A Fool's Guide to Landlording

Don’t!!!  Just do not do it!!!!  Stop right now, toss this book away and slap yourself silly until you get all thoughts of being a landlord out of your head.  Believe me, this self-imposed punishment will pale in comparison to the ugly world you seem hell bent on entering.

Oh, I know, you think that you’ll make some money off of your investment, that investing in real estate is safer than the stock market, that you’ll lower your taxes, and an endless line of other justifications that make becoming a landlord seem like a sensible thing to do.  Maybe, maybe not.  If you’re lucky, financially you’ll break even.  Chances are you’ll lose money, and more importantly, your faith in human kind. 

So what makes us such experts to be writing a book and dissing your ambitions? After all, all those TV real estate gurus say anyone can do it.  Well, we did more than dip our toe into the rental game. We dove in full force and came out of it bloodied and battered.  We still have one single family home that we rent, but when our reliable tenant moves on, we will have none.

First, a little about our aspirations to help you understand how and why we did the rental thing.  We had hoped to buy several properties, hopefully gain the experience needed to move on to multi-unit complexes and leave conventional employment behind us.  My wife and I both have some skill in home repair and maintenance, have an understanding of business and taxes, and generally work well with other people. 

So, if you bought this book because you wanted to get advice from some professional real estate guru, well, you screwed up.  Take heart, though, I’ve read all of those books by these “qualified” characters.  While they give SOME good advice, I thought they tried too hard to sell their ideas. The business is not as easy as they claim, has substantial downside risk, and is not as profitable as they claim.  At least not for common “Joes” like us.  This book gives you the “man on the street” experience. 

Chapter 9:  Horror Stories

So, it began like this.  At first, they called wanting a motion sensor light for the detached garage in the back yard.  It was too dark, and they were getting scared at night.  In reality, I thought this was a reasonable request, so Sandy and I spent a day over there installing the fixture.

To get a feel for this day of work, let me mention that they had two very big dogs.  These dogs had an affinity for digging holes in the back yard (and in the house, for that matter: more later).  Also, big dogs make big piles, if you know what I mean.

So, after being in the house only 3 weeks, the backyard looked like Beirut, and smelled like a wastewater treatment plant.  No, it smelled worse than that, actually.