The Accidental Landlord

Alright, the title is kind of misleading.

First, we are not yet landlords.  We are still in the god awful showing of the property and screening out lunatics phase.  We haven’t even gotten to the part where money exchanges hands.  We’re just basically unpaid tour guides in the museum of our lives.  And. It. Is. Awful.

As for the, “What?  How did this happen?” part of it all…  well, it was always part of the plan.  Or at least, part of the dream.  Our five year plan involved moving out of our school district before our progeny was old enough to enter kindergarten.  The real estate market being what it is in this town, nay the country, we were going to keep our house on as an investment.  Try and make some of that sweet, sweet rental income while we were at it.

But that plan was for five years from now (well, three years from now because holy crap my daughter is almost two).  Once we had added a second bathroom, painted the living room something other than purple and red (I assure you that it seemed like a good idea at the time), and figured out what we were doing with our unfinished car port… you know, and a few other things.

Instead, life does what it does, and laughed in the face of our plans with a big old HA HA HA.

Now we’re looking down the barrel of a five week deadline.

This is not to stay that we don’t want this.  Honestly, all the moaning and groaning aside, this has been the kick in the pants that got us moving.  Sure, our five year plan turned into a five week plan and we’re scrambling a little bit, but we’re getting it done.  Slowly but surely.  Yeah, we aren’t adding a second bathroom, but we finally made a decision on that car port (a coat of paint and some minor major repairs to the roof late,r and it’s a… car port… you’re welcome future tenants).

And we’re going somewhere good.  Somewhere where we will be doing good.  And no matter all the other details, that makes it all worth it.

Even being a docent in my own home.

I’m also trying to lean into it a bit.  I’m giving into the crazy, the mayhem, the insecurity of it all.

The first day of showings I scheduled them all perfectly so that I had an hour for each visitor.  That gave us a full eight hour day with eight visitors.  You know, like a noob.

I even dressed nicely, figuring that I was asking these people to trust me as much as I needed to trust them.  I wanted to present myself as someone that took things seriously.  Someone that wasn’t going to get them in here and take advantage of them.  I wore a skirt for crying out loud.

My husband took a different approach and after the last appointment left pulled two knives out of his cargo shorts.  He had one in each pocket, he confided in me, in case something happened and he needed to use one, he didn’t want to forget where it was. 

After an awful day where only half of the scheduled viewings showed up (two cancelled without any warning at all), and one unbelievably unpleasant group of people that I had to tell on the spot that we would not be renting to them.  No no no, not under any conditions, NOT EVER.  I needed a beer and a break.

This weekend the viewings are scheduled for every 15 minutes for three hours.  I’m wearing shorts and a t-shirt.  And maybe I’ll shower.  But maybe not.  Because walking from room to room and giving the same speech over and over again (all the curtains are staying, this bathroom was partially remodeled in 2015, oh this is the original vanity from 1951, blah blah blah, word vomit word vomit word vomit…) is sweaty work.

Did I mention it is also very thirsty work?

So, here we go.  This is our adventure in landlording.  Worst case scenario it’s just a year.  Just 12 months.  This could be a good 12 months, or the worst 12 months of our lives.

Here goes nothing everything.