The tenant who fixed my house for nine years left the list on the counter

The pencil is what gets me. He wasn't building a case against you, he was keeping his own records because that's what he'd always done.

I had a guy in a four unit who repainted his own kitchen twice in six years and told me about it after the second one, casually, like it was weather. When he left I found he'd also replaced the closet doors with better ones. I never adjusted his rent either. Same reason as you probably, the account was boring and boring is what I wanted.

Is it normal for a tenant to just do repairs themselves and not tell the landlord? I've been reading leases all month and most of them say the tenant has to report and not fix. Was he technically breaking the lease the whole time or is that a thing everyone just lets slide?

juniper, most leases say that, and most tenants who fix a flapper aren't thinking about the lease. There's a difference between a flapper and someone rewiring an outlet, and thicket's guy seems to have known where that line was.

thicket, nine years at 1,150 while the market moved to 1,475 is roughly 3,900 a year you left on the table at the end. I'd still have made the same call. A tenant who caulks his own tub three times is not a tenant you go poking at in March.

We see the pad version of this maybe twice a year on the management side. The one that worries me isn't the flapper, it's the guy who gets on a ladder for the gutter. If he'd come off that ladder the conversation with your insurance carrier would have been a lot less warm than the one in the driveway.

Doesn't make him a bad tenant. It makes him the kind of tenant I'd want an actual conversation with about what to call in.

None of this shows up anywhere in a rent roll. Nine years of stable occupancy and low maintenance spend on the P&L, and the reason is one guy's habits, which walk out the door with him. That's a weirdly fragile thing to be underwriting on.

sable, that's most small residential portfolios honestly. The maintenance history you're shown is a history of who lived there, not of the building.

Two pages front and back in pencil. I'd have framed it.

Out where I'm looking this is half the tenant pool. Guys who've owned before, lost the house or sold it, know how a hot water heater works and would rather do it than wait two days for someone with a van.

The flip side is the ones who think they know and don't. Had a seller tell me about a tenant who "fixed" a leaking supply line with a bike inner tube and a hose clamp and it held for four years, which is the part I can't stop thinking about.

hollow, the inner tube one is real, I've cut two of those out. Both times the owner had no idea and both times the tenant was proud of it.

thicket, the 6,400 turn is the honest number in your post. That's nine years of small deferrals landing at once because nobody was walking the house. Not a criticism, the guy earned you the right not to walk it, and then the bill came at the end anyway.

I'd go read your lease again. Most residential forms I've seen have a clause making the tenant responsible for damage from unauthorized repairs, and a separate one about alterations. Yours may also have a habitability provision that a landlord can't sign away, and how far that goes depends on your state, so an attorney there is the person to ask.

None of which matters here. It matters the day one of these guys puts a wax ring in wrong and the subfloor rots for two years.

This is the version of the business I actually want. One house, one guy, nine years, four phone calls. The 6,400 at the end doesn't scare me at all compared to the alternative.

verity, that's where I keep landing too, though I've been trying to work out how you'd ever know in advance you were getting that tenant. thicket, did anything in the screening nine years ago tell you? Or was he just an ordinary application that turned out to be that guy.

The coffee can is the part that will stay with me. He'd been carrying that debt in his head for four years over a water heater that was never his.

The customers who keep receipts in a rubber band are a specific generation and they're aging out, and after five years of running a service business I've watched it happen. Enjoy them.

Running your numbers as you gave them. Nine years, call the gap an average of 200 a month over the back half, that's somewhere around 12k of foregone rent, plus his 1,900 of parts you'd otherwise have paid. Against that you had no vacancy, no turn costs, no leasing fee for nine years. At a 1,150 rent, one 45 day vacancy and a light turn is maybe 3,500 all in, and you'd have had two or three of those.

So it's closer to even than the 1,475 comp makes it look. It's still negative, but the size of the miss depends entirely on how you value never once thinking about that address.

sextant, that's the calculation, and I'd add the thing you can't line item, which is that the guy's habits kept small problems from compounding for most of that stretch. The tub is the counterexample. He caulked it three times because he didn't want to bother anyone and by the time thicket saw it the answer was a subfloor.

I'd want that legal pad in the file for the next house I buy. Ask the seller if the outgoing tenant left anything. Most say no. Once in a while somebody hands you nine years of history in pencil.