I'm back from South Carolina, and I'm so upset I could cry

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Ivylad, Ivygirl and I took a trek to Summerville, leaving last Saturday. Relevant thread here.

Our plan was to rip up the carpet, paint and clean up a bit, go shopping for new appliances on Wed, then do some sight seeing.

Yeah, not so much.

Our realtor warned us the house was buggy. That was an understatement. I’m used to smashing the occassional cockroach, but this was an infestation the likes of which I have never seen. We set off 12 bug bombs in two days and it only put a dent in the problem.

The tenant did not own a lawnmower. A neighbor would come over every two or three months to mow. One time there was so much trash in her yard it messed up his riding lawnmower to the tune of $400, which she did not offer to pay for.

The gate to the chain link fence is gone. The screen door is gone. Windows are smashed or cracked, and screens are missing. The outside dryer vent is gone, and the dryer hose is duct taped to the wall. I’m afraid to look behind it.

Wallpaper was painted over. The realtor (who also owns several rental properties) suggested that we pull off the paper near the seams, seal it with drywall mud, then sand and paint. I attempted to do that in one of the back bedrooms, but the paper came off like peeling a banana. So Ivylad and I pulled off all the wallpaper, only to find two fist-sized holes in the drywall, which had to be repaired.

We were making trips to Lowe’s and Home Depot twice a day. Ivylad pressure washed and used his new paint sprayer, which although is a bitch to set up and a bitch to take down, paints a room in about ten minutes. I roller painted in the kitchen and bathrooms, where there wasn’t enough room for the sprayer.

The popcorn ceiling was peeling in a couple of rooms, so we took that down. It’s a very easy job, but VERY messy.

Ivygirl worked in the yard, but it still needs work.

About two years ago we paid to get the house repiped due to leaks, which is the basis of a class action lawsuit against the builder (another story.) The company the property manager used did not run the pipes behind the drywall, so we have exposed pipes in the laundry room, the kid’s bathroom, and outside the house. The toilet was leaking in the kid’s bathroom, and we had to replace all the innards.

New carpet and vinyl will be installed on Wed, and the new stove and dishwasher are coming in Thursday. The property manager will arrange for new windows and new screens to come out of her deposit, as well as the extermination. Anything we want to charge her for we can. We have dozens of receipts to go through.

We never did get to Fort Sumter, but we did get to Sticky Fingers.

Lesson learned: If you own a rental property, make sure it’s close enough so you can drive by it on a regular basis. The tenant paid the rent on time every month, so we thought everything was fine.

2

I hope you didn’t give them your damage deposit back. That is terrible.

Some people can be complete animals when it comes to rental housing. I was living in some condos, and the people on the corner were rumored to have 9 dogs and umpteen cats. They finally got eveicted, and the owners had to gut the place. These condos were fairly new, but i remember seeing the toilet, bathtub, and dishwasher being hauled out. I can’t imagine how things like that could be destroyed! It was something like $50,000 worth of damage. The worst part of that is, the condo management made a rule that new people moving in could not have pets. That really wrecks it for responsible pet owners looking for a rental.

3

I know from experience, trust me. I do not know if it is any consolation but I live in North Carolina and would gladly help you out if I lived just a little closer. That and I have no license or a car. Being on so many different moves I would be more than willing to spend the weekend at the house doing anything and everything I could do for maybe a piece of bread or two, water, and a floor to sleep on. I am not kidding and I am very sorry to hear it! Things will work alright, though, I promise. Just put in some hard work and things will start to go your way.

4

I thought you were crying because you had to leave :slight_smile:

Sorry to hear about your troubles.

5

Oy! If some people insist on living like Neanderthals they should go back to living in caves!

6

*ivylass, I am so sorry. I wish there was something I could do, but I live in Kansas, so I guess it’s going to have to be moral support. Email if you feel like you need to talk, or call, I am in the phonebook for Topeka, Kansas.

Remember the names of the tenants and the property manager. When we do our next “Finish the ******Story” thread, we can give the villains their names! :smiley:

Let me tell you my dirty house story. Back when I was in college I was in a business fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi. Our chapter raised some money one weekend by clearing out a rental house, which was so bad the contracting remodeler wouldn’t touch it until our work was done. In the living room the carpet was rotted and the floorboards warped because of a pinhole leak in the roof. Paneling, what there was of it, was loose from the walls. Mounds of trash and unopened mail everywhere. The mail included what looked like billing statements with things printed on it like OVERDUE! or YOUR LAST WARNING! The furniture upstairs was damp and buggy, and not worth hauling downstairs, so we got the thrill of throwing it out the second floor window and watching it crash. Two inches of nasty sludge covering the cellar floor, and both toilets were stopped up and half full of human waste. Oh, and while we were there the sheriff’s department came looking for the former tenants!

I could go on and on. But there was one part that made us sad, rather than grossed out. Amongst the garbage were little baby shoes, and photographs of what looked like a cute toddler. So a little kid must have been being brought up in that filth.

7

:smack: That will teach me to preview!

8

I thought you were mad because you bought the house and then went to look at it and it was worse than you thought. I didn’t realize until the end of your post that you owned the house while all this was happening :eek: .

That really sucks.

9

0000=(
/comfort

I really wish I still lived in Virginia because I would volunteer in a heartbeat to stop in and check the place out whenever I was in the area…I used to go to Atlanta to visit relatives about every other month=(

You need to put it into the rental company’s contract that they have to visually inspect the property once a month, or alternate months if possible…so someone can see if they are total slobs.

sigh and I used to get guilty if a place I rented was not spotless when it came time to move out=( I used to work with my place’s owner and arrange to paint walls or do small modifications to places in return for some of the rent…one kind owner let me live there for free because mrAru and I renovated the place while we were there…changed nasty shag carpeting for the beautiful hardwood floor buried for years under purple shag, repaird the beautiful plaster and lath walls hidden under crappy plywood fake oak paneling, refronting the kitchen cabinets and replacing the countertop with a lovely tiled one…changing the flat roof for a peaked one.

I hope your next renter is a sweetheart!

10

“Sad Marge Simpson”?

11

I appreciate all the offers of help. Believe me, we could use it.

We’re planning on selling it, hence the working “vacation.” The realtor thinks we could list it for about double what we originally paid for it, once it’s fixed up. There are some things, like the exposed pipes, that will not be fixable. Some things, like the broken tile in the master shower, will need to be repaired by outside sources with the tenant footing the bill.

This is a tenant who doesn’t have a clear grasp on the way things work. I don’t think anything she did was intentional…she just didn’t know any better. She’d been there about four years, and a year into her tenancy, she expressed interest in buying the house. She seemed extremely disappointed to find out she could not just take over payments, that she would also have to reimburse us for our equity. Imagine, the nerve of us asking for our equity!! :eek:

I do blame the property manager for not taking a closer interest in the property. We met with them and showed them pictures, and she said she did not know the woman did not own a lawnmower.

The next rental property we own will be close by. Maybe even next door.