Tenants

House #2

After a week of having been moved in, we finally got "the" call from the tenant of House #2. I was expecting it as the move-in never goes smooth all the time. It turns out she a list of things that she noticed were broke:

1. None of the bathroom outlets were working.
2. The garbage disposal was not working.
3. There was a leak under one of the bathroom sinks.
4. Something was wrong with the dishwasher.
5. There was an issue with the light above the kitchen sink.

The list above is almost verbatim what the tenant said on her voice mail. The one thing with tenants is that they usually think small problems are BIG problems. After my wife got done talking to the tenant, she passed the phone to me.

Problem #1 - I explained that the bathroom outlets not working was probably due to a GFCI being tripped. I told her there were 2-3 in the kitchen in one in the garage. If it was tripped, there would be a solid yellow light on one (or all) of them. She went around the kitchen and garage while I was on the phone, and said none of them were tripped. She then said she thought it was a breaker in the breaker box and had turned it off earlier, but thought she had turned it back on. Turns out it was still off. Ooops! Problem solved.

Problem #2 - It turns out the disposal WAS working, but was making a "funny" noise. I told her something probably fell in it. She said she looked inside, but didn't see anything. I told her I would come over to take a look (I had to come over for the other remaining "problems" anyway). It turns out a small nail had fallen into the disposal. She claims she didn't do it, but I know I had turned the disposal on a few weeks before to disinfect it. Problem solved.

Problem #3 - This turned out to be the only legitimate "problem" in my book. It turned out the pivot nut/connection was loose and water was dripping out from it. Problem solved.

Problem #4 - The "something wrong" was that the bottom cover appeared to be gone, exposing about 2" of crud. I told her in the 10 years we lived there, I have never taken it off, so the crud was built-up food/dirt that was now exposed from the missing cover. I asked her if it was possible one of her kids had taken it off, and she said she would ask, but had doubted it. Problem solved(?)

Problem #5 - There was nothing wrong with the light, only that the link connecting the rest of the chain to the lamp was open. My FIL helped me install the light fixtures in the house several years before and said he always did this to make it easy to adjust the chain later, if need be. I told her it shouldn't be a problem as long as no one climbs a ladder and starts messing with the light itself. Problem solved.

The whole time I was there was <20 mins. When I returned home, I explained to my wife all the "fixes". She said she hopes the tenant isn't one of those people who call every week with a list of "problems" to which I agreed. Aside from the leak under the bathroom sink, all the other things weren't really issues to me.

House #1

I checked my email on Sunday, and realized that the tenant for House #1 had sent me a message the day before at noon, saying the A/C was having the same problem as before (which was it was dripping water and not cooling). I thought it strange that (1) he sent an email and didn't call, and (2) it was over a day since he sent the email and hasn't followed up. It was dinner time, and I thought since he hadn't called or written me back than it can wait until Monday morning.

So this morning my wife called him and his wife and left messages to both. I sent a response email, also, saying I got his message and would call my A/C guy to check it out, but needed to know if someone was going to be home today or tomorrow. Still nothing for a couple of hours, until I got a response to my email. He just said "thanks. my wife will be home tomorrow." Before getting the email, my wife had called the A/C guy and explained the situation to him. He said it was not unusual for it to be clogged again as it could be a secondary problem OR the tenants aren't taking care of the place (meaning, not changing the filter). When the A/C guy goes over there to fix it, I'm going to ask him to check the filter and see if it looks like the tenants aren't taking care of the place as they are supposed to.