What to expect from the worse renter in the world and how to deal with it

This article will be divided up into 3 posts.

What landlords and renters think of each other

Renting out a property implies at least 2 protagonists: the landlord and the renter. Another important actor can be the management company, I’ll write another post about it.

Usually landlords are suspicious of renters and conversely. Renters expect landlords to be greedy, to provide not in such good shape homes (because what do they care, they don’t live in it), to increase the rent any time they have the opportunity to do so, to avoid repairing as much as they can to save money, to impose rules on how and when the renter can leave the flat, to blame the renter with any little damage in order to keep as much as possible of the safety deposit, etc.

On the other hand, landlords expect renters not to be able to pay the rent, to give back the property in bad shape (because, what do they care, it’s not their property), to try to negotiate the lowest rent price possible, to expect the landlords to pay for any repairs, to leave the flat on short notice, to refuse to be liable for damages and expect that they get back their entire safety deposit, etc.

This is why there are laws, rental contracts, inventories and warranty agreements to govern the relationship between landlords and renters. And yet, despite all those protections, problems can arise.

Fred and I have always been renters, we own 2 small properties that we rent out but we don’t have our own home yet. In the pool of landlords we met, there were some good ones and there were some that fit the above description. Because we are in the shoes of both the renter and the landlord, we knew we wanted to be good landlords, provide homey flats furnished with anything a student could need (we originally focused on students because our studios are located close to a university). We did our best effort to fix the studios, buy new nice furniture, provide fully-equipped little kitchens, towels, sheets, TVs, DVD players, etc. It was not cheap but we wanted our renters to be happy because we knew how mad we were at not so good landlords.

I am naturally a suspicious person whereas Fred is naturally a positive person. I was very afraid that the worst could happen and, actually, the worst almost happened with our very first renter! Can you believe this? If it weren’t for our second flat the renter of which is really nice and seems really serious, I would have lost faith in the whole renting-out-properties project altogether!