The thing about owning rental property is that you’re always on duty. It doesn’t matter if you’re on vacation, at your day job, or in bed getting a good night’s sleep. Unless you’ve got someone else you’re paying to answer the phone (you’re making more money than I am), then you’re on duty 24/7.
Now, I’ve put a lot of effort into ensuring my buildings are well maintained which means I don’t have a lot of maintenance problems. If there’s a problem, I like to fix it as quickly as I can. This can prevent my phone from ringing in the middle of the night. On Tuesday of this week, while I was out of town visiting my parents, I received a voice mail early in the morning informing me there was sewage backing up into the tub of a basement unit. This is seriously bad news.
A sewer back-up can cause major damage, if not addressed quickly. Normally, before I spend any money with a tradesman, I will go out and see if I can solve the problem myself. While this costs me time, it has most certainly saved me money in the past when I can solve the problem. In this case I was out of town, so I had no choice; call the plumber.
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Steve Maintenance & Repairs Plumber, Sewage
Not long ago I proclaimed that: ‘Rent day is my new favourite day‘. I may now have to recant. Since then I have two more tenants start falling behind in their rent. The first tenant owes me a monthly rent of $650 and has been pretty much behind from the start. Though, she has been very good at keeping me in the loop and getting rent up to date within about 7 days. She’s a great tenant and for that I’ll happily work with her to ensure she can manage her cash-flow and maintain her rent to me.
The second tenant first went into arrears last month. She owes a monthly rent of $675. Unlike my first tenant she did not notify me that she did not have enough money and I didn’t learn of it until the cheque was returned NSF. On that occasion she claimed to not know it bounced nor that she did not have enough money in the bank to make the payment. Although I was suspicious, I waived my usual $25 late-payment fee and told her to let me know in advance if she was going to be short in the future. That way I could hold her cheque and not have to go through the hassle of collecting the rent all over again.
On the second of this month I received a text message (yeah, you heard me right, a text message) from this tenant asking me if I could hold her rent. I was not happy. First of all I had already deposited all the rent money, and second, text messaging is not a reliable way to work out a late rental payment with your landlord. I’ve never texted with her before. The next day I called and not so politely informed her that it was unacceptable to text me the day after rent is due asking for a reprieve. This time I’m holding her to my $25 late fee and I’m now expecting this money on March 12th via Interac Money Transfer. We’ll see.
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Steve Rent Bounced Cheque, Rent
