Want to know how to waste two hours of your time? Get subpoenaed as a witness and then discover that the officer neglected to update you that the court date changed, that’s how.

What a pisser as I had things I needed to get done and pushed them off to do the right thing. What’s more aggravating is this same officer never returned one of my initial calls or emails when this first started a year ago. It seems to be an ongoing saga.

I understand the police are busy, I understand they are often understaffed, but here we have a chance to put a deadbeat away who stole a vehicle at knife point and we’re screwing around. Anyway, I’ll have more updates after the 1st of September when I find out the new and updated court date!

OK, just so you know, this isn’t even an eviction. I had a tenant “allegedly” steal a vehicle from another tenant last year at knife point. I know, I get to deal with great people.

Worse yet, this was part of my pilot project to help young kids get off the street by putting them in some of my shared accommodation properties. Now just to add some perspective to this, I am not Mother Teresa, or even close!, part of this was to help fill rooms and some was indeed to try and help people who needed it.

Quick recap on the project, out of 11 tenants, I evicted or assisted nine of them to leave, the other two will never be allowed back. These were 18-24 year old kids who wanted financial assistance, housing assistance and typically had problems at home. The problem with the system I see is they were never made accountable.

They didn’t have to work for their money, they didn’t have to show up for job interviews, they didn’t have to get up in the morning. Also since they didn’t pay for anything and new housing would be found for them, they also weren’t responsible for anything. No smoking, sure, whenever Bill wasn’t around, no overnight visitors, sure whenever Bill wasn’t around. Anyway you get the idea.

Anyway, I will post more either late tonight or tomorrow as the story unfolds!!!

Revelations – Something revealed, especially a dramatic disclosure of something not previously known or realized.

Definition from Answers.com

I was talking with a friend this morning (you know who you are and thank you!) about how angry I am with people lately. Last week I had a former tenant send me an email who discovered a $1,295 judgment on his credit. He stated that I had lied to put this on his credit and he had witnesses about black mould in the property and was considering consulting a lawyer. It pissed me off a bit, so I suggested he go ahead and proceed as I would then have his current address and could go after all the additional charges I didn’t have in the judgment.

It irritated me that he tried to get out of paying originally and when it finally caught up to him, he was still trying to get out of it.

Yesterday I met with two guys from out East who were here to do some promotional work with the Calgary Herald. They called last week and wanted me to hold two rooms for them. They were persistent and very concerned that I had to hold them, so I did. They were supposed to call Saturday to confirm time of arrival, but of course they didn’t so I didn’ t expect them.

Then they called Sunday to say they were here, the rooms weren’t quite ready, so Karen and I had to rush over and prep them before they got there. When they did show up, they didn’t have the money with them for the rooms, and they wouldn’t be able to get it all since they had to withdraw money for traveling earlier that day and had daily limits. Yep, this irritated me too, especially since we had the conversation about costs a week earlier.

So they ran to the bank, came back and wanted to talk to me, in private. So we go outside and they tell me they thought it was too much. They wanted a discount of about 30%. They explained if they ended up staying longer they could rent as apartment for less. So to recap, I held two rooms, rushed to prep them for them, gave them the benefit of the doubt and was letting them only pay part of it up front and now they wanted a further discount. I was furious. I suggested they go get an apartment and walked away leaving them to drive off.

What I’ve been noticing over the last month is I’ve been letting incidents like this get to me. It’s just been a series of little pin pricks that get more and more and more and more and more annoying. The phone call this morning was part one of the revelation that this was happening.

You have to wait until tomorrow for part two!

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks preparing another of our rental properties for sale and I was handed another reminder of why tenants are not a landlord’s friend. I don’t want this to be taken the wrong way, I am not saying you cannot be friendly and I am not saying you need to create a hostile environment, but you do need to remember a landlord/tenant relationship is a business arrangement.

The Tale of Two Tenants

So, in this property one of the tenants had been with us for almost three years. During this time we had some hiccups, they had fallen behind a few times, managed to catch up, fallen behind again due to the economy and both being laid off, and then eventually caught up again. I even took them to the RTDRS to protect myself, but recommended a Cinderella or Stay order so they could be put on a payment plan rather than a straight eviction which I could easily have obtained. According to any definition, I went above and beyond to help them.

These particular tenants had a couple of dogs as we allowed pets in this property. We had run into some issues during their stay as we had a yard service come through and cut the lawns on a weekly/biweekly basis as there would be evidence of the dogs on the lawn (I will let you figure that out). In these cases, the lawn folks would do the front and leave the back, pretty simple really.

Anyway, now they are gone, they found an incredible opportunity to move to an acreage for less rent and off they went. It was all pretty quick, they gave me about two weeks notice and they actually didn’t even catch up on the money they were behind until after they were out and it involved applying the security deposit to make it balance. For the record, this is not how a landlord should ever use the damage deposit, but this is an example of being too friendly with tenants and should be taken as a lesson.

So once they were gone, I do the tour (no exit walk through as per our systems, once again when you don’t follow your systems, you lose money!) and find the place is looking rough. No, it’s not vandalized; it just wasn’t kept up that well. There is the little stuff, like the dust on the fan blades in the living room that looks like feathers on the edges it’s so thick, the ripped and torn screens on the windows and the patio possibly from the dogs looking out. There are the dust bunnies that are lying in the corners, hanging from the ceiling and on every cold air intake and fan. The sign that it has been months or possibly even years since a good cleaning was done behind furniture and it has only become apparent once furniture was removed from the property.

Then there are slightly more annoying things, like the three kitchen knobs broken off or missing, the myriad of wall anchors and dents in the walls that need patching, the missing and removed closet doors. Finally, there is the badly worn hardwood floor that needs refinishing due to possibly a rocking chair with a nail or staple that dug into the floor damaging it quite severely along with a myriad of scratch marks throughout the floor from animals and moving furniture. Oh and I mustn’t forget the large burn mark on the deck railing (the deck needs to be replaced anyway, but still).

I’ve already spent about fifteen hours patching and painting walls, I’ve brought a contractor in to get the entire front deck replaced, new windows are on order and I am preparing to get the entire floor refinished and as I am doing all of this, I have plenty of time to reflect. Especially as I paint, and it hit me the one day, this is not how a friend would leave your place. At least a friend you want to keep.

Tenants as a generality are just renting space, they get to move on and leave the wealthy landlord (whether he is wealthy or just scraping by, he owns property so renters like to assume he is wealthy) with the place when they move on. I’m not saying all tenants are like this, but I am reminding you of why you need to treat it like a business, and as a counter point let’s look at tenant number two!

The Other Tenant

So now, I am onto the tenants in the lower suite of the same property. These folks moved to Alberta a year ago from Ontario and owned their own home, but weren’t going to purchase here yet until they determined it was where they wanted to be.

During the time they were with us, they never missed a payment or fell behind. They called us a couple of times when there were any property problems and updated us right away so we were able to send out the necessary repair people or take appropriate actions to remedy the problems before they became serious. When their lease was coming up, they gave us two months notice they were moving as their job was located in the deep South and the property was in the NW. The commute was killing them, although they loved the suite, so moving made perfect sense.

When I arrived to do the exit walk through, the place was virtually spotless, not a burnt out light in the place, and the battery was even working in the smoke detector (not so true upstairs as they had removed the battery there!). The only problem was a couple of large anchors in the wall in one room where they had attached part of a desk. In comparison to the upstairs unit that was insignificant!

Comparison Time, What Was The Difference?

So what was the difference, or differences? Well the lower tenants had owned their own home and I have to assume took more responsibility for their place. The upper tenants had become “friends” (not the type I invite over for dinner or call to chat with, but possibly more the type who take advantage of you once or twice before you push them away) and possibly felt I could take care of their mess.

They were done with the space and simply wanted away, so they left. With the damage deposit applied as rent, I had no payments from them at a minimum of a thousand dollars of cleanup, wall repairs and painting. It’s true that I would have painted anyway after having a tenant in for that long, but it’s the tenant’s responsibility to leave the property in the same shape as they originally occupied it.

The Lesson

You really have to focus on your business as a landlord. When you let relationships get in the way of business, it can cost you money. Sure times have been tough the last couple of years for people, but if you let your tenants get to close, times can be tough for you too as you take responsibility for their actions, or lack of actions. There has to be a line between helping people out and ensuring you and yours are taken care of. Sometimes it’s a fine line, other times it can be very definitive, it depends on your emotional makeup to a degree, but remembering this is a business can hopefully help you ensure you are standing on the correct side of the fine line! It comes down to this, tenants are not your friends, they are your business partner in a rental property and you need to treat them as this.

Have any of you tried to help someone who was a tenant? Or do you feel a tenant took excessive advantage of you? Share some of your stories here to help remind others of where that line is. I look forward to hearing from you.

I follow a fellow by the name of Bill Gray who is known as “The Landlord Doctor”. He is a seasoned debt collector and has some great advice about screening tenants in the following article. I’ve mentioned some of this previously, but it’s always great to get a fresh perspective.

Screening Tenants – Don’t Miss an Important Component to Screening New Tenants

Be sure to check out some of his other great articles as well.

I had hoped to have my eviction package all complete by now, but time has managed to get away from me and the project keeps expanding. Currently I am just finishing page four of the outline up, I already have about a dozen pages written and I have ideas for about a dozen more! My original deadline of December 31st is long past, but I will keep working away.

I was just checking some of the stats earlier today and I have had over 300 hits on the blog all directly related to evictions in Alberta. Obviously people are looking for information, I might as well be the one to supply it! If I have helped you previously with an eviction, or you have suggestions about what to include, I would love to hear from you so I can help guide the next person in a similar situation.

My goal is for the completed work to have the whole process covered from whether you need to provide a 14 day eviction notice to the final steps to regaining possession of your property from a tenant.

Great title, lousy article. At least that is how many of you will feel when you read this hoping to find an easy way to collect money from tenants you have evicted. Although some people have had success with collecting money from evicted tenants, unless the outstanding amount owed is over a couple thousand dollars you may be better off letting it go.

The time and energy you waste trying to collect could probably better serve you by spending extra time finding and screening for exceptional tenants to replace the less than stellar former inhabitants. For those of you looking to collect, though here is some information to help you with the process of either garnishing a former tenant’s wages, or potentially seizing tenant’s assets to pay outstanding deb.

If you are planning on doing this yourself, here is the link to the governments PDF on Getting and Collecting a Writ of Enforcement in Alberta. This 40 page document (yes 40 pages!!) walks you through the various forms and processes, but most importantly, it says this.

“Legal enforcement of a Judgment is often complex and difficult. Many aspects of creditor law and legal procedure have not been explained in this brochure. Court employees are not allowed to give you legal advice. Please consult a lawyer if you have any questions.”

They also include the phone number for the Lawyer Referral Service sponsored by the Law Society of Alberta which is 1-800-661-1095 or can be found at this link, Law Society of Alberta Lawyer Referral Service. You can receive up to half an hour free legal counsel by using this service. Once you have received some advice you can decide at that point whether to pay for additional advice or whether it may be worth it for you.

Due to the complexity, the other option is to have one of the collection/bailiff services do the process for you. Costs for this start at about $700 and can move upwards for additional services, so be sure you are receive a breakdown of what the potential charges will be prior to committing to anything.

Also, this is different from simply sending the tenant to a simple collection agency that attempts to collect outstanding money for a percentage of the debt. Companies like Foster and Co, Kurseshi and Company or Serv-it offer the full service of going through the courts and garnishing wages and can offload the time you would spend on the process.

If you have had experience collecting, or attempting to collect from former tenants, we would love to hear your thoughts on the process.

This particular post could have also been titled “Google Knows All”, but it does revolve around tenants, so I thought I would share. Hopefully there are a couple lessons and some laughter for everyone in this.

Around mid December I received an email from a lady named Marla for my mixed residence shared accommodation property, it looked like this;

What is ur address? I am looking for a place
temporarily. I am a non smoker and very quiet..

Other than bad spelling it looked acceptable, perhaps she just texts a lot which accounts for the “ur”?  I responded by provided the district (I don’t like to give out the address until I can confirm it is worth my time) and at the same time asked when she needed a place.

She replied back as early as the upcoming Friday and asked for the address and inquired if she could see it first. We passed a few more emails back and forth and then I received a call from a private number the next day from a lady asking the same questions. I asked if the lady was Marla and she said yes (should have been a sign that she didn’t mention it first!!) and we set up a 2:00 meeting on the Friday at the property.

As is my practice, I asked her to give me a call about an hour prior to the meeting in case something came up and to verify I wouldn’t get stood up. She immediately said no, she couldn’t. Ok, that should have been warning sign number two, but we had a couple vacancies, it wouldn’t be too far out of my way, so I said fine, no problem.

Now I had two lawyers meetings that Friday morning and late Thursday afternoon the second lawyer’s office called and informed me we would have to move the meeting to 2:00. This was a refinancing that had to be done before Christmas, so I had to accept the new time, but now I didn’t have a number to contact Marla, and she wasn’t going to call.

Fortunately I did have her email address, so all I could do was email her and hope she read it prior to leaving to meet me. Luckily enough she did receive it Friday morning and called me. I explained the situation and we rescheduled for Saturday at 1:00. Being the “nice guy” I am, I explained it’s for reasons like this I like people to call an hour prior. Since the Saturday stop was semi on my way home from other rent collection it would work.

Anyway Saturday rolls around, I complete my rent collection early, get to the property about 45 minutes ahead of schedule and start doing some work while I wait. This property has an onsite manager, but he had to work the Friday and the Saturday, otherwise he normally would have met and shown the property.

So it is a few minutes before 1:00 and Dave the manager suddenly appears, he ended up not having to work that day, so I said perfect, he could hang out and meet Marla and show her the place. So I packed up, headed home and then checked up with him about an hour later, Marla never showed up.

Here I had worried about her the previous time, made an exception and strayed from my system of calls an hour before and in the end it just wasted my time and Dave’s. This however is where it really starts to get interesting, or should I say fun?

I festered over it the remainder of the weekend and Monday morning I sent an email off to Marla that read like this;

I hope you can understand now why I ask people to call an hour prior to the viewing, it saves the hour plus of wasted time I had sitting at the property only for you to not show up. Just another reminder to me why I shouldn’t make exceptions.

Merry Christmas

Well my new best friend Marla took exception to this and later in the afternoon I received this back, just without any asterisks in it;

F**k you you Canadian  scum. I don’t know you and don’t bother me again  or my boyfriend and his buddies will punch your f**kin head in .

Oh my gosh, did I hit a nerve?!!! A threatening email, what should I do? At this point I had a couple of options; drop it in case the threat was real, or push buttons. Since I am a natural button pusher I went that route.

There is where the “Google knows all” comes into play. I simply plugged her email address into Google and did a search and lo and behold I had pages and pages of links with her email address in it. **For you landlords, this is a great way to find out more about your potential tenants as well, think of it as a unique screening technique to acquire additional information about your tenant.

From the web search, I was able to ascertain the following. She had a history of placing ads in the Rossland, Kelowna, Trail, Selkirk and Nelson areas offering to housesit. She offered excellent references and would also pet sit. As I looked through more of the ads, she also rented out furnished rooms in properties, hmmm.

Now I am only assuming this, but from what I could see she was getting free places to stay, then subletting rooms out and making some quick cash, nice little scam. Flipping through more of the ads she had posted, she was now offering to housesit in Calgary, Canmore and Vancouver in separate ads over the holidays, so I am sure she was just between places when she found me and was waiting for an “opportunity” to open up.

It only became better the more I looked as I also found her putting ads out as a qualified legal assistant experienced with family law, personal law and litigation and as a medical records assistant with plenty of experience. and as a housekeeper, also with plenty of experience. The kicker was when I found one of her ads renting a place out in BC with her BC phone number. This led to me sending out the following email back to her;

I thought with your background you would have been slightly more eloquent? The problem with the internet is that is makes a wonderful shield for threats and bravado when in reality it just makes the threatener feel better about themselves. Maybe you need to go back to all your old haunts like Rossland and Nelson and continue with your house sitting program. After all with your excellent references you should have no problem finding a place outside of Calgary to housesit over the holidays.

Don’t threaten to send your boyfriend after me, if you have one, I don’t live at the property which is why I originally asked you to call in advance. If you want your boyfriend to come find me, call an hour in advance! With your previous litigation experience ( or could it pertain to personal injury law? Definitely not family law?) you should be well aware this email you sent me wouldn’t help your case. Anyway, I am done with you, unless you want to push it, so remember the internet offers only partial anonymity. If you do want to push it you can reach me at 250-308-XXXX, ooops sorry, that’s your old number.

Merry Christmas

My wife particularly liked how I ended by my emails to her with Merry Christmas. Oh and I did include her phone number without the XXXX’s as well.

Strangely enough that was the last I heard from her? So a couple lessons to be learned from this. 1) Don’t stray from your systems, in my case if I would have stuck to my guns and demanded the call an hour before I would have recovered some of my time and never had to deal with this. 2) Google Knows All, if you don’t want your information on the internet, don’t use it, otherwise be careful what you say or do, Google your name someday to see what comes up, you may be surprised. It can also be a useful tool for checking out potential tenants.

The positive part of all this is one more chapter in a potential book, so thanks for that Marla and thanks for providing what I hope was an entertaining post. If you have some fun tenant stories I would love to hear them!

What an anticlimactic day. After all the drama, all the issues, all the problems, this latest eviction seems to be winding down with barely a whimper.

I ended up meeting with the bailiff today and we posted the notice, changed the locks and then away we went, patiently awaiting SWAT boy to show up at the property so I could then bring the police in and charge him with trespassing. After such a lengthy eviction and between the drinking, the smoking, the fighting and of course SWAT, I felt he would freak out just a smidgen upon finding he was legally locked out of his former abode.

I even called his cell phone and left a message warning him of the implications of trying to re-enter the property without me present. Now according to the other tenant, he had left the previous morning around 7:30 with his backpack and hadn’t made it home yet, so initially I was concerned he had already taken off, but when we checked his room to verify, he still had some of his possessions in the room.

I made sure my evening schedule was clear, in case I needed to rush over with the police in tow, and then I sat back to wait for the impending explosion. Finally just before 2:00 he called!!

He was calling from a different number, which threw me off initially, and inquired whether I had been to the property the day prior, as he had been away. He then very politely asked if he could leave his items in his room over the weekend and come back to pick them up on Tuesday. At this point he still wasn’t aware of the voicemail I had left him, the trespassing warnings and the locks being changed. Then the conversation took a turn.

He had actually started to take responsibility for his drinking and had checked himself into a detox center the day before, where he was going to be staying until Tuesday. Then later in the day Tuesday, he was transferring into a nine month program for alcohol abuse outside of the city where he would be setup in a group home environment away from the bright lights of the city and the allure of casinos, bars and liquor stores. He even apologized about owing me the rent money and that he wants to make it up, but won’t be able to until he finishes the program.

Wow! Of course he may be blowing smoke, but at least he is attempting to start to take responsibility for his own actions and it’s a positive step, too bad it took such a toll on all of us. He was a totally different individual when I initially met him, so I can only hope the alcohol was the factor that pushed him into becoming such a problem. Of course after all this I felt deflated. I had all this adrenaline ready for the impending phone call, the eventual problems and confrontation at the property and the fall out that was sure to come, then in moments all the hostility was gone and now I’m left wondering about the next step.

I’m pretty sure I won’t be seeing any of the money owed me for rent, damages, RTDRS hearings and bailiffs. I’m more positive than ever that I am burnt out by these properties and I am quite sure this will be a positive turning point for us. We will take this opportunity to move forward, unload some of our properties that have become more work than reward and start to refocus on the areas of Real Estate that have been most effective and rewarding for us. Hopefully SWAT boy uses this as a turning point for himself as well.  Anyone out there interested in a slightly used rooming house with great cash flow?

A small village must be very upset my tenant hasn’t come home in a while. He doesn’t seem to get it, I have even tried using little words, but apparently to no avail.

He was to be out as per the court order at noon today, so around 10:30 he called this morning to inform me he was going to appeal the eviction. You have to admire his persistence, if you aren’t busy shaking your head at him.

Not sure what makes him think he will win if he can even get an appeal started at the 11th hour. To add to the problems over the weekend he blew up at the other upstairs tenant again, the end result being he broke the mirror attached to his door and the door itself is beyond repair. Nothing your typical great tenant wouldn’t do, right?

Today’s issue was when he yelled at the other guy again, after the fellow shut the door in his face. He then pushed the door open and went towards the fellow who apparently clocked him pretty good in self defense, knocking SWAT boy down and drawing some blood. They had to help him up and guide him out of the room. Just another day at the nuthouse.

Anyway, at this point I confirmed he hadn’t left, filed the appropriate paperwork (affidavit of service, affidavit of default and writ of possession) at the courthouse. Now within 24-48 hours I get a call back that my writ is ready, I get to go downtown and grab it and then I can bring in a bailiff to post it at the property for an outrageous fee and within 24 hours of that point, SWAT boy is officially trespassing on my property if he re-enters or is found sleeping there.

So after all the drama, SWAT boy couldn’t attend his own eviction hearing. Guess when you are busy you have other priorities in life! Apparently he had to work, he even called into the hearing office today to tell them he couldn’t make it, but they felt it wasn’t enough notice to postpone.

It may have also had to do with the fact he wasn’t going to win. Due to the law, he needs one full business day to move out, so he is to be out by Monday November 16th at noon. Oh and I was awarded a judgment of $418.55, along with $25.71 per day from Saturday on until he is gone. I went directly to the courthouse and filed the eviction order right after the hearing so all the correct procedures are in place.

After that I showed up at the property at about 2:40 to check on things and make sure it looked fine, not expecting him to be there, after all he had to work. Even the other tenant informed me he was out, but I knocked anyway. Lo and behold out pops SWAT boy!

I handed him the eviction order and he grabbed it and walked past me and out to the front door where he proceeded to ring the bell a couple of times. Then exclaimed, “oh it does work, I couldn’t tell since you always just walk in”.

Now just so every landlord and tenant reading this is aware, a landlord cannot walk into a regular rental property unannounced. He needs to provide at least 24 hours notice. This however is not a regular rental property, it is a shared accommodation and the only portion the individual rents from me is the room, which I do not enter without providing notice. The common areas are the areas for everyone’s use, the kitchen, the bathrooms, the laundry room and the living room. I do not require notice to access these areas, he doesn’t seem to get that, but now it doesn’t really matter.

So that is the positive news, the reality is he may not leave Monday, and I doubt I will be able to collect any of the judgment monies, although I do have the option of garnishing his wages and attaching an outstanding amount on his credit history. I will see how Monday goes and weigh my options at that time. If he leaves great, if he doesn’t, then on to the next step a affidavit of default and a writ of possession.

This buys him another day or two, but the result ends up the same, although it becomes more fun for me if he does stay on, as I can have him charged with trespassing. And given the chance to make his life miserable, I am at the point I will be all over it!

So far, another successful eviction story, if you don’t count the time lost, the energy wasted or the negative attitude that this creates.

Do you realize the number one search string that brings people to this site is hinged around the word eviction? Ironically for the last three or four months my entire life has revolved around evicting problem tenants who believe they have the right to disrespect my properties, don’t find it necessary to live by societies, never mind my rules and who are trying to take advantage of my trying to initially help them.

Along the way, I have also run into a steady stream of other landlords and investors with similar problems. I haven’t been able to help all of them, but I have been able to help the majority ease their fears and concerns about the process. After some prompting over a bottle of wine (or more) about opportunities out there, a thought came into play.

I guess it’s finally time to take advantage of my experiences and turn them into a tool to help other landlords. I’m currently in the process of putting a package together that will walk people through the eviction process in Alberta, it will explain the steps, the costs, the potential pitfalls and your various options. Anyone out there interested in this? There will be a cost associated with it, but considering the costs that can run up with a bad tenant it will be very affordable.

I’ll potentially be looking for a couple of people to review it and I should have a draft available by the end of November. Let me know if you would like to be one of those people, if I get a flurry of people it will end up being a random draw of some type (with preference going to people with excellent grammar!). With any luck, it should be available for purchase and as a giveaway to lucky readers sometime in December, unless of course I get stuck in more evictions!

If you wish to be updated and you were brought here by the search engine, or have friends who don’t read this blog, but have eviction problems, simply register on the site and you will be notified when it is ready! Register by clicking here. If you can also take a minute and please answer the polls below it would be appreciated because they will help me with some questions I have!

How refreshing, every day my thoughts about people and helping out get dragged further down. Case in point, SWAT boy caused a bit more stress Sunday.

Here I am sitting at home when the neighbour to the house calls. When the tactical unit set up outside the property, they broke the fence so they could accurately point guns at my resident moron. Now the city will fix it, hopefully along with the two door locks they broke, but I have to wait for the claim to go through etc.

Anyway, the neighbour next door is quite fastidious about his property, and he is a nice guy. So he took it upon himself to start repairing the fence. Maybe not a full blown repair as several two by fours have to be replaced along with the fence boards themselves due to the way it was torn open, but at least something to make it look less obvious.

As he is working, the resident moron comes out and tells him to get off of his property. Wow, here is the guy trying to make the place look a bit better, working on the fence that was broken due to my resident moron and he is telling him to get off property that isn’t even his. I’m guessing it was about two minutes later when the neighbor called me, extremely upset. I’m also guessing the guy was drunk again, just to make him even more of a pain.

Right now, my hands are tied as I have to wait for my eviction hearing Thursday. Most probable result is he won’t show up and I have to go through more headaches with bailiffs, changing locks and police. Worst case, he shows up and the hearing officer grants him a Cinderella order so he can stay and try to pay off over the next couple of months.

Since I am whining, I might as well mention my paranoid tenant staying in another property. I collect rent Saturday mornings every week. I have a scheduled two hour window I arrive at properties I pick money up and mosey on to the next place. My paranoid client refuses to hide the money in his room, always has to be out of the property by 9 in the morning (even though he doesn’t have a job as far as I can tell), and has made me make separate trips to collect.

When he wasn’t around Saturday again, I left a note telling him this wasn’t going to work, he had either to leave the money in his room or come up with an arrangement to be there. If that wouldn’t work, it was best he moved on. We had company Saturday and didn’t check messages until Sunday to find out he had left me a message. He had taken my note to the police since it was threatening. I imagine they had to hold back laughter as a tiny little man in a cheap trench coat shows up at a police station telling them his landlord is demanding his rent on time. I deal with freaking morons lately and it seems to be getting worse!!!!!!

Talked to the other tenants yesterday and he apparently called the Better Business Bureau to report me, talked about calling a lawyer and went on and on. Dealing with this crap makes it so hard to get up in the mornings lately. The only positive I can see is it’s going to make a great book someday.

The story of SWAT boy carrys on, and it just keeps getting better, fortunately I am trying to take the positive lessons from this. First I screwed up. Everyone take note, don’t fill out eviction forms when you are frustrated and in a rush. You make mistakes.

It’s embarrassing to mention, but I pulled some doosies on this one, I spelt the tenants name wrong, left out a letter in his name, and didn’t change the date on the form. Unfortunately the tenant noticed this. He had contacted Landlord and Tenant Services to find out his rights (or what responsibilities he could avoid more realistically), and I am not sure if they walked him through the eviction form or he discovered it himself. He contacted me Monday to inform me he was writing a letter of objection against the eviction and if I wanted him out I would have to take him to court. I was pretty upset, but he got me, my error.

Step two, I stopped by the house and picked up the objection letter Tuesday. I had to wake him as he was on the couch with a couple of empty beer cans visible (it was after 12, barely!), so much for the detox sticking. He was a bit off, so I can only assume there were more than two beers involved, he eventually told me the letter was on the table, nope not there, looked around confused and pointed to a side table and then walked over, grabbed it and gave me his hand written letter.

I grabbed it and started to walk away, no sense wasting my time there, I already had my plan in place. This irritated him to no

end. He started getting quite upset and asked why I wasn’t going to stay and read it. I told him it wasn’t necessary. Guess I hit the right button.

I quickly read through it and this is where he pointed out the name, the date and the address being wrong (the address was actually correct as I used the titled address, but he doesn’t need to know that). It also said that he wasn’t smoking it was someone else (did I mention ditch responsibility) and that I said it was ok to drink in the house. After reading it I simply said fine and started to walk away.

Once again the mood swing went out of control as he started to get mad and yelling at me about messing this affecting people’s lives. I just kept walking out and he then started to swear at and about me as I continued to leave. I’m a little confused, if I am the worst landlord ever and this is such a  horrible place why is he fighting so hard to stay?

Anyway, according to Landlord and Tenant his letter of objection makes my eviction null and void which now means I can just go directly down to the Residential Tenancy Dispute Resolution Service and file for a court hearing for next week. I just finished my paperwork before starting this post. Twenty pages in total and three copies of it are required for filing.

This isn’t my biggest file I have taken in, but definitely interesting. I will keep you posted!

Because SWAT showed up you moron and that counts as the final strike! The full SWAT story is available here, Has Police Tactical Visited Your Rental Property Lately? So by the title, you can guess I had an interesting day Sunday. I had to stop to collect some rent for November 1st and the yahoo who triggered the police tactical event a week ago finally had some money for me. So I stopped in.

I don’t get it, as much as I like to think I am a smart person, these people, and yes, I have now resorted to calling many of my shared accommodation tenants “these people” just don’t think as I do. He brought up the eviction right away and mentioned the date h was supposed to be out was the 4th, but then proceeded to tell me how he had the money for me so he should be able to stay, and then showed me how clean the place was. He also brought up how he had checked Craig’s list and could get a place just like that if he wanted.

He had also obviously put some suck up time and energy into improving the cleanliness of the property. He even cleaned inside the microwave and the floors and made sure to point it out to me! Nice work, so I thanked him and told him he still had to go. Has anyone else ever seen a lead balloon? I became witness to one right then and there!

To say he was unhappy with me might have been an understatement. He complained about how much work it was going to be for him to move again, he told me how he was comfortable there, how he liked the size of the room. Then he complained about having to call his brother and get his brother to help him move as he had a vehicle and it was going to be a hassle for his brother. I just stared at him.

When he finally realized I wasn’t changing my mind and the only thing moving was him, that was when the comments about how I was one of the worst landlords ever. How I was a certain piece of male anatomy for not keeping a clean responsible tenant (I may have neglected to mention this clean responsible tenant only a couple weeks out of detox, who I had carried during this time as he wasn’t working and couldn’t pay, also smelled of booze while talking to me). It deteriorated a bit more from there, so I started to leave.

I almost made it to the door when one last crack about me not helping people and being a p*^%& made me stop and walk partially back in. As I looked at him, I realized it was just a lose lose situation and anything I said or did was only going to elevate things, so I just turned and walked out to the sound of more yelling and a slamming door from his room.

As I was driving around to my other stops that afternoon,  I replayed it all back in my head and after first reminding myself about how many people I have helped, how many tenants I have provide great homes for and how many times I had been ripped off by the majority of these tenants, I just became more irritable. Being a landlord really is a thankless job. You try and provide a safe comfortable place, yet you are a money grubbing land baron in their eyes.

Now the current type of tenant I was dealing with could not ever be deemed a fine upstanding citizen in anyone’s eyes, and I have had some incredible guys stay in these properties as well as our regular rentals, but it just wears a person out. The bad people always leave a much more indeligible mark on our memories versus the wonderful people we have dealt with and unfortunately the bad memories leave a far heavier impact than the good ones. The more I thought about this fellow the more I realized he wasn’t taking any responsibility for anything. I was a jerk (or worse) not him, the police over reacted (still doesn’t quite add up) not him, the other fellow made him drink he didn’t do it himself, he didn’t think it would hurt if he smoked in the house on occasion, and the list goes on. What was he responsible for? Making the place clean and wonderful, but none of the bad things that occurred, they were all someone else’s fault.

This seems to be the biggest fault of so many people these days. They just won’t own up to their responsibilities. I understand no one is perfect, I am far from it, but when I screw up I take responsibility, when people depend on me I take responsibility, when I screw up, I take the blame. If you have to go around hiding from responsibility, pushing blame at others and avoiding being a grown up, you will never amount to anything, or if you do, it won’t last. You will be a fleeting success and as you come crashing down, you will come down hard.

During these tougher economic times, I am seeing more and more examples of this, more and more individuals pushing responsibility away and saying it is someone else’ problem. Whether they believe the government should take care of them or the landlord has to carry the cost of supporting them, whatever the case, they just feel it is not their responsibility and pass the buck.

It should be an interesting day Wednesday, since it’s not his fault my tenant is getting evicted, perhaps it won’t be his fault that he trashes my property. However it plays out, I will keep everyone posted!