What I talk about when I talk about renting

I’m back in my house. I’ve been here since the first weekend in June. It feels great, but it’s also been incredibly busy. When I day-dreamed about moving back into my place, I pictured the tenants moving out, me taking a quick couple hours to spot-clean here and there, and voila, smooth transition and I’m settled back in. That’s obviously a crazy person’s daydream, and not at all what actually happened.

The story begins when my friend and I arrived to pick up the keys from the tenants. I pulled up to a front lawn covered with furniture and household goods, and a teenager trying to bash apart a mattress with a baseball bat. It was so comically ridiculous that I just started laughing. At least everything was cleared out of the house, and the tenants were finishing cleaning. And by “finishing cleaning”, I mean leaving standing water all over the living room floor, and wiping down other surfaces with a cleanser that appeared to be mud-based. Luckily we spotted the standing water in time for it to be mopped back to a reasonable level, and we pulled the plug on cleaning once they’d overstayed the move-out time by an hour or so. I seriously think that these people didn’t ever clean for the several years they lived here, and tried to cram it all in during the last hour of their tenancy. Don’t try this, renters of the world. Even if you have a relatively clean lifestyle, you can’t clean that much time away that quickly. Needless to say, I’ve re-cleaned everything. The kitchen was bad enough that I hired pros, and it took a team of three people several hours to bring it back to something I felt comfortable eating out of.

Here’s a thorough accounting of what a house looks like after almost 4 years as a rental. TL;DR: There’s dirt. Everywhere.

https://youtu.be/BP3U7kj6Woo

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Pod delivery was quick and easy, and I have nothing but good things to say about the people at ABF U-Pack. The morning after we collected the keys, several of my friends came to help me unload my pod. I cleaned the floor in my upstairs living room, and we piled everything there as a holding zone until I could gradually clean and unpack more thoroughly. I still don’t have much upper-body strength after my mastectomy, so I stood around feeling awkward while people did manual labor on my behalf. Luckily, many hands make light work, and the pod was unpacked in less than an hour. We celebrated with pizza and beer, which turned into an all-day adventure that continued to the Poudre River Fest and then out for sushi dinner. Sidenote: I just realized how many times I’ve used the word “luckily” so far in this post. I thought about changing some, but decided to leave them, because I mean it. I’m very lucky to own a house and to have great friends.

In case you were wondering, here’s how the pod forklift loads itself back onto the trunk. Neat!

Since taking things back over a couple weeks ago I’ve been working on cleaning, painting, and other home improvement projects in every spare moment I have. I’ve spent an insane amount of money, and am on familiar terms with the staff at Home Depot. I’ve done fun things like replace toilet seats and bathtub drains and doorbells. I’ve also learned that “guaranteed one-coat” paint is a crock of shit and you will think “oh, the exorbitant price is worth it because this will cut down on the awful tedium of painting” and you will be wrong and an idiot. But I’ll save all that for future posts.

If I had the process to do over again, or I ever decided/needed to rent my house out again, I’d do some things differently.

Be much more diligent about move-in/move-out logistics. My first property management group was not as on-the-ball as I’d have liked, and they never did any kind of walkthrough or inspection when either my first or second set of tenants moved in. That makes it very difficult for me when it comes time to assess damages caused by the latest tenants (in a legal proof-requiring sense, anyway). Luckily, the friend who’s been helping me out with the house since I parted ways with that company has been great, and we’ve done the best we can with the situation at hand. Even more luckily, while doing the move-out walkthrough before I moved back in, the tenants admitted to most of the existing damage, which is good to have on record in case anything goes into legal territory (something I don’t want to happen, but I’m planning for worst-case scenarios).
No pets. I hate this, because I have pets and know how tough it can be to find good pet-friendly housing. Unfortunately, even with a pet deposit, some people’s pets do more harm than good. In my case, dogs destroyed every window screen they could reach, chewed/clawed a bunch of window and door frames into oblivion, scratched up several wall corners and doors, and left dingy smears of dirt on the walls. And there’s a general kennel-esque smell about the place. My backyard is also a desolate wasteland now, though a total failure of lawn maintenance by the tenants is partially to blame for that one. According to one of my neighbors, the dog would ram the fence trying to get through into their yard. According to another neighbor, there was not one but four dogs living here, all of whom barked non-stop anytime they were outside, which was most/all of the time. I love all pets, but I hate bad pet owners.
Be much more explicit about smoking rules in the lease. My lease specifically states that no smoking of any kind is allowed anywhere in the house, including the garage. Yet, when I moved in, the garage REEKED, and the tenants either also smoked in the rest of the house, or the smell from the garage was strong enough to travel everywhere else. I’ve washed every surface I can, placed charcoal odor absorbers around the house and dishes of vinegar in the garage, re-painted several rooms (because I wanted to change the color, or they needed a new coat to cover up patched/spackled holes) and I think it’s getting better… or I’m just getting used to it. Luckily there’s no carpet in the house, or the smell would probably have been impossible to remove. In the future, I’d create a separate addendum to the lease – a page that specifically states that no smoking is allowed, and if evidence of smoking is found, the tenants have to pay for professional cleaning/painting/whatever. I’m flexible and understanding on most things, but this is a dealbreaker that will make me hulk out on you. Smoking is disgusting and leaves behind a disgusting mess. Walls can continue to sweat out nicotine for years, even if you clean and paint. Even though no smoking is already part of the lease, it obviously needs to be more prominent so people know I’m not kidding around.
Leave the neighbors with contact info. When I moved out, I considered leaving my property manager’s contact info with my neighbors. But in the end I decided not to because a) I was being optimistic and hoped it wouldn’t be needed b) there are already processes in place to report code violations/nuisances/etc to the city, and c) I was worried that if the neighbors had direct access, they’d be calling about every little thing under the sun. Turns out, my worst-case-scenario thinking was pointed in the wrong direction, and I should have thought about the tenants, not the neighbors, being the annoying ones. Turns out my tenants were fairly thoroughly disliked around the hood, and I feel really bad that neither I nor my property manager knew about it. I suppose the blame there is split: I could have left contact info to deal with things directly, but my neighbors could also have used official channels to complain if things were really as bad as they say. On the good side, the fact that I’ve taken over means I’m now everyone’s favorite neighbor. People kept coming over to say hi the entire time I was moving in, and I now have a fridge full of beer.

I realize this probably all sounds like an angry rant, but I’m 99% happy/excited and only 1% stressed/angry. In a way, it’s been nice to have an excuse to do a lot of home improvement projects. I’m poor, so if things had been in perfect shape when I moved back in, I wouldn’t have been able to justify spending money on a lot of the things I’ve been working on. So thanks for that, tenants. And more posts about specific house projects coming along soon!