No Shows really irritate me

Today I lined up several appointments to see my upstairs apartment. There is so much to tell about this apartment but for now I just want to vent a bit because I'm tired from working on that apartment all day. Anyway, the first person shows up a half-hour early, which wasn't so bad but I wasn't ready for them. The other two decide to just not show up at all! What is it with people? A little common courtesy perhaps?

So then I get two other calls from people who have seen my ad and they want to come over and see the place. Sure, come on over. No show! What the bleep?

Seems like a common pattern. Two weeks ago I had set up an appointment with this woman and made a special trip over there just for that appointment. 10 minutes past when she is supposed to be there still no sign, so I call. She then tells me she has decided that she doesn't want to be on the second floor. Ok, but could you have called and told me this? Argh!

The interesting visit of the day came when this guy calls and in broken English says he wants to come over and see the apartment. No problem, come on over. 20 minutes later he shows up with 7 people in tow and they proceed to fan out through the apartment (it's a big place). With the exception of his initial hello he doesn't say another word to me. But they are all speaking very excitedly to each other in Spanish. Finally they reconvene in the living room and start shuttling out the door, with still not a word to me. The initial man thanks me, then leaves too.

While all this is happening I was doing work on the bathroom. I decided that I was going to take some leftover laminate flooring and re-do the floor in the bathroom. I've heard mixed results about using this in bathrooms, but I had the extra so I went for it. Lots of caulk all around the edges. The worst of it really was cutting around the toilet (I went this route instead of mounting the toilet over the flooring, which I heard can be problematic).

Hi There

Hello and welcome to the first post on my blog. As the title implies I am in fact a landlord and I have also pretty much had it by this point. I've had many trials and tribulations over the past couple of years and figured I should start a blog to write about them. My hope is that other weary souls may find this and either learn from my experiences or at least know they are not alone. If nothing else writing this blog may make me feel a bit better.

So a little background. For a long time I had wanted to get into an investment property, but I either didn't have the cash or couldn't convince my wife that it was a good idea. Finally I was able to have both and so in 2004 I started looking around for my first property. I did my homework first, understanding the costs associated and the importance of positive cashflow. The market was still a bit crazy then and the numbers just wouldn't work out on a lot of properties.

But one day I came across an ad for a property being sold by owner. It was a two family that was currently rented, and even at the price he was asking I'd be well on the positive side of things. When we went to look at the place there were 6 other people there looking, and even though there were some obvious things that needed updating it was clear the place was going to go quickly. So we made an offer on the spot, which turned out to be a good strategic move. After a little back and forth the owner accepted the offer and we became investment property owners.

A lot has happened since then. Some decent times, and some incredibly bad times. Especially recently. Unlike some blogs I'm going to mix my posts with current happenings as well as anecdotes from the past. I'll try to make it obvious which are which.