My Thoughts

My Thoughts
typewriter186

Insider enjoys reading the weekly Classifieds pages, which are always home to some interesting items. For instance, a couple weeks back, the old guy bought an antique cash register from a lady in Berlin. Insider collects antiques and this item has a lot of history to it. Another interesting part of these weekly pages is the rental section and these days there seem to be many.

When Insider was younger and not so smart and experienced, he used to own some apartments in the area. Back then housing was cheap to buy and the old guy would rent a hand full of units to make a little money on the side. As anybody who has ever rented property to anyone is well aware, that means he had a hand full of headaches because renters suck for the most part. Some people are honorable and care about right and wrong, but others are despicable human beings and live like the messiest and inconsiderate of animals. Insider’s theory is it all comes back to entitlement and the young-timers he was renting to epitomized it. Every second week of the month Insider would have to pick up his rotary phone and dial up his tenants looking for the rent. It didn’t matter to them that they signed a legal document promising to pay a certain amount of money by a certain day of the month. They didn’t care. It never failed that Insider would have to change the locks on the tenants, hold their personal stuff as ransom and things would get ugly.

As if getting paid was not bad enough, the bigger problem (migraine) is the damage these miscreants caused to the units. Insider remembers the problem was so bad he had to get his handyman to go over often and Spackle and paint walls, replace toilets and windows, put down new carpet from bizarre stains and repair holes in the wall by the bed (Insider does not want to know how that happened). Of course, with renting, a security deposit is collected, but it’s never enough to offset the damages these losers caused. In many cases, the old guy never collected the money he was owed. Sure, he went the legal route and tried to collect, but that was often a lost cause if they did not hold steady employment, which would allow Insider to seek wages after spending much of his money on attorneys.

After a few years of dealing with these issues, the old guy simply sold the units for a small profit and counted his blessings that he did. That’s why Insider always wonders how all these people listing rentals in the Classifieds are doing it. The old guy figures they are either smarter than him, getting lucky with good tenants or simply spending a lot of money to fix up their places after the destructive types are long gone. It could be a combination of all three.