Keeping up with the Tenants

My name’s Freya and I’m a landlord.

Most people think landlords are selfish, greedy, unprincipled immoral demons out to make our tenants’ lives a misery. Just tune in to any talk show about property and all you’ll get are horror stories from tenants complaining how terrible their landlord is and how hard it is to buy a property. No one ever gets the landlords’ point of view across. We’re treated like a distant faceless thing that doesn’t care.

Well do you know what?

I care. I cared about my property, and most of all I cared about the tenants living in it. Ask any of my friends and they’ll tell you what a nice person I am. “Too nice!” as my friend Alice puts it. She thinks I let people walk all over me too often to avoid upsetting anyone.

I remember being made to feel guilty that I was able to afford to buy to let. No one cares that I worked my arse off to be able to do that. I don’t even have a second house! I rented out the one I had so I could afford to rent a place closer into the city. It was purely economical. It meant I didn’t have to spend a fortune on travelling to and from work. I’m sensible you see. No one values that anymore. We blame everyone else for our problems.

When Gary and Laura applied to be tenants, they were the nicest couple I had ever met in my life. Just goes to show you can’t judge people on first appearances.

The first couple of months were fine. Then the honeymoon period was over and the phone calls started.

“Washing machine’s packed in. You need to fix it!”
“It gets too cold, you need to replace the windows or we’ll report you to environmental health”
“The kitchen worktop has collapsed!”
“There’s water coming through the living room ceiling!”

No one cared that Gary had broken the washing machine himself, or that Laura climbing on the kitchen worktop had caused it to collapse. No one cared that they had left the water running in the bathroom which was why the living room ceiling leaked. No one cared that when I gave them notice to leave they took me to court saying I was a terrible landlord and had broken a dozen health and safety rules.

No one cared, except for Billy.

Billy cared that I was crying into my coffee one morning in Starbucks. Billy cared enough to offer me a Kleenex and listen to my problems. He cared enough to give me his card and arrange an appointment at his office the following morning. Turns out Billy worked for a home buyer company that specialised in buying properties fast when a landlord needed to get rid of them quickly and needed help.

Billy made me smile for the first time in 6 months when he sold my house with Gary and Laura still living in it. It was no longer my problem and all the stress and unhappiness I had felt evaporated instantly the moment he told me the house had been sold. I reinvested the equity from the sale into the home that my fiancé and I bought together last year.

Where are Gary and Laura now? I don’t really care. In a way I suppose I should thank them. My fiancé and I are getting married in June, and I’ve never been happier.