I’m not renewing my lease, which ends July 31, so my landlord has started showing my apartment. After giving three showings, he sent me a nasty email today.
I’m extremely irritated. I made a big point of cleaning the apartment before he showed it, even though I’m in the middle of exam week. I made sure the kitchen is clean, the bathroom is clean, garbage is taken out, litterbox is clean, etc. Dirty laundry is in the hamper, bed is made. It’s free of dirt, bugs, and odor.
I think I know why he’s upset: clutter. I have six file-size boxes in the living room that I never unpacked. They are pushed up against the wall and not in the way of “walking,” but they’re unattractive and make the space look cluttered and small. There are numerous little cat toys scattered over the floor (jingle balls and the like). And I leave a canvas sack by the front door with my dry cleaning in it. But no one has any problems actually walking around the apartment–not by a long shot. I do aerobics in the middle of the living room without moving anything beforehand.
My question is: what is my responsibility here? My attitude is, I will keep the place clean and accessible, but I still live here, and I don’t have the time or the desire to turn it into a showplace prior to every showing. I don’t think it matters that the file boxes are an eyesore or that there are cat toys about because they will be gone when the tenant moves in and they don’t impede access. Is that unreasonable? What’s the standard?
Your attitude sounds reasonable to me. If Jerk Landlord wants to make a big deal of it just send him that last paragraph, which sums up your position pretty nicely.
The only thing that I might have a problem with is the cat toys, if they are small balls that someone could step on and take a header. But most cat toys are foam or something, so I doubt that’s a problem.
Turns out the cat toys are his problem! Maybe I just have a blind spot for that stuff. They’re mostly soft and squishy so I just stomp 'em. It’ll be obnoxious to be putting them away and taking them out again for four months, but since you guys think it’s reasonable, I’ll do it.
I always just grab a paper sack, fold down the edges to shorten it and gather all the cat toys into that when cleaning. Leave the bag out and the kitties get to rediscover the treasure trove of toys and they get a bag to play with too!
Yeah, part of the reason I didn’t bother picking them up in the first place is that they know where the toy box is. I’m fairly confident that as soon as I leave the apartment, they’ll just drag the toys back out–quite possibly even before the landlord shows the apartment. I have one cat who is quite determined that all the cat toys should be evenly distributed across all floor areas in the apartment.
It’s probably a losing battle, but I’ll do it anyway.
I would just cut down on the number of cat toys available on show days. Pick a bunch up, toss them in a bag, and stuff it in a closet on days you know there is a showing. Yes there will be some around for the cats, but it IS still your home.
AFAIK, you are under no particular obligation to make the place all shiny for him, but you can be a decent person and straighten up a bit when you know there is a showing. I would be very clear that you’re not going to make any special effort to clean up on normal days, but you’ll straighten up (and pick up a bunch of the toys) if he lets you know in advance.
Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of. When there aren’t fuzzy cat toys to kill, they tend to look for fun elsewhere. In the past, this has included dumping the wastebasket and emptying the contents all over the floor, tearing pictures off the walls, and throwing breakable glass objects off of shelves. Oh, and climbing the screens (which, in this apartment, are located inside the windows for some reason).
When they have a full complement of furry toys, they act like angels. Almost.
This post (especially the decent person part) really set me off, just like his email. The implication seems to me at first glance to be that I’m a slob and inconsiderate. Which is far from the truth. When he started showing the apartment, I did a huge housecleaning. My apartment is cleaner and neater than any occupied apartment I ever saw when I was looking. I start thinking about that and my blood begins to boil.
But I took a deep breath and realized that my housekeeping is a hot button issue for me, and that I am probably overreacting.
My landlord called half an hour ago. He actually sounded very contrite. He wasn’t trying to be a jerk. He was mostly just concerned that he was going to step on something and break it. I said I didn’t care if things got stepped on, but offered to put the toys away.
We compromised; I’ll put some of the toys away and leave out the favorites so the kitties don’t wreak destruction. I figure this is OK. Now that spring is here, they spend most of their time watching the birdfeeder anyhow.
Maybe you could tell your landlord this? I’m sure he’d much rather see cat toys than garbage and glass, or have them ruining the screens. It IS your home, and you don’t owe him any explanation, however. You’re not being dirty or attracting mice or other pests, so he really doesn’t have any right to tell you how much “clutter” you’re allowed to have.
Sorry QN, didn’t mean to imply that you were a slob or not a decent person. You were already doing the decent thing by cleaning up. I just meant to contrast that with your technical right to leave dirty laundry and junk all over the apartment.
I am certainly glad that my apartment complex has a “sample” apartment which they show to persons considering living here, so that I don’t have to go through what you are. (Though I should declutter my floor).
About cat toys, when trying to sell their house at one point, my parents had a complaint from a realtor that someone had seen a (dead?) mouse in the house. It was decided that the mouse in question was one of those semi-lifelike mice with real fur. We suspect that the visitor was sufficiently unfond of mice as to not get close enough to detect that the mouse was fake. Given that the mice were the cat’s favorite toy, it would have seemed mean to take them all away. (To say nothing of the difficulty involved in being sure that there were no mice hiding where the cat could get them. )
I don’t think your landlord is a jerk, but I think he probably did state his position very badly. Given the later developments, I’d say when he wrote “so we can walk around,” he meant “so we can walk around unimpeded.” And really, it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable request to try not to have so much crap scattered over the floor because that makes it really hard to show the place. If people are constantly looking at the floor to make sure they’re not going to trip over or break your stuff, they’re not getting a good look at the rest of the apartment. And while you might not care about your toys being stepped on, the potential renters are likely to care a whole lot about being the ones to step on your toys, both because nobody likes to go into someone’s home and break their belongings and because of the risk of injury to themselves. You also have to consider that having clutter lying about makes the place look small and junky, people don’t want to rent a small, junky place, and if that place is still unrented when you move out your landlord is losing money.
IMO, his concerns were entirely reasonable, and his note was not at all nasty. Nasty would have been telling you that the apartment was hideously filthy and you MUST clean it up before the next showing. So, no, I can’t really see him as a jerk. Not based on this incident, anyway. Given that, the nice thing to do would be to help the guy out as much as you reasonably can, which I’m fairly sure is what Cheesesteak was getting at.
I understand about being sensitive to any perceived slurs on your housekeeping, though. You shoulda seen me when my inlaws came to visit for the first time and spontaneously offered to help us pay for a cleaning service. I know they absolutely didn’t mean it that way and would be horrified at the thought that they had insulted me, but still, I had done one of those oh-god-the-inlaws-are-coming sorts of cleanings where you vaccuum under the furniture, wash the windows, and polish the faucets. I thought it looked about a million times better than they had ever seen his apartment, and they’d never offered to get him a cleaning lady. There was a moment or three of “Oh no, you di-int!” combined with “Well, I never!” with a dash of “Beeyotch, do you think your pig-ass son did any of this? You saw his apartment. Shit, you made a few special trips to clean his apartment.” thrown in for good measure. I was het up. And I was really het up the second time they came to visit and repeated the offer. In retrospect, though, it’s just funny. Mostly because I know they were really only trying to help, and Deb would just drop dead of embarassment if she ever realized how it could be taken.
My landlord is already showing my apartment and my lease is up August 31st. It’s pretty standard here to start looking for an apt. quite a few months before you’ll actually be moving in.
Umm…maybe you missed my earlier post where I noted that 1) I understood his concerns, 2) I realized I was overreacting, 3) Jerk Landlord and I mutually apologized, and 4) we came to a compromise wherein I agreed to pick up most of the cat toys, since that was all he was worried about anyway. It honestly didn’t occur to me that they were a problem because I’m used to them, but I get it now…really.
I still refer to him as Jerk because he’s done numerous unquestionably jerky things ever since I signed the lease. This is another reason I immediately jumped to the conclusion that he was being hostile…because he very often is.
It’s in the lease. I didn’t pay close attention when I signed it. Oops.
Gotta run now. He’s showing the apartment three times this afternoon. And yes, it’s freshly de-cat-toyed.
My sister’s landlord is doing this too. She’s received several notices like the one you received (even though her lease is not up until August). In the last one, her landlord went so far as to request that she “make her bed, put away all clothing, and wash dishes”.
Now, my sister is not Martha Stewart, thank goodness, but her house is not a pit, either. It’s a bit cluttered, but she’s a mom with a child and she’s living in a house that has ONE closet, so there is not a lot of space to put clothes and stuff. Demanding that a tenant MAKE THE BED?
Luckily Sis works with some attorneys, so she was able to respond with a notice to contact her only through her attorney from now on, that the place WILL be clean when she moves, and she does not expect there to be any problems with receiving her $1200 deposit back when she leaves.
I don’t know about your situation, but her landlord obviously is used to dealing with people who are easily intimidated, and he’s just picked the wrong person to go toe-to-toe with. It’ll be interesting come August, I think.
Good luck. Save every single thing the landlord sends you, just in case you end up in court over your deposit.
Part of why I was so pissed is that I had made a big point to do all those things.
I’m a lawyer and have dealt with a fair number of landlords in my time. I always get my deposit back, and so do my friends and family members. All it usually takes is a letter signed “Q.N. Jones, Esq.” My current landlord already knows I’m a lawyer, so I doubt he’ll give me trouble.
I have fresh proof of his jerkitude. He called yesterday and told me he had three showings today, at 3:30, 4, and 5:15. I left the apartment at 2:45 and returned at 5:40.
At 5:45, he knocked on the door with people for another showing. It took me awhile to get to the door because I had stuff in my hands, so he started unlocking the door to let himself in. He got really red in the face and embarrassed when he found out I was there. He was hoping to sneak another late-scheduled showing in without giving me the requisite 24 hours notice.
I wish I could afford to buy a house, but with my credit rating, if I don’t want to deal with a landlord, my only other option is a van down by the river.
My mother is a neat-freak-- I’m talking almost compulsively clean. You wouldn’t find a single cobweb or dustbunny in her entire house. She even scrubs areas which are never seen.
Her mother-in-law is a Certified Nasty Person-- the kind that delight in thinking they’ve made someone unhappy. The last time she visited, she looked around and said, “Hmm. It looks like you cleaned for a change.”
My mom laughs about it, but I’m sure it had to sting.
Oh, let me guess–she’s one of those people who, if you drop in completely out of the blue some random afternoon and today’s neatly folded newspaper is lying next to her easy chair or she hasn’t gotten around to putting away the freshly-washed dishes, she apologizes for the mess. My mil is like that, and her mother is even more compulsively clean. It’s just how they are. Somehow, that made it even worse at the time.
