An update: how our flats are doing

One of our flats has been pretty easy to deal with so far. The community of owners didn’t plan any works so that, normal community expenses aside, we had no extra expenses to pay this year. And as far as renting out is concerned, we found a renter shortly after advertising and the rent is being paid every month with no exception.

The other flat, on the other hand, is giving me a headache! First of all, a majority of owners in the building voted in favor of many works this year : they decided to install quite a fancy lock on the main entrance door because the normal lock was broken and anybody could just get in. It’s a good thing that they tackled the problem but the downside is that it cost a lot of money. It was also decided that water meters be replaced in each and every flat of the building. Again, we had to pay. And now we found out that they are considering repainting all the common areas (walls and ceilings): based on the budget estimate provided by the painter and the number of shares we own, we’ll have to pay another 500 € – Last year works cost us around 900€, on top of normal community expenses.

As far as renting out is concerned, it’s not any better. Although we did find a renter shortly after advertising the flat last year, as you know, it turned out to be one of the bad kind, who didn’t pay the rent, left without letting us know, and whose warrantor would not give us the keys back nor pay the due rents. We were disappointed at how our management company handled the situation so we decided to change and, before we found one that we liked, we had to go through contacting several that were either not offering the basic services we needed or wouldn’t answer us. As we are not living close to our studios, we had to pay somebody to take care of cleaning and changing the locks (our new management company handled it, but we still had to pay). Now, our studio is ready and the new management company told us that they had three visits so far but none of the visitors called back. It’s been 5 months now since we last collected a rent payment for this flat and we definitely need to find a renter.

Last week I checked the websites of real estate agents in the town where our studios are located and I saw that our studio was the only one furnished. You would think that this is an advantage, especially for our target (students). I could see that the price we are asking for is not expensive at all: we are the third cheapest option and the first and only option for furnished studios. And yet, there were few visits and no successful outcome so far.

In the next post, I’ll write about the three new lessons we’ve learnt.