no vacancy

Two weeks into the New Year, and I am already not meeting my goal of blogging four times a week, but these past two weeks have been incredibly busy, and at the same time still pretty boring, and thus there doesn't seem to be anything worth sharing. The only thing mildly newsworthy in my life right now is that Session started last week, which of course is the reason I have been so busy as everyone gets back in the swing of things at work.

So after racking my brains for something to tell you all and coming up empty handed, I decided to rummage through my drafts for a post idea last week. That's where I discovered this untold story- the story of how we rented out our duplex. I had meant to tell it earlier, but I wanted to wait until we had received our first real month's rent so I didn't jinx it, and then I kind of forgot about it, and then it kind of took me forever to finish writing it- trying to find a balance of telling all the parts to the story, but not going into detail overload. But because of a lack of anything else going on, now you get to hear all the riveting details of how it all happened- almost 3 months after the fact.

We posted the online ad that I slaved over on October 23- with the intention hope of having the apartment filled by November 1st. We knew one week was a little ambitious to find someone AND have them move in, but we remained optimistic. I created the ad through Postlets, and once I finalized the ad, Postlets published it on Craigslist and Zillow as well as two other real estate websites.  We had found our apartment online and figured that is where most people would do their apartment shopping, or most of the type of people we wanted to rent to, anyways. We got two emails with inquiries about the apartment, but both were looking for Section 8  housing, which our apartment is not licensed for- so no luck. We were starting to get discouraged, after all, everyone we had talked to who knew anything about rental properties, property management, or real estate was sure we would have it rented out in a week.

After a few days of this we discussed, again, putting up "for-rent" signs in the yard, but we really thought that would draw the wrong kind of crowd. It wasn't until David talked to our realtor/coworker who also is a landlord in the area who has filled all 3 of his duplexes via signs that we finally decided to bite the bullet and go buy some front-yard advertising. And, low-and-behold, as soon as that first sign went up we started getting mass amounts of inquiries. Of course many of the people who called were not interested once we gave them the specs, but we probably set up showings with over a third of the people that called in about the apartment. David was in charge of this part, while I just spied on them from the upstairs window, but from what I heard our apartment showed very well. David repeatedly reported that people commented on how big and how clean the apartment was- which or course made me giddy, knowing people were appreciating the months of hard work we put into the apartment. Unfortunately this is where our luck started running out- even though we were scheduling lots and lots of showings, and we were handing out lots and lots of applications, people were just not turning them in.

We discussed if it was the time of year, the rent we were asking, the application requirements, and couldn't quite figure it out. Families had come through who said they were going to turn in an application, and seemed like they would be a good fit, only they never showed up again. After a few days of showings and lots of false hope, we finally got our first application: a family of 12 (and remember this is a 3, maybe 4 bedroom/ 2 bathroom apartment). The family fit all the financial requirements and after talking to them extensively we really thought they would be responsible and respectful tenants. The problem was no matter how responsible they ended up being, 10 kids would wreak havoc on the apartment and our water bill (which is the only shared utility, thus we pay the entire bill). So after giving it lots of thought, we had to turn them down.(Luckily, we have an "owner-occupied" duplex (obviously), so this was a legal option. If we did not live in the upper unit of the duplex, legally we would not be able to discriminate against an applicant because of their familial situation, and would have had to find another reason to turn them down, or be forced to pay the water bill and have our apartment suffer the abuse of 10 kids.) I felt pretty bad about saying no, they were a nice family, who needed to quickly find a new place to live due solely to the actions (or rather, inaction... not paying the mortgage) of their previous landlord. But we decided, especially since these would be our first tenants, that it was worth waiting to find the perfect fit. So we went optimistically back to scheduling more showings, confident this next batch would give us our tenants.

Within the week we had another application: a middle-aged man, his fiance, and his 90 year old mother. On the surface, they seemed like they would be a good fit: low- maintenance tenants, who took care of the apartment, and would be staying for a long time. Without going into too much detail for his sake, lets just say, they didn't work out due to a lack of honesty on the applicant's part. We had gained an appreciation for the background check we decided to do, but now we began to worry and question letting the first applicant go. But of course at this point we had no choice but to go back to scheduling showings, the problem was the calls weren't coming in quite as frequently as when we first put up the sign...

Lucky for us it didn't take many more showings and third time proved to be a charm. Only a few short days after turning down the second applicant, about 2 weeks into November, we received another one. A single mom, and her adult children, who brought her pastor as a reference. There were a few minor questions raised by her application (one of the reasons her pastor came with), but overall she seemed like she would make a responsible tenant. We decided to pull the pin. And at this point, 2.5 months into the lease, we are still satisfied with our decision, and our tenant seems truly pleased with (and grateful for) our apartment.

So all in all, the process wasn't that bad. I mean, it wasn't great- it took longer than we expected. But we got lots of interest, even nearing the winter months, we were able to rent it out at the upper end of our rent window, and so far (knock on wood) we have had no issues with our tenant. 

Even with our success the first time around, we decided next time we would do things differently- namely do as much as humanly possible to be filling the apartment in the spring and summer, when the people who want to move are moving (as opposed to the winter, where it is mostly just the people who need to move, often for unsavory reasons).  Luckily we realized this before signing the contract, so we were sure to offer only a 9-month lease so if our tenant decides to move out after the lease expires, we are filling the apartment in August. Now this just raises the question of what time of year do we buy our next one?