Hi, friends!
Have you been on the receiving end of the landlord special for home renovations or maintenance? Have you seen some real humdingers at friends or family places?
I’m working from home today and the house across the street rents for 2.5 times my mortgage despite being about the same size house, just also has a 1 car janky garage. The owner has been using a kitchen knife to cut through some cardboard for a while, and I’ve also seen her using a circular saw just balancing the plywood across her thigh. I can’t imagine how great the inside is.
Update: there was some half-assed shovelling along the foundation. Which means the basement leaks and is going to get some caulk to bandaid that for a few weeks.
I’m trying to think of anywhere I rented where the landlords did anything.
Same. I rented for a long time and any minor repairs, I just did myself. It took forever to get landlords to do anything. The only time I remember not doing my own repairs was when a central AC unit went out on a condo we rented.
We’ve been here a long time, any suspect repairs are on us. Except the electric. That we hire an electrician for. Actually, we have some door locks that are reversed and light switches where down is on and off is up, been that way for nearly 25 years. You’d think that would have been a thing we fixed by now….
I haven’t rented since I was young, and back then my standards were pretty low. I didn’t ask for much, so when I did, my landlords were generally reasonable.
But that was decades ago and with rents going the way they are going, it sounds like there’s been a corresponding rise in crap landlords. My condolences to those who are dealing with that situation.
I haven’t rented in a really long time but we were landlords for awhile. We were fortunate enough to be able to buy a view house (major fixer upper) when the economy crashed before Obama but our current house at the time was super undervalued because of all the foreclosures in the neighborhood. So we figured a way to buy the new house and have the rent from the old house pay for our renovations on our current house. We hated being landlords. We rented to this Russian couple that were running a car detailing business out of the house (against HOA rules) and were constantly breaking things and demanding we fix them the same day! We started out doing fixes right away but when some became related to the business (they broke the garage door) we started dragging them out as long as legally allowed until we could end their lease. The next tenants weren’t too bad but when they left we were done and the market had recovered enough to get rid of that house to fund our last phase of the renovations.
A couple photos from Mexico:
Banderas Bay
More beach
One of the residents
Obligatory sunset (no filters)
Biological pest control (a Harris’ hawk named Bandit)
Overall, Puerto Vallarta is very touristy but still beautiful. You have to search out quiet/solitude. Next time we go, we will head inland to explore the mountains and valleys that surround the bay area.
Great pics! Salulita & San Francisco are way less touristy but looks like you had a great time!
That’s what we had read/heard, but we had only 3 full days there, and so just decided to not do any tours or day trips. Next time I’m almost sure we will — we talked to one couple who had gone on a birding tour and logged more than 70 birds in a 7-hour day. THAT got my bird-nerd attention.
There’s probably no better resource for figuring out trips into the country than birders.
Fun photos!
I think the key thing for getting out of the tourist places is finding a good driver/guide.
When we went to Puerto Rico and later Costa Rica we were able to get great recommendations for people to hire and it was so much better than if we had to rent cars and navigate ourselves. If I ever go to some remote part of a place like Italy or Japan, I think that’s what I’d do too.
Beautiful! Thank you for sharing.
That’s some pretty neat photos.
who me? nah!
i just jerry rig plumbing for the fun of it and think bubble wrap makes a fantabulous decoration for my back door
wouldnt want my landlord to actually sort shit out for me….i mean..that’d be unreasonable…..like…what does €730 a month even buy you nowadays?
like..a loaf of bread and a nana?
anyways….he doesnt know it yet but 2 months from now when the rent increase lands im taking him to court
yeah fuck you you lazy fucking c*redacted*
anyways….in celebration of the triumphant return of my music list
i has a fun little nugget for the hockey fans
you know that song you all sing along too?
yeah…its from an ancient video game
nerds!
I like how there’s a microwave in the first one, which Nat from Nat’s What I Reckon seems to hate with the fire from a thousand suns.
i agree with nat
nuking food is a crime
that said im fascinated by the nukeable burgers on a bun they sell
like what the fuck are they made of?
(i mean…going by the taste i’d say cardboard…….but i think that blackens in the nukeybox…so is not that)
@Farscythe, Had never seen the Zombie Nation video before, despite having heard the song plenty of times. I hope Cindy and Mindy got into real estate eventually.
Prescient post, Brighter!😉😆😂💖
I had a MASSIVE realization yesterday, as to why it is, that I’ve basically collapsed & just entirely CRASHED as a human being this past month, and it’s in large part because of my living situation–and the fact that I now HAVE landlords and *especially* a Property Maintenance Manager, who are so *actively* trying to get shit done, that I no longer need to carry the mental load I’ve been hauling for the last four damn years!🫠
I’ve been wondering WHY I’m soooooo exhausted and feel like I have mush-brain once I et home in the evenings, and had basically hit the absolute WALL, as far as unpacking goes…
And then, yesterday, after I woke up and dragged myself to work (an hour and a half late🙃), after being woken up by a pulled fire alarm at 1:30am, I realized…
For the first time in at least a year–although I WAS an hour and a half late?
I was *at work*, able to focus, annnnnd not dealing with the adrenaline dumps I’ve had, for the last 3 years, whenever a crisis happened…
Because *I* no longer NEED to carry the mental load of safely evacuating three people.
Every time the fire alarm tripped in the old building? Boy-roommate would have a mini panic attack, and would “need” to either go smoke a bowl of weed, *or* “need” to go outside and smoke a cigarette, before he came back in to start figuring out if we needed to get our third roommate (his fiancee, who used a motorized wheelchair) out.
I was left with the rest… figuring out if the emergency was ACTUALLY an emergency, making sure everything was out of the way so she could get out, packing up their cat, etc…
Now? I just have to wake up, grab Dad’s ashes & Lily’s, some clothes, and go.
If I don’t wash my dishes for a WEEK, because I’m so wiped after eating supper, I put my food away & just sleep?
I have 3/4ths of a sink full, at the end of that week.
Before?
That was a DAY’S worth of dishes–and MOST of the time we lived together, *I* did the majority of dishes.
I finally realized–once I realized that with *his* extensive skill-set, out Property Maintenance manager HAS to have grown up in a situation *somehow* parallel to mine–with either military, fire department, law enforcement, or medical first responders in is family–that the reason *I* am now crashing sooooooo damn hard?
Is because–for the first time in four YEARS (even *without* a dog, AND even though we have homeless folks apparently sneaking into our building and pulling the damn fire alarms when they’re caught😆😂🤣)–
I fiiiiiinally feel SAFE ENOUGH to actually let my guard down, and honestly RELAX, in this space💖💗💝
I can TRUST that Maintenance is *trying* to keep the place safe & secure.
I’ve MET the overnight security guard twice (the first alarm-pull was Saturday, Maintenance fixed the front door mid-week last week, so it can no longer be pried open).
I no longer feel like I have to be responsible for the safety of *three* of us, plus their cat–I can just be responsible for *myself*, and THAT is why I’ve crashed so damn hard this past half-month!
And ironically? As soon as I realized *why* I’ve been sooooo wiped, I actually HAD the mental energy to accomplish *some* things yesterday.
Not much inside my place, but a BUNCH, in regards to things I’d had to get done elsewhere, but hadn’t had the bandwidth.
And it turned out that my hunch about the Maintenance Manager was 100% right😉😆🤣
Someone ELSE asked him while I was waiting for the other manager where he’d learned how to do so much (he was talking about setting the posts for a chain-link fence, rather than hiring it out), and he said, “When you grow up poor and you want things, you figure it out”
I cracked up and said, “I *thought* you had to have that sort of background, or that you had military or first-responders of some sort in your background!”
And he looked at me, with a shocked look on his face, and said, “I guess I DO–I grew up poor in the south, and my Dad & Grandpa both served”
He’s a GREAT dude, somewhere Gen-Xish, and it’s just INCREDIBLY comforting to know that he’s been in charge of hiring a team of Maintenance folks who may not *look* like the traditional “Apartment Maintenance” team (more tattoos and a bit rougher around the edges, than at fancier buildings😉), but who DO have some actual SKILLS at fixing things, rather than just making some cosmetic shifts😁💖💝
That’s really great to hear. Maintenance can make such a difference in the rental arena.
It’s WILD how much of a difference it makes–apparently even subconsciously!😉😆🫠
The relief of *knowing* I’ve GOT some active backup watching out for things, and that there IS going to be a response, is an enormous relief, and I hadn’t even *realized* I was apparently still carrying that burden🥴😆😉
@Miluly, this: “I fiiiiiinally feel SAFE ENOUGH to actually let my guard down, and honestly RELAX, in this space💖💗💝”
I am so very happy for you!
@Elliecoo, the RELIEF I felt,once I fiiiiinally realized *this* is why I’ve been so damn EXHAUSTED that I’ve been crashing & falling asleep at 9-10pm most nights, and SLEEPING through plenty of those nights, until 6:30 am–and STILL being tired when I wake up!😆😂🤣
I KNEW I was doing lots of emotional labor & household atuff like diahes, but daaaaayum, I hadn’t realized–until I HAVEN’T had the adrenaline dump& crash, either time the fire alarms went off this weekend–just NORMAL tiredness from being woken up for an hour+ in the middle of the night, that my *previous* dumps were from that worry about the roommates, and needing to make plans on *top* of the contingencies, if Boy-roommate fell apart (yet again!) in the middle of a crisis.
I never really THOUGHT about how growing up in a small-town culture, where *everyone* pitched in & has *some* roll they can fill in calamities & catastrophes fored how I handle crises, AND how much stress it’s been, KNOWING that I potentially didn’t have *any* back up when stuff went wrong has apparently been DRAGGING on me, at levels I hadn’t consciously noticed