Crap, one of my 'tenants' ditched on me. But-- Joy! No, crap. Joy! Crap!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Okay, I rent a huge house and sublet out to five rotating ‘boarders’ – mostly students. It’s a good gig when everything goes smoothly.

The downside is, of course, that I have to pay the difference for any vacancies that I have on the first. Usually, I can avoid it, but sometimes stuff happens. (Last year, schedules came together a bit funny and I had three rooms to fill for January first – and you know how everyone likes to plan to move on New Years Day. Eeesh.)

Anyway, I got a bit of a curve ball this morning in the form of a call from one of my boarders. He’s a great guy – and one of the more permanent fixtures. Ideal tenant, really. Works nights, practically invisble. Pays on time, every time. Quiet. Really quiet.

Quiet enough that I was caught totally off guard when he told me he was calling from Edmonton. He went out to line up a job there, it worked out, and he was calling to let me know that he can’t be arsed to come collect his stuff.

We had a friendly conversation. No point in griping, I figure. Upshot, I keep the security deposit (naturally) and can “have” anything he’s left in the room. I put a good face on this because I like the guy.

I rent furnished rooms. I expect to keep whatever’s in there. I don’t want to have to take the trouble of disposing of clothes that he couldn’t be bothered to take with him.

Anyway, I wish him well, offer congratulations on finding what is by his account a rewarding new job, and tell him not to worry about anything. Then I hang up the phone and curse. This means I have to take $400 out of my May budget – and pay to fix the room up, buy advertising, count on going over my meagre allotment of cell-phone minutes, all that stuff. Oh yeah, and spend a bunch of time dealing with all this stuff instead of working. I guess it is working, after a fashion, but I prefer not to have to do it.

So I get the key to his room and get in there to size up how difficult it’s going to be to make it ready to show in the next couple of days.

I can’t help but be pleased with some of the stuff I’ve “inherited.”

First and foremost, a relatively decent computer. Duron 966Mhz, with a DVD burner, a nice 21" flat-screen monitor and a combination scanner/printer. Score! It’s better than what I’m running now, anyway. I can migrate some of my better peripherals into the ‘new’ tower and set my old box up in a common area as another access point for folks in the house that don’t have their own computers.

There’s also a little 14" TV that can stay in the room as part of the furnishings. That adds value. Supah. A little portable stereo. I’ll probably hawk that, along with the stacks and stacks of hip-hop CDs. There’s a VCR that will be good in the downstairs livingroom.

Tools. Tools are good. Also, a decent set of dumbbells, just like the set I’ve been procrastinating on getting for beside my desk for over a year.

Hey! A quarter-ounce of a certain aromatic herb that will make cleaning and repainting the room less of a drag. Uh, lavender. Yeah. Lavender.

Next to all that, the junk doesn’t seem quite so bad. Big Brothers will be happy to take away all the clothes. There is a remarkable stack of flats of empty Budweiser bottles. That’s kind of a hassle. Maybe if I set a box out at a time the alley scavengers will take 'em away.

Anyway, I’m kind of conflicted. I do hate to have to scramble. If I get it sorted and get someone in by the fifteenth, it’ll be more-or-less even, financially, though. It may be possible.

On the other hand, “free” stuff! Yay!

I guess I should stop procrastinating and start cleaning that room now. Rrrrgh.

2

At least you’ve gained back some of what he’d owe you for May, had he stayed. Joy? Sure. Still a pita to clean out after someone.

3

I’m no lawyer, but hadn’t you better get in writung that you can take his stuff? Hate to think what might happen if his new job falls through and he needs to get his stuff back if his ex-landlord now has it all, that might look very bad.

4

I agree. Before you do ANYTHING to his stuff, fax him a contract saying that he relinquishes his stuff and the deposit and have him sign it and fax it back to you so that it’s in writing. You don’t want him taking you to court and have him claiming that the brand new whatever you got was actually his and that you took it from him while he was gone.

Don’t mess with anything until you have it in writing. And I know it’s a hassle, but if that doesn’t work out, you might want to consider looking up the statute in your state what qualifies under abandonment so that you can legally take his stuff without getting your butt dragged to court.

5

We have a friendly relationship – I don’t feel terribly anxious about it.

If he has a reversal of fortune and needs his stuff back, I wouldn’t hesitate to return whatever remains to him, if it came to that.

I’m sure it’s a moot point, though, because geographic and economic concerns make it unlikely that he’d come back for anything – and if he finds himself unexpectedly unemployed, Edmonton is a much better place to be. Better prospects, much cheaper rent, etc. It wouldn’t make any sense to come back, as the resale value of everything he’s left behind is well below that of airfare here.

Besides, I didn’t think to get any new contact info from him. :smack:
Yeah, Ginger, it does suck to clean other people’s mess – but I remind myself that doing it makes it a lot easier to get by on the meagre income I make whoring myself out. My month-to-month expenses are very low, except in the rare instances when I have empty rooms and am obliged to make up the balance out of pocket. Not a bad exchange for routine maintenance on the house and keeping the rooms filled. When I get my ass back to proper wage-slavery, I’ll be saving money hand-over-fist. Woot!

(The last time I had to clean up after someone was something else again – she was asked to leave because nobody could stand her slovenly ways in the common areas – and what she did to that bedroom… :eek: )

This is something else again. If I manage it properly, there’s a good chance I won’t be out-of-pocket at all for May. He forfeited his half-month’s deposit by giving me 1/30th of the required notice. As long as I can get someone by the 15th of May, everything’s even-stephen. I think all the free gear makes up for the day or two of mucking out. The more I think about it, the more cheeful I get.

I won’t have to keep borrowing other people’s computers to get the piccies off my digital camera. The scanner/printer/copier thingy has a built in card-reader. (For some reason my WinMe box has always been bitchy about loading the USB MSD drivers, and I’ve been unable to use it.)

6

Very strange that someone would abandon what appears to be a large chunk of their personal posessions.

7

Yea really sorry you have to clean up after him though. I hope he didn’t incur any damage to the room.

My mom rents out rooms from our duplex to students and they always love messing up the room before they move out. Usually my mom, brother and I stay up for two days straight repainting, waxing the hardwood floor, repairing broken furniture…and my mom usually gives them most if not all the deposit back! She’s too nice for her own good. But once I get my undergrad degrees (in another year), I’m moving back to take over as manager and I will rule with an iron FIST! :smiley:

8

CD’s, eh? You should toss them all in a box and then do a Doper auction… Hehehe…

I’ll take any old Outkast as an idea fee.

congrats though. I imagine the… uh… Potpourri will make the day go by easier.

9

Tenants have to give notice in writing and a forwarding address in writing now, if they want their security deposit back. You have to give him two opportunities to schedule an outgoing walk-through. If the tenant skips, even in a friendly manner, you should be okay. Always cover one’s butt, though. Yes, he did give you late notice, but in our office, if we can re-rent the property again early, we refund tenants’ deposits (minus cleaning, damage, etc. charges).

You’re probably aware of the RTO but it never hurts to keep that butt well-covered.

10

My butt’s pretty covered w/r/t the deposit and all that.

While usually everything ends up being on a friendly basis, everything is spelled out pretty plainly in the tenancy agreement that I get everyone to sign before they move in.

Last year I had a girl move out with a little less than two week’s notice, again because she’d gotten a good job elsewhere. She kept the room neat-as-a-pin and was pretty much ideal in every other way – so I told her if I could rent the room out in time I’d return the deposit to her anyway. No harm, no foul, and I knew those two weeks waiting for her first paycheque weren’t going to be easy.

I would have been well within my rights to say “No thirty day notice, that’s a bonus half month’s rent for me,” but then I’d have to spend some of it on a top hat, cape, and wax moustache. No thanks. :slight_smile:

11

Hey, if you need to clean the place out, why not throw a Dopefest and recruit some other Dopers?

12

Haha sounds like you’re trying to recruit some cheap labor for him. :slight_smile:

13

Well, if he throws in some beer and a weekend up at his cottage… :wink:

14

Sounds like the OP doesn’t actually have a forwarding address, but that’s £1000 or so of stuff that’s been left behind - mainly the monitor.

15

You got off easy, Larry.

A Friend of Mine use to sublet a bedroom to a guy that after about a year, he and his other roomie decided to vote him off-island, if you know what I mean.

They said he was weird. ( and for these two Out There Like Pluto Guys).

He left behind, in his room, jars and jars and jars…filled with urine. :eek:

16

Uh, nowhere near worth that much, Quartz. (The monitor is a flat-screen CRT, not LCD. It’s certainly “nice” by comparison with my old 15" monitor, though.) The computer & monitor would be unlikely to fetch $150 used, together. Turns out that the printer part of the scanner/printer combo is busted – dunno if it’s repairable yet. It’s the paper-feed mechanism, so I figure I might be able to make it work again.

All told, if I hauled it all to a consignment store, I doubt that it’d bring more than $200. The electronics is the main thing, and it depreciates like hell. The CDs seem to be mostly home-rolled, on closer inspection, and none too well-cared-for.

There’s practical value there, for sure – but not much in the way of monetary value.

If there was, I’d sell it in a heartbeat – as it is I’m probably going to go into a bit of debt to get my own ass out to Edmonton for my niece’s July wedding, and a cash windfall would be nice.

Shirley Ujest… I don’t know what to say.

17

That’s just taking the piss. :smiley:

18

Your tenant wasn’t named “Howard Hughes Jr.” by any chance? :eek: