Landlord or landlady, I worked for you and your fellow zookeepers for thirty years and I could tell you some stories. But I won’t bother. For every story I told you, you could tell me ten.
My hat’s off to you. Somebody has to provide housing in this society, and I assure you that it isn’t going to be me. I know that hard work in the field of rental housing can pay good money (don’t laugh; it’s really true!), but there’s not enough money in any honest work to make me endure what you go through.
The biggest problem a landlord has is his tenants, right? Of course! If you could just keep the tenants out of your houses, landlording would be easy.
But they go with the territory, don’t they? And when the plumbing isn’t working, the tenants call you. Never mind that they’ve been pouring grease down the sink; never mind that the handle has been jerked off the vanity drawer and flushed into the toilet to stop it up; never mind that a gob of latex and sanitary products the size of a large rabbit has the sewer line blocked, never mind that the shower curtain has been torn off the rod for six months and the floor around the tub is ruined; . . . they don’t fix it themselves, they don’t call a plumber, they call YOU!
If you did your own plumbing, you probably wouldn’t be reading this web page. Instead, you probably hire the work out to somebody you hope that you can trust. From my own experience, I suspect that trust is uppermost in your hierarchy of concerns.
Let me describe to you how other landlords used to do business with me. They’d call or text me on the phone and say, “Kevan, go find out what’s wrong and fix it and send me the bill.”
And then they dismiss it from their minds and go on about their other business.
Over time landlords discerned that I cared about their property and about saving them money as much as I would if I were a co-owner of the property.
A landlord has to cut costs to the bone if he ever expects to make a profit off the property; but more important than that is the need to have a conscientious and experienced person doing the work.
Barley Services has closed. I wish you luck.
