AND ON & ON

It's been a disrupted summer.

The home kitchen got finished; then the rest of the work finally got done... When Sam said "Enough!"

About a week later we bought the doublewide mobile home with the rest of the acreage next to the Bondurant house. We did three weeks of cleaning and updating/upgrading to bring it up to snuff for the rental market.

The State Contracting officer for the Conservation Department promised that they wanted the property for their employees, but dropped us two months later! We've just rented it, having to take a risky tenant due to the late part of the rental market year.

Now, since Sept 1, we've been putting the Bondurant House in order and hope, despite the lateness, to get a tenant. We may have to wait until spring, though.

A landlord only has the gaps between tenants to do the long-term maintenance work that a house needs. It's expensive, but necessary, to do the detailed cleaning and checkouts/repairs that will carry the property through another (hopefully) long lease to a family who will keep up the regular cleaning and repairs.

Choosing a tenant is an art and a skill. Thanks to the Internet it has gotten easier. The application is only the starting point. I ask for an applicant-generated credit report, with a credit score. Credit scores might be low, but often you will find that the actual bills due are small. I do a lot of credit counseling, too.

Gut feelings are most often wrong, especially if they are positive. If they are negative I listen to them. However, if I really like someone I am even more careful to get the paper corroboration to verify my feelings. I always do the paperwork! We have relatives who are Very Charming, but will take your gold teeth while they chuckle!

When I see money flaunted (I'll take it NOW! Here's more cash than you asked for!) I figure there's something that generated that excess that I need to understand. Suspicious old woman, aren't I? Been done wrong to and paid the price for my naïveté!

We had a family that wanted the big house ($1800/mo). A beautiful wife, three really nice children, but a marginal credit score and some worrisome items in their history. We wanted to meet the father, talk to him and figure out the situation so we'd feel comfortable renting our luxurious huge house to them. He kept ducking our questions (on the phone) and dodging meetings (forgot? stood up?). We got more leery.

The sweet wife came and helped us start cleaning. He still wouldn't show. She finally called, after a few days of no contact, and said she couldn't take the stress. Maybe she wanted it and he didn't. My instincts, liking her, said GO. My paperwork and his run around said NO. They might have been great tenants, or they might have been a lawsuit waiting to happen.