Drummer Tenant Noise

When one of my tenants was new in the apartment, I didn't realize that her sons were "musically-inclined".

Okay, some may consider drumming as music and some as noise. But apparently, her sons and their friends were into it. And these drums aren't little bongos but a whole drum set for a band.

How they managed to fit a drum set in such a tiny apartment still baffles me. The first time I heard it, I was appalled at the ruckus. At first I thought that maybe it was a passing, temporary thing. But in the next few weeks, we discovered it wasn't. We were at the apartment every weekend and every time, there were drums playing.

 

No Pets Policy

In my almost 10 years of landlording, I've only had to reject a potential tenant only once - because of pets. The applicant was actually a very amiable guy. He was a German mestizo working as a nurse. He came to the apartment riding a big bike - the Harley Davidson kind of a bike. No problem there, I thought. He could use one of the parking slots for the motorcycle which was too big to park in the walkway.

He wasn't renting with anybody else, but he had a big dog, a Labrador I think. The way he described it was it was very gentle. He could be right, but I'm sure there are some days when a dog's temper may not be pleasant. The scenario raised several of concerns in my mind:
  1. The dog will be left alone when the tenant is out working. It will need to pee and poo. Who'll take care of the mess and the stink, meanwhile?
  2. Damage to property. Some dogs scratch on doors and bite on other objects.
  3. Danger of bites to other tenants. You can never be sure. There are small kids in the apartment who run and play within the compound.

It wasn't too hard to advise him though to look somewhere else since we do have a "no pets" condition in our lease which I'm reproducing below:
"That the LESSEE shall not keep any pet (like cats, dogs, snakes and the like) without the written consent of the LESSOR;"


 

Paying for a Vacant Unit's Utilities

Maybe 5 years ago, I learned from a mistake and the hassle that went with it. I was asked by a tenant to come over to the apartment. We had a vacancy back then and has been vacant for quite a while. Upon reaching the apartment, we found the water meter of the vacant unit gone! Whoa! We later learned that the subdivision office confiscated the water meter since we've been remiss in paying for the vacancy's water bills for two months. Was the confiscation legal? I don't know. But it was certainly done to penalize our nonpayment. How did it come to this?

You see, the subdivision charges a monthly minimum amount for water - whether or not you consumed water. Yeah, bummer. The thing is, we do consume water in that vacancy, although minimally. Almost every week, we visit the apartment to water the small garden and therefore get water from the vacant unit. And we were always confident we could handle the monthly bills. Well, we didn't have problems with the amount. It's the frequency of paying that did us in. We would pay for 2 or 3 months at a time, because sometimes we'll be there on Sundays when there's no office. Honestly we didn't know the office would STILL go to that length of removing the meter even with a minimal amount. But hey, sh1t happens.

And so we had to pay for the re-installation fee to get the meter back. Lesson learned: be updated with your payments just as you expect your tenants to be updated with theirs.