Bree says, "Mr. Landlord: you're FIRED!"We've been renting here in our new home town because I haven't yet sold my condo up north. I do have an offer on the condo, but it's contingent upon the sale of the buyer's home, so the process is taking longer than I had originally thought.
As far as that goes, my only experience with selling and buying was in a seller's market in 2002, and my co-op sold in four days, at 150% more than my original purchase price. A far, far cry from this summer, when I dropped the price three times, and only received one offer in over three months. My expectations definitely needed to be adjusted to be in line with current reality.
When we first came here in April, we stayed at an extended stay hotel where we could pay by the week. It was okay, and it served our needs well. But I was so ready to get out of there! However, getting into something else was more of a challenge than I thought. I was so confident that my condo would sell quickly that I didn't want to move all the furniture out and pay for storage (a really great move on our part, thanks to Scott!) and so finding a furnished apartment for a short-term was the goal. HA! It took over a month to find something, and even then, we were "taking" something that the landlord didn't even want to rent to us.
Why? Well, because there is no air conditioning. The landlord agreed to give us a break on our rent both to give us compensation for no a/c and to give him an incentive to fix it.
Since it's been three months and the a/c still isn't fixed, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that he doesn't really need the money - or at least he's not concerned about getting the full rent on this place. Which I'm okay with, after all, maintaining two separate households is expensive!
Scott bought a portable a/c unit for the bedroom, which has been a lifesaver, because there were days when the temperature was over 100 degrees, and we would have cooked ourselves without a/c! And it was kind of like living in the hotel room again - having to do everything on the bed - eat, play, watch tv, entertain baby, fight for pillows, etc. that I felt I had come full circle!
So you'd think that dealing with no a/c would be the worst that we had to deal with, right? Well, in a relative sense, you'd think so. But I came home after picking up Bree one night, and we had no electricity. Hmmm, curious. All the neighbors had power, and it didn't look like our circuit breaker(s) had tripped. I called Scott and he said to look at our meter - which had a big red tag hanging from it! Yes! Our power was disconnected because the landlord didn't pay the bill! Good times. When I called him about it, he was really apologetic, but insisted that the electric company had been sending the bills to the wrong address. He also made sure that the power was turned back on within an hour - he told them that we had a baby living here and needed the connection turned on ASAP. I appreciated that.
And the last casualty around here is the washing machine. Two service calls and one bad diagnosis: the motor needs a new clutch. HA! Like that's ever going to happen.
Oh, and lest I forget, the department of public works left a nice notice on the door that said (and I'm paraphasing) "fix your toilet already! It runs longer and harder than the Energizer Bunny!" Landlord said he'd take care of it a month ago. And yet, it continues to run, wasting .33 gallons per hour, according to the dept of public works.
But you know, there just might come a time where our rent is so discounted that we'll be living here for free.
I haven't been a renter in over 7 years - and I think in all my years of renting, I've never had this negative an experience with a landlord. But don't get me wrong, he's a really nice guy, just a terrible landlord.
Please pray for the longevity of the refrigerator. And that my buyer gets an offer on her home.
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