We'd hear a groaning, then a crash, and run to see where the latest tree had fallen. This went on for hours!

We have tornadoes in my neck of the woods and tornadoes are short lived. This wind and rain seemed endless. It started early that morning and carried on until well into the afternoon. The power had gone out about 9:00 a.m. I couldn't believe how long it was going to take them to get it turned back on.

The actual storm turned out to be the fun part of the ordeal. Six trees fell on my street. Two of them fell onto the apartment 4-plex across the street from mine. These were MY apartments, though none of the tenants knew yet that I was the new property manager. These were MY tenants with no power and water leaking into their homes. This was MY job.

I think almost everyone in town operated on stunned adrenaline for the rest of that day and night. But when we went outside the next morning with the sun beating down all hot and steamy and every single piece of ground covered with some fallen green, we heaved a sigh and got busy.

It was a couple of days before I could reach the property owner. Land lines were out, cell phones were iffy. I later learned that he had spent those first two days cutting his way off his property with a good chainsaw. Fantastic country living! But the work did begin.

I promised I would write more about property management, but I didn't want to leave out this very important part. I began this job in a certain way with a certain goal--and that I have been so successful this far is largely due to the way I began. When I have more time, I will tell what happened next.

Cassandra

[efex77]

Hey Cassandra,

Nice post. Explains the context of your start on the bussiness.
Wait to hear the next part

Bye

[MDZ]

Cassandra, I also can't wait to hear the rest of the story. Property management is an interesting topic to me, so I am all ears here. Thanks for putting up that first part.

[Cassandra]

Every event is an opportunity. I know you have heard this. Katrina was no different. I made this an opportunity to make myself known to my neighbors. This is completely contrary to my nature. I had been living on this street for four years and couldn’t call any of my neighbors by name. So it was with gritted teeth that I started knocking on doors and looking around the neighborhood to see what could be done.

Don’t misunderstand me. I love helping people just as much as the next person. But once your neighbors learn your name, they want to come over and gossip. They want to call you and invite you to things. There are people in my family that I won’t even tell them where I live because I don’t want people coming to my house.

Obviously, after the storm there was lots to be done. About the third day we all ventured forth and started dragging all the limbs we could carry out to the street. It wasn’t long after this that the refrigerators had completely thawed out and most of us were out of food. We (the neighbors) started taking turns going to get ice and food. My dad (up the street) has a welding machine/generator that he would crank up each morning for long enough to make a pot of coffee. So I started bringing coffee to the older ladies across the street.

I still didn’t advertise that I was the new property manager. I quietly got about the business of calling people to remove trees, cleaning out ditches, inspecting damages. I wanted people to be aware of me as a dependable person rather than the landlady. I needed them to trust me. That trust is something I will have to continue to earn as long as I have this job.

I also didn’t want to give the impression of “Hey! I’m the property manager here. Let’s get fixing what’s wrong.� I want them to understand that I have an interest in the upkeep of the community as a resident here. Even in the properties that I don’t live near, I feel like their condition is a direct reflection on me.

You’ll discover this, too, if you begin managing properties. And the more properties you manage, the more this becomes apparent. People will identify you with the quality of your properties. There’s a woman in our community who has been renting out residential properties since before I was born and everyone in town knows her as a slum lord.

I don’t want to be a slum lord. But the entire time I was helping out in the neighborhood, it was always in the back of my mind, “Now these people are going to be calling me and coming over and... ugh...� But it was necessary. I never invited people into my own home and I still don’t. Even though people come to my door to pay rent or complain their A/C isn’t working, etc after business hours. I always open the door and take care of their business in a polite, but pointedly abrupt manner, outside. I’m at home, after all. (Not at work)

But that was another pattern that I set early on. “I’m here and I live here. I’m your neighbor and I can be neighborly, but I’m not your friend.� I have to remind them of that from time to time.

After the first few day following Katrina, things were pretty dull. I continued to call the power company and the maintenance people. Once the sun came out, it was like living in a crock pot until the electricity came back on (on September 9th.) I actually enjoyed roughing it except for the heat.

I started working in the property owner’s office on 9/6 last year. For the first couple of days, I went in with wet hair and wrinkled clothes (no electricity). The organizational disaster I walked into was like heaven for me. Next post, I’ll tell you what I found. You will hardly believe it.

Cassandra
P. S. Copyright 2006

[Cassandra]

First I should describe the properties on my street. There are 4 houses. Little 3 bedroom bungalow type things. The people who live in them just never leave. All of them have been occupied by the same tenants for 7 years or more. The rent for these is $350 (and has been since the tenants moved into them.) This is too low for those houses, but not ridiculously low. Comparable houses on my street rent for $450, which is what those houses should be. But, Mr. C doesn't like to raise the rents on his good tenants.

In addition to those houses, Mr. C owns two 4-plexes and four duplexes. (16 apartments). I live in one of the 4's. When I became property manager, these were renting for $300 each. When I moved into this apartment a couple of years ago, it was my mom who told me what the rent was. I thought she was mistaken. I couldn't believe there was anywhere to live that cheap. But, she was right.

I am one of those rare people who wants to live in the cheapest place I can find. My home needs to be safe, dry, clean and large enough to hold all my stuff, but I want to pay as little money as possible for this. I only mention that because I have found it to be contrary to the desires of almost every other person I know.

Every one else I know is living in absolutely the most expensive place they think they can afford. And what kind of people do you think can just barely afford to live in a $300 apartment? If you guessed broke ones, you are correct!

When we cleaned out the trees that had fallen behind the A building, there were old appliances behind what was left of the fence. At one time, there was an old mattress in the ditch across the street from me that had cats nesting in it. It stayed there for months. I called and complained to the previous office manager & it was finally removed. People would just throw their garbage in the streets and leave it there. (You are supposed to call the city and pay them $5 to come pick it up.)

When I was just a tenant, none of this bothered me much. I am reclusive to the point of being almost oblivious to my neighbors and their nasty habits. However, if their behavior got so bad that it actually disturbed me, I would definitely complain.

I was the kind of neighbor who, if the folks across the street were arguing loud enough to lure me from my cave, I would stand on the front porch with the phone in my hand to call the police, and stay out long enough to point the cops to the right apartment when they got there. The whole point being so that everyone would know they were bothering ME and bothering ME has consequences.

This is what my street used to be like. The street immediately north of us (and the surrounding neighborhood) is improved with $150k-plus homes. The street immediately south of us is medical office buildings, the hospital, upscale fitness centers and other commercial development.

In other words, there was this ratty little street in the middle of some GREAT neighborhood. In addition to that, Mr. C had just finished paying off the mortgage on all his rental properties. These properties hadn't been paying for themselves up until then. They should have been, but they weren't.

I hope I'm making it obvious what a fantastic opportunity this was. Ratty apartments in a great neighborhood with suddenly a few thousand dollars a month in disposable income. I get goosebumps all over again just thinking about it.

But what was the problem? Mr. C is a genuinely good person. He makes a wonderful boss.. How'd he get in such a mess with this property?

That'll have to be the next post. But all the information was stashed away in a bottom drawer (literally) of my desk in my new office. (Dramatic climactic music)

Cassandra
(C) 2006 by Cassandra of Troy

[Cassandra]

LOL, FC

When I got to the office, Mr. C sat me down & told me that there were a few of his tenants who were behind on their rent. The woman who'd been doing the job before me, Ms. L, had recently become very ill. She'd had diabetes for a while, then cancer, and in June had decided she wasn't going to be able to keep her job. So she quit. Mr. C had had a college student helping him out part time over the summer.

But he told me that once Ms. L left the office and he started going through the records, he'd found that some tenants were getting really behind. When he found this, he wrote personal letters to each tenant letting them know how much they owed. He told them he'd be willing to work with them if they came to talk to him. Most of them had. His rule was they had to, from this day forward, pay at least the current month's rent, plus something (anything) on the past due rent.

Cool, I could work with that.

I asked him if he had files on his tenants and he just shook his head "no." So, I sat down at my desk and brushed off the dust and cobwebs. In the top drawer, I found the receipt book and the ledger book that recorded all of the rent payments. In the middle drawer was the checkbook and the bank deposit bag. In the bottom drawer--crammed so full it would barely shut--were all the tenants records. A copy of every note to or from a tenant and the rental application forms.

Wow, the stuff I found. I labeled files for each of the units and started separating stuff out. Some files are packed full of notes from the tenants promising to come in and pay the rent at some later date. A couple of the files are still empty to this day. I don't have so much as a signed form from them. There are some tenants I have no proof even of their name.

I found eviction letters that had never been mailed. (I could tell because they weren't stamped.)

It probably took me two days to get all of this organized. The next thing I worked on was the ledger books. I identified all the tenants that were past due and went back as far as I could find records to see exactly how far they were past due.

Nine tenants were over three months behind on their rent. Some of them as much as 10 or 11 months behind. They didn't get that way from just skipping rent payments altogether. They would pay $100 or $50 sometimes. Sometimes they would pay $400 one month to catch up, but if this was the case, they were invariably short the following month.

It's just hard to imagine. A solid third of his tenants were seriously delinquent. I was really furious about it. But he didn't want me to just evict them all. So, I had to allow them to try and catch up. So, I began by just monitoring them very closely. And I admit, I was just waiting for them to slip. They didn't need to be living there in the first place. I waited for any excuse to get rid of them. It didn't take long. I did my first eviction in November.

When it was done, the entire neighborhood breathed a sigh of relief. Thinking back, it made me feel like a super hero. If you will imagine that there was a pestilence on the neighborhood and *I* sent them packing. It was a good feeling.

It's also a great story, which I will relate in our next episode.

Cassandra
(Ten feet tall & bullet proof)

[Cassandra]

Oh, I suppose I'll call the lady Lucy. I had never really appreciated her as a neighbor because her live-in significant other drove a giant diesel truck and would crank it early in the morning to go to work. No offense to those of you who own such a truck. But let me assure you, no one wants to hear that crap at 6:00 in the morning.

She also had two dogs and an undisclosed number of cats that freely roamed the neighborhood. She's one of the ones who left junk in her ditch all the time. Additionally, she had a teenage son and daughter whom I never heard a peep out of.

Once I became property manager, I began to hear stories of suspicious goings-on over at Lucy's apartment. People going in briefly at all hours of the night--that kind of thing. She was also about $2,700 behind on her rent. She had responded to Mr. C's letter by calling him two days after the deadline to call, saying she would be in on a certain date to make payment arrangements, then not showing up for that appointment.

So, I wrote her a letter saying she had ten days to pay the back rent or I'd start eviction proceedings.

She called me a couple of days later and said, "I just got this letter about the rent." "Yes, ma'am." I replied. "You want me to pay ALL of that?" she asked. "Yes, ma'am." I replied. "Oh, ok," she said and hung up the phone.

No money was forthcoming (surprise surprise.) So on the 11th day, I sent her official 30-day notice via certified mail. About 29 days later she called and said she'd be out of the apartment in about 10 days. That was fine with me. It would have have taken longer to get a court date & get her thrown out. Plus I know there is no chance in hell I'm ever going to recover any of that money. So at the time, that was the fastest way to get rid of her.

She came to the office to return her key. (Something evictees don't normally do.) She was a mess. She was all dressed up, but she looked awful. If I had to guess, I'd say she was a meth user because she was so gaunt and pastey looking and had those sores all over her face.

It was a couple of days before I got the nerve to go into the apartment. I wish I could show you the pictures. There was cat and dog feces ground into the carpet. Holes in the walls. A hole all the way through the front door. I walked into the kitchen and nearly had a stroke when a cat jumped off the counter and out the back door window (which was completely broken out, but had plastic nailed over it.) There was another cat sitting in the kitchen window. Just chillin'....

It was really spooky in there. I turned the corner to the hall and one of the bedroom doors (the daughter's door) was covered with a hand painted sign that said "JESUS IS LORD" or something like that. I went into the bedroom and the girl had scrawled the ten commandments and other scriptures on the walls in black permanent marker. There was still some broken furniture inside and clothes in the closets. Mr. C had told me he wanted to start fixing up the insides of the apartments so he could charge more rent on them. So we started here. All told, I probably put close to $5,000 in that apartment.

I went back to the office THAT DAY and started composing a rental agreement. There had never been one before. People would fill out a one page application that had their name, address, place of employment, income, and space for some references on it. If they were rented a unit, the address and amount of rent was written on the bottom with a note saying they had to give two weeks notice before moving out. There had never been anyone who would actually check any of the references or verify employement.

I put a limit of two pets per unit with a $50 non-refundable deposit in my new rental agreement.

It was a week or two before I finally got rid of all of Lucy's cats. I had to catch some of them myself and meet the animal control officer over there and move them from a pet-taxi into the back of his truck. I think a couple of the cats finally got the message and just ran off to safer neighborhoods.

The two dogs Lucy left were unspayed females. About a month after Lucy left, one of the dogs had a litter of puppies in a culvert across the street from me. We found them one Sunday afternoon after a heavy rain. I heard some awful crying and went outside to investigate. The puppies were drowning in the culvert that had filled up with water. The mama dog had taken two of them into a neighbor's utility room (small room on the back porch for the washer, dryer, and water heater) and nested down with them. I guess she'd left the other to die.

I called the police and asked them what to do. The animal control officer doesn't work on weekends. They dispatched a couple of officers, one of whom got down in the ditch on his yellow rain coat and got filthy digging the other 4 puppies out of the culvert. We took all the puppies back to the utility room to be with their mama. I brought towels and dog food from my house and someone donated a big plastic bowl for water. The second adult dog had come, too. So we got them all settled in the utility room. The door didn't latch well, so I found a heavy metal pipe and jammed the door shut with it. Then, I put a note on the door for the animal control officer that said, "There are two adult dogs in here and six puppies. I do not expect them to be thrilled to see you. Please open the door carefully."

When I got to work the next day, I called the animal control officer who came and took them all away. We were FINALLY shed of all of Lucy's pets. And now the lease also stipulates that if pets are allowed to roam free and become a nuisance, I will assume they are strays and they will be removed fromt he property as such.

You know, we don't have that problem anymore. Funny how that works.

Cassandra

[Cassandra]

At the same time I'd sent Lucy her 30 day letter, I'd also sent a 30 day letter to Judy (not her real name) who lived on the other street. Mr. C has 5 more duplexes on another street a few blocks from my street. Of the 9 past dues, Judy was the only one on the other street. I think she was $2,800 behind at the time. She'd made arrangments to pay an extra $100 a month when Mr. C first contacted her, but she hadn't been doing that.

When she got my letter, she called Mr. C crying and begging him for another chance. So, Mr. C told me to TRY to work something out with her. I talked to Judy and told her she had to pay the extra $100 per month and she said OK. This worked out for a while.

But my next eviction was another one on My Street--Mary. Mary was about $1,200 behind on her rent. She'd been living in that apartment for about 7 years. For the past two years, she'd been getting Section 8 assistance. Her part of the rent was $15 a month, and she would rarely even pay that.

It was in November-December last year and I got a letter from MS Regional Housing Authority (MRHA) saying it was time for Mary's yearly evaluation. They had inspected her apartment and found the smoke detector not operating. We had 30 days to make repairs or they would stop paying us. I looked through Mary's file and ledger sheet and wrote a letter back to MRHA telling them I wouldn't be making those repairs and they could find Mary another place to live.

Oh my dear LORD did that woman kick up a fuss!

First, let me add that Mr. C didn't care for this woman OR her live-in boyfriend--Mac. Mac had been a tenant of Mr. C a few years ago and did some yard work for him. Mac would cut the grass & Mr. C would pay him with checks. Well, Ms. L had driven by the apartments and found out Mac hadn't actually cut the grass. Things got ugly and Mr. C evicted Mac, and ended up having to drag all his belongings to the curb and change the locks on the apartment. Months after that, Mac & Mary hooked up and Mary moved him in with her and they commenced laying around drunk, being noisy and disagreeable, driving down the street too fast AND not paying the rent.

Mary called me and tried to get me to change my mind. Mr. C warned me that she might try to get ugly with me. I told him I couldn't care less what she thought about me. (BRING IT ON) THEN, Mary starts telling everyone in the neighborhood that she doesn't know why she's having to move. She is certain it's not because of all that back rent that she owes because Mr. C told her she didn't have to worry about paying the rent.

!!! Now I got some crazy woman telling folks the property owner doesn't care if she pays the rent! (PSYCHO) THEN... she called our alderman who lives on that really nice street north of us. He came to my office and spoke with me about Mary and said he didn't like to see people put out in the street. He had also heard the story that Mary didn't have to worry about paying her rent.

As kindly as I could, told the alderman that I was going to remodel the apartments and clean up the street. I said I didn't know what Mary had been told, but I had not been given any instructions that anyone didn't have to pay their rent. Mr. Alderman nodded and said he'd like to see the street cleaned up, too and that he would let Mary know she needed to keep looking for another place to live.

I wish that had been the end of the story, but it wasn't. But I think I'm at my quota of paragraphs for this post.

Cassandra