Landlord Shmandlord

Today’s xkcd:

You’re living in a nice apartment, but you have really noisy neighbors.  You have been trying to deal with it, but you’re at the point where you feel you cannot put up with it any longer. What do you do?

I recently spoke about this with Rob Sachs at NPR, and I thought it would help to elaborate.

Step 0: Take Notes

Keep a detailed record of every incident and communication related to the noisy neighbors.  Record what happened, when it happened, who was involved, who else saw/heard/etc.  In general, this is a good rule of thumb whenever you’re having trouble with another party, whether it’s a tenant, landlord, noisy neighbor, or somebody else.  It will allow you to remember the details and help you refute inaccurate claims if things get nasty.

Step 1: Talk to Your Neighbors

Your first step should be to talk with your neighbors.  It is important to let them know that you are bothered by their noise.  They may not realize that they are being loud, and they cannot do anything unless they know about the problem.

You should approach them in a calm and friendly way while the noise is going on.  Do not be confrontational, but be clear in describing how the noise is affecting you.  You won’t be perceived as being nasty or unfriendly as long as you are nice, calm, and neighborly.

Assume  that they are reasonable people and that they are not aware they are being loud.

Step 2: Talk with Your Landlord

Do not approach your landlord until you have tried talking to the neighbors at least two times.   You should only approach the landlord after the neighbors have demonstrated a complete lack of regard for you and your sanity, when there have been several incidents with no sign of stopping.

When you speak with your landlord, start of by describing that you have unsuccessfully tried to deal with the situation yourself.  List the incidents from your record, and describe the conversations that you’ve had.  Not all landlords are going to deal with the noise, but  you won’t know until you try.

Also, encourage other neighbors to contact the landlord if they are bothered too.

Now, I am a landlord (obviously) and I know that some landlords will be mad at me for giving this advice.  My reason is as follows:  while, as a landlord, I would prefer not to be bothered, I also want my tenants to be happy and to continue renting from me.  If they have a problem, and have been diligent yet unsuccessful in solving it, I want to do what I can to help them.  If I can help them fix a problem, especially if it would prevent them from moving out, then I am happy to help.

Step 3: Call the Police

That being said, the landlord may be unable or unwilling to help.  At this point, you have explored all of the options available, so the next thing to do is to call the police.  It is important that you call the police while the noise is still going on.  You will lose credibility if they show up and the only audible sound are birds chirping peacefully in the back yard.

Talk with the police offers when they arrive.  Ask them what options you have, and see what they recommend.  Laws and ordinances change depending on your location, but they should know what options you have.

Also, it is important to remember that once the police are involved you will no longer have a good relationship with your neighbors.  Bringing the police in may encourage the neighbors to increase the volume or retaliate in other ways.

Step 4: Speak with a Lawyer

Depending on the local laws and regulations, you may have civil recourse.  A judge cannot silence your neighbor, but he may be able to impose fines which you will receive.  Again, this varies widely by town, so a local lawyer could give the most specific advice.

If you’re ambitious and confident, you can explore the law yourself and potentially take the noisy neighbors to small claims court pro se.

What not to do!

There are several things that you should not do throughout this process, because they will be counterproductive to your goal.

• DO NOT fight fire with fire.  Do not start blasting loud music to retaliate.  This will only encourage them and mutually assured destruction will ensue.
• DO NOT be nasty to the neighbors at any point.  Always try to be friendly, even when you’re explaining how they’re ruining your life.
• DO NOT call the police or the landlord unless they would agree that the noise is excessively loud.  If you are complaining about your neighbors breathing, then you are going to lose all sympathy.
• DO NOT permanently change your apartment without your landlord’s written approval.  This includes new walls,  permanent soundproofing, or anything which is permanent or in violation of your lease.

What else can you do?

There are a few other options of things you can do if the noise doesn’t stop

• Rearrange the furniture in your apartment, sometimes this can help damper the noise.
• Be understanding, if the noise is a new infant, then try to understand that parents probably have it worse than you.  At some point, you may have your own child who will keep the neighbors up at night.
• Move = (

[image courtesy of ms4jah]

Last week, your Shmandlord was interviewed by NPR’s Rob Sachs for the NPR podcast, What Would Rob Do?  The topic of the interview was what to do about noisy neighbors: when to talk to them in person, when to call in the landlord, and when to call in the police. Check out the interview here.

Two of my tenants are moving out at the end of this month, so last week I started advertising in the our local circulation, which I talked about here. So as the calls started coming in and I was doing my initial screen, I realized that I had spoke with this one woman multiple times before. It seems like each time I try to rent an apartment she calls.

She doesn’t sound like a real estate agent or someone in the industry, trying to get dirt on new rental listings. She didn’t ask many questions about the property at all. I get the impression that she is genuinely looking to rent, and I suppose always is.

Anyway, she’s going to drive by the place and visually assesses whether or not she is interested, and if so call me back. I’ll let you know if she does.

I hadn’t thought of this technique, but maybe I could use it if ever presented with a similar situation.

A New York landlord hired a marching band to drown out the sound of his tenants protesting asbestos contamination.

Many tenants at the midtown building, owned by Kent Swig of Swig Equities, have been driven out to make room for the construction of luxury condos at the site, the New York Post reported Monday.

The tenants remaining also have complained they have been subjected to airborne asbestos by bad renovation work.

“It’s a question of health and safety … . We have four independent tests that show asbestos,” said resident Alan Kroll, who was among about two dozen protesters outside the building Sunday.

Swig decided to drown out the protesters by hiring the Steppers Marching Band, although the move mostly just drew a curious crowd.

The Department of Environmental Protection has ordered construction halted until the asbestos is cleaned up.

Thanks mshades for the image.

Depending on what news sites you read, you may be familiar with justin.tv (justin.tv blog). Since March 19th, 2007, Justin has been wearing a camera attached to his hat 24/7, and streaming the video and accompanying audio over the internet for everybody to watch. All of this has been run out of a single two bedroom apartment in San Francisco.

Many things have happened since the camera was first turned on. A viewer prank called the police and reported a stabbing in the apartment. Shortly afterwards, the police entered the apartment with guns drawn, amusing viewers around the world who were watching it live. The next day, somebody reported a fire and six firetrucks showed up, though to the viewers’ dismay it was not aired live (techcrunch).

Other problems are occurring too. Other tenants are complaining about the traffic at all hours of the night. Tenants have also complained that they were getting filmed in common areas without their permission (SF Chronicle).

All of this has obviously upset the landlords, Trinity Management Services, who operates over 50 apartment complexes in San Francisco. After searching the apartment a few times looking for lease violations, they eventually filed for eviction against justin.tv. Not only that, but they have stopped renting other apartments to applicants for simply knowing Justin.

As a landlord, I can completely understand why Trinity would want to get rid of these guys. It seems like the case should be pretty straightforward, if they’re violating the lease, causing the other tenants to complain, and disturbing the peace: kick them out.

However, then the situation got sticky for Trinity.

With all the publicity that the justin.tv team commands, websites sprung up to try to stop the eviction. Sites like Don’t Evict Justin were put up in an attempt to bring down the management company, using all tactics possible, including digging up dirt and court documents. Worse yet, it appears that a lot of Trinity’s business comes from young entrepreneurs/professionals, which means that by fighting justin.tv they may end up alienate a significant part of their tenant base.

I find it somewhat odd that these young entrepreneurs do not empathize more with their landlords and the other tenants. They are callously disrupting the lives of the other tenants as well as impacting the business of Trinity. It is sad to see that they’re taking the all-too-common “Landlords are Evil, Screw ‘Em” stance and ignoring everybody else.

My question for the Shmandlord readers is, what should Trinity do? How could a landlord protect themselves against this (although obviously the probability that it would happen to any given landlord is virtually zero)?

As you already know, I am having trouble with another set of tenants [read].

When they started receiving their checks from worker’s comp, it turns out the amount was less than they initially told me. Apparently, they’re only able to pay 60% of their rent each month. Obviously this is unacceptable, so I filed for eviction and the hearing will be on Friday February 2nd.

The key points in the situation are:

• They were behind on rent last spring. I filed for eviction, but ended up dropping the case before our court date because they started sending me checks every week. Within a few weeks they were caught up.
• I believe they have another source of income but are not telling me about it — they have three cell-phone lines and the two parents both smoke cigarettes.
• They need to start paying their rent or they will leave. Hopefully this eviction will get them back in shape

Ugh.

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Important note: I did not properly screen the first few tenants that I personally found. Since then I’ve corrected my ways. In total I rented three units to tenants that were not properly screened, of which these are the only ones that are still around. I will elaborate more in a future post.

Well, I have some very exciting news:

I’ve located my ex-tenants. They’re living at a hotel in the neighboring town. I promptly filed the small claims suit today. It turns out that in this town there are two options for serving the papers. First, the court documents can be sent through certified mail, but this requires that the recipients sign the return receipt. I know from experience that they never sign for any of their mail, so this method is out of the question. The second method is to have the constable do it. The court clerk said that the constable is very good at finding and serving people, so I have my fingers crossed.

Unfortunately there is no way that I or another third party can serve the papers. Now I just have to wait to hear what happens. I am confident that even if they were to move again, I’ll be able to track them down. They owe me a lot of money and I feel obligated to make them pay.

I am personally aware that they’ve done this to several landlords before me. Do people not follow through (I understand it is a hassle, but if nobody tracked them down then why would all tenants not do this?) If anybody has evicted tenants before, did you end up getting paid? Did you have to file a civil suit?

I’ll keep you up to date.

There is a situation unfolding that has me very nervous.

The tenants who helped with the renovations are hitting some hard times. The father had an incident in early 2006 where he fell while working as a contractor, seriously hurting his wrist. He had a cast for a while and then seemed fine when it was removed, but apparently over the past few months it has become very painful. To make a long story short, he just had surgery a few weeks ago, and will be in a cast for the next four months. This presents the problem of how will they pay rent.

To flesh out the history, they own their own power-washing company. Power washing, I’ve learned, is a very seasonal business. Over the winter, they both do odd jobs to pay the bills. When the incident first occurred in January, he was unable to get another contract position and it was too cold to power wash. They stopped paying rent. I filed for eviction, and a week before our court date they explained to me that they were really in financial trouble. I let them slide on the rent for several weeks until power washing season. I was concerned that I would not collect, but they really were down on their luck and had no other options (if I evicted them, it would be unlikely they’d find another place to rent). Either way, I believed that they would pay me back and they did. Once the summer came they started giving me a check after every job, and were able to catch up within a few hundred dollars by September/October. They paid off the next two months by helping with the renovations (on which they did an amazing job).

This brings us to mid-November, whose rent they’ve only paid half. Again, the surgery was in the last week of November. Since then, they’ve been waiting for their worker’s comp checks to come in the mail, and of course it hasn’t. So I’ve been waiting, unsure how to proceed. As of today, they have still not received it, and I am basically at the end of my patience.

So what do I do?

Well, today I called the workers comp office to find out what’s really happening. The woman wouldn’t go into detail because I wasn’t authorized (I made it clear I was the landlord, to avoid any legal complications). But after speaking with her, it seems to have prompted my tenants to get in touch with her (they said they were trying, but for some reason couldn’t get in touch with her). Anyway, it looks like the first check is coming tomorrow to cover the past few weeks — since the surgery. From this point forward, checks will arrive every week. With the first check, they’re going to pay rent through the end of November. After that, they’re going to give me a quarter of the month’s rent each week from their checks.

I will still be a little behind, which I will collect when the wife gets her winter job (she couldn’t get it earlier because “she needed to take care of her husband”). Overall, I am cautiously trying to help them through. I certainly don’t want to get burned, and will protect myself. On the other hand, I would like to keep them as tenants (assuming they don’t get more behind. Enough is enough). They keep the place very neat, they fix things when needed, and they’re very nice.

We’ll see…

Finally, my apartment is rented. The lease is signed, and the security deposit and first month’s rent were paid. I performed a background and credit check, and also verified that he has had a stable job for several years. There was a surge of interested the past week, so I had a few applicants.

I want to reiterate: make sure that you call a perspective tenant about an hour before you’re supposed to show the apartment. I’ve found that usually when I forget to do this, they forget to show.

There was only one noshow this time around, who when I called 15 minutes after she was supposed to arrive, she responded: “Oh, I was not able to borrow a car. Can you show it to me this weekend?” She surprisingly was actually looking for an answer.