Bed Bugs! Holy crap

Last December I received a call from a tenant who had moved in three months earlier. They said that their son started waking up in the morning with small bites on his body, and they were told by their doctor it was probably bed bugs. And so began my long and painful journey of discovering what an incredible nuisance bed bugs can be.

This apartment had never had bed bugs before. None of my apartments had. Of course, the tenant denied that there could be any possible way they introduced these things. The problem is, that once they are in, they are your problem whether you like it or not. When I didn't act fast enough, this lovely tenant decided to call the health dept, who then called me. By the health dept's own admission, most of the time these are introduced into apartments by tenants doing dumb things like taking in used mattresses. Unfortunately, even if that is the case it still falls to you to do something about it.

I learned very quickly that it's a long and expensive process to get rid of these things. I used Terminix, because they had done a pretty good job for me in the past when another dingbat tenant attracted roaches. But the price is wayyyy higher for bed bugs. The inspection and treatment turned out to be $1,200!!! Holy crap! And it's not like they come in, treat the place and then you are rid of the bugs. Oh no - bed bugs are very good at hiding all over the place, including clothes. So you need to bag up your clothing, and put the clothes in the drier on high setting for at least a half hour. Then the mattresses have to be encased in a giant plastic bag to ensure any that may survive treatment cannot escape.

If the tenant doesn't follow through on their part, it's almost like the treatment was a waste of time. The hidden bed bugs will just emerge later, and then start reproducing at a rapid rate. Which is pretty much what happened in my case. These people ignored what they were supposed to do, yet were so very surprised when the bugs came back. Terminix came back too, several times to treat again, but each time they also said that the tenant has so much junk around that that bugs are probably camping out in places they can't spray.

I then learned what an incredible foul mouth my tenant (a woman) truly had. Over the course of the next few months she would call to bitch me out, using every variation of the F word, including some I had never heard before. Again we would send Terminix back, again she would ignore the instructions. I had enough and told her that I would release her from her lease, and in fact I wanted her out. At first she was thankful, but then when she couldn't find a new place (probably because her credit was crap) she more or less refused to get out. This of course didn't stop her from calling me and bitching me out.

She's finally out, and I took it upon myself to get educated and rid this place of bugs once and for all. I learned some important things:

1) Dry vapor steam is a really effective way of killing these things, even in crevices. A steamer like this is pretty expensive - they start around $300 and go up. But the temp of the steam is over 200 degrees, which kills the bugs and their eggs on contact. I bought one and then proceeded to steam every surface in the apartment. The upside is that dry steam is also very effective at cleaning a variety of things, such as caked on grease (side note - when this tenant moved in I bought a brand new stove. When she left, it looked as if she had never cleaned it - there was at least 1/8 inch of grease along the whole cooktop)

2) Bed bugs are attracted by carbon dioxide, which is how they find you. You can create a very inexpensive bed bug trap using an upside down dog food bowl and dry ice in a cooler. Check out this link: http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/7_on_your_side&id=7212643

3) Bed bugs can't fly - they just crawl really fast. Which means that if they can't crawl to you, they can't get to you. One easy solution is to put these cup like things on the feet of the bed frame. The bugs climb over the side, but then can't get to the frame of the bed and so get stuck in the cup. You can also foil them by putting some talcum powder on the sides of the bowl - it will be too slippery for them to get out.

4) Diatomaceous earth is an effective residual way of killing bed bugs. It may sound like an exotic chemical, but if you ever owned a pool you probably have used it before. It is a powder used in pool filters to filter out impurities. If you spread it on the ground, and a bed bug walks over it, apparently it will tear open their underside, and then they soon die. Bed bug companies have been repackaging the stuff as bed bug killer and of course selling it at a premium. But you can go down to a pool supply store and buy a big bag of it.

A couple of other tips:

1) Never, ever, buy a used mattress or boxspring, or allow a tenant to do so. Even if the seller indicates that they never had bed bugs. They could either be lying or they never even noticed they were getting bit.

2) Bed bugs can travel. If you have one apartment that has bed bugs, don't let that person go walking into your other apartments, or move their stuff to other apartments. The bugs may go with them.

The futility of reference checking

This isn't in reference to my recent new tenant, more a general comment that I wanted to write about for some time.

When a new tenant applies, you always ask for references. Seems like the right thing to do. But how many times have you called a reference and you got a bad report? Rarely I would guess is the general answer for everyone, and it is for me as well.

Lets break this down a bit. A good tenant will have no problem providing a reference, and their current landlord will probably say nice things (keeps the place clean, pays on time, etc). But a couple of different things could happen with a bad tenant:
1) The "my current landlord is a Nazi" excuse. You meet the prospective tenant, and things seem pretty good, but then you ask why they are leaving their current place. Then the horror story comes out, with stories about how bad the current landlord is and how he has kept the place substandard and it's doubtful they will get an honest referral so they beg you not to call. This is usually corroborated by a couple of other friends or maybe someone "respectable" like a minister or something. So already you know that if you do call you will probably hear bad things. So what do you do? By passing you essentially are telling these people you think they are lying. Maybe the right thing to do is pass on the situation. Maybe I should have done this more often.
2) The landlord who just wants to get the people out. Here's a case where the tenant is a monster, and essentially the current landlord has agreed not to say bad things about them as long as they will leave. Sound really unethical but believe me it happens. So you call this guy and he says they were decent people and paid on time. You wind up signing these people up, and then you discover the monsters that they are. I had evict one tenant that was like this. Only when she finally left nobody called for a reference. She probably used tactic #1 above.

So I think checking references is a somewhat problematic practice. On a couple of occasions I have called a reference and they gave me glowing reviews, and those reviews turned out to be correct. But it still makes me wonder.

The drought is over

As mentioned in my previous post, after a really long drought I was able to rent one of my apartments that had been vacant for 7 months. It would be great to think that previous rents would have been able to sustain the apartment during that time, but that kind of reality only happens during the real estate informercials. No, I've been putting out about $1k of my own money every month to cover costs. PLUS, in that time I've had to pay for advertising, which is far worse than you can imagine. The local paper charges about $135 for a two week stint for a little dinky ad. The only upside is that if you renew then it's half the price, but then if you renew after that it goes back up again.

So why did it take so long? Looking back, I think there were some lessons to take away:
1) Nobody wants to move around the Christmas holiday. The number of calls from around mid-Nov to mid-Jan was pretty much nil. Calls a month to either side of that were pretty slim. For the most part, most families will want to move in prior to school starting, so if you haven't rented by end of Aug you are probably in for a wait unless you hit people with special circumstances. I'm even thinking of structuring leases with an end date no later than July going forward.
2) Not sure of the scientific validity of this, but what I have found is that most people look for apartments either the last week of the month or the first week of the month. So if you don't advertise during this time you will probably miss out. Or if you advertise during the off weeks you will probably waste your money.
3) The neighbors buildings have a big impact on perception. The guy who owns the building next door is one of those guys who jumped on the "no money down" bandwagons and now is in deep doo-doo. The place was never very nice in the first place but he wound up having sewer trouble and his front wall had to be ripped up, and he never bothered to do much to fix it. So it really looks like crap. Most people won't say it directly, but judging from the looks on their faces as they come up to the house they are seeing that as a reflection on my house.
4) Likewise, the front entranceway is their first impression on your house. So even though they are not going to be spending much time there it could affect things. While painting/fixing things up I saved the front hallway for last, and looking back it didn't look that nice. Maybe this had an impact.
5) Never believe anything until a hefty deposit is in hand. Several months back I had a woman who was very interested and said she wanted to move forward. I thought it looked good so I didn't re-run the ad (and missed the sweet spot mentioned above). It turns out that this woman's current landlord wouldn't let her out of her current lease. Make a long story short, this never went anywhere.
6) I should have dropped the asking rent earlier. Yes, maybe I was a little stubborn.

And some puzzles:
1) Should I have used a realtor? Would it have made any difference? The argument is that even though they charge a hefty fee (one months rent) it could be made up for less vacancy time. But I'm not convinced that it would have made a difference, and in the end it might have taken just as long.

And a rant:
Why is it that people don't show up for appointments? I kid you not that probably 40% of people who set up appointments are no-shows. In the worst example, I had a guy call me up one night and ask to see the apartment the next morning. I show up, and no guy. I call him and he says, "oh yeah, I forgot". Don't bother coming.

But the story has a decent ending. One day I'm over at the apartment waiting for an appointment (who was another no-show) and I get a call from someone who is going to be in the area and wants to see it. They come in, and are immediately in love with the place. I've had this before, and then never hear from the people, so I'm not too excited. After a quick chat they tell me they want the place. They also want to move in as soon as possible, since their other lease is already expired and the landlord is just letting them find a new place. I tell them that I will need references and such, and the lady pulls out a small pile of documentation. Letters of reference, paychecks, etc etc. She's about the best prepared tenant I have ever seen. I look through this stuff and call her current landlord on the spot. Checks out. I ask when would they like to come back and do paperwork. She says can you write up the lease now. I say ok, but I'm going to need the security deposit when you sign the lease. She says ok, plus she will give first month's rent. Cash. Now. Ok then. Icing on the cake - they want a two year lease (which is fine with me because I'd rather have that stability than the option of raising the rent).

So this is one battle won in a long list of them. Next time I'll write about the roof leak from hell.

Back again

Been a very long time since I last posted. Not from lack of material, that's for sure - I've had plenty going on with the landlording front. Some of the more significant fun in the past year:

1) I had a tenant move out on me last August, and at long last I now have a new tenant
2) I have been battling the roof leak from hell and the fight is still not over
3) The owner of the house next door continues to let his house go to pot, and I'm convinced it's had an impact on my ability to rent the apartment mentioned above.
4) My longtime dream tenant is now talking about moving out. That was one of those things I wished never happened.
5) I resorted to renting the house I used to live in. Thought that was going to turn out ok but of course I was wrong

I'll cover these in separate posts.

Beware of "flat rate" contractors

Been a while since I've blogged here. Partly I guess because after a year of turmoil things finally started stabilizing, and I guess I wanted a break from active landlording for a while.

But yesterday I had an experience that I feel compelled to write about. For the second time I've had an experience with a contractor who uses a "flat rate" fee structure. For the uninitiated, this is a company that creates general groupings of repairs into one price, so 4 or 5 repairs might all cost the same amount, regardless of how long it actually takes to do the repairs.

These companies promote this as good for the customer - if it takes longer to do the job, you pay the same amount. But don't be fooled, these companies have no intention of losing money, and so if the job does go longer, then they will make the claim that the extended work included a repair that didn't fit into the first category, and so they will have to charge you separately for that too.

This is exactly what happened the first time I used such a contractor. I was having electrical problems, and the guy showed me on their price sheet that diagnosis was going to cost $x (can't remember the exact amount). Ok fine. After some searching they found the source of the problem at a junction box. Rewiring would cost $x. Ok, go ahead. When all was said and done though, three more things slipped into the price.

So yesterday I needed a plumber out because the radiator in one of the bathrooms was no longer producing heat. "Air locked" I had been told by my heating company, but this radiator didn't have a vent. So I was going to need to have someone install a vent. I contacted a company that agreed to come out for a $69 diagnosis charge, which could be applied to the repair. No mention of flat rate pricing. The guy arrived, looked at it and determined that he could install a new elbow with vent, but he would have to drain the whole system first. This was when they sprung the "flat rate" pricing on me. The flat rate for draining the system would be $388 (not sure how they arrive at these prices). BUT the flat rate for installing the elbow would be an additional $306!

$306? To install a little elbow in a very accessible location? He gave me the speech about "doing it right" (every time someone charges a ridiculous amount they use this line, even if they have no clue what "doing it right" really means). When pressed, he said installing that elbow, after the system had been drained, would take about an hour. So basically $300 an hour to do the job. He countered that if he runs into problems and it took longer I wouldn't have to pay more. In this case, even a novice plumber should be able to do this job in 2 hours. When I told him that flat rate pricing really only benefits the contractor and not the customer, his response was "why shouldn't it?"

Anyway, if a company uses this approach, my advice is to stay away.

Ding-dong the witch is dead!

Well, I didn't think it would ever happen but the troublesome tenant in my downstairs apartment has indeed left. Let me clarify - it appears she has moved out, but she has left a bunch of stuff in the apartment. This didn't stop me however from changing the locks. A couple of days have gone by and I haven't seen any signs of forced entry. I'm heading over today to start the fun process of getting the apartment ready yet again. In addition to leaving some stuff she also left a nice amount of garbage strewn all over the yard. Such a lovely person.

Maybe eviction isn't such a bad idea after all

I must admit, in a lot of ways I'm too soft on tenants. I'll let them sweet talk me into a longer deadline for their rent, and I'll believe the excuses. But this time I've let things get out of hand. I have a tenant that is now three months late on their rent. Three months?!? You're crazy you say. The first month I let them get away with it because they had to be temporarily relocated (more on this later) but even though the hotel was being paid for they claimed that they had a number of unanticipated food expenses. So I guess in return for them not complaining I gave them some leeway. The second month was an extension of the excuses from the first month. Now it's the third month and I had to say enough is enough.

I've heard a lot of horror stories about evictions. Oh, it takes months to get them out. They will trash your place out of spite. They will find some reason to sue you. God only knows what else. So I started feeling quite helpless, as the rent wasn't coming in, but eviction seemed quite daunting.

But as mentioned, I had had enough. So I did some research. In CT, it can in fact be a long process. You have to start by serving a "Notice to Quit", which is kind of the nice version of the letter to get out. You have to give the tenant at least three days (not counting the day it is served or the day they move out) to get out. If that doesn't happen, you have to then go to court to file a complaint, which is then given a new date and has to be served back to the tenant. If that still doesn't get them out then they can request a trial, and then it starts getting long and ugly.

I spoke with the tenant first and told her that this just couldn't go on any more. That didn't seem to sink in so I went ahead and had the Notice to Quit served to her. As you can imagine, she was not pleased. Lucky for me she left me a long winded voicemail where she more or less incriminated herself on a number of items. Save that for later.

But then something strange happened. She seemed to have accepted her fate and said she would be out by the end of the month. Could this be a trick? She went further by saying it would be ok to show the apartment, and she would still try to get the back rent. What have you done with my tenant? I knew she was crazy but this was not what I expected.

But I may be talking too soon. We'll see what really winds up happening in a couple of weeks. But if it does go well, I probably won't be so afraid of the eviction process in the future.