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Amen to that. I'm not against buying... but I will never again buy a condo.

Thankfully, my g/f sold her appt at the height of the condo craze, and was able to get top dollar for her unit. This, in turn, is what made it possible for us to buy into our supposed 'nicer, higher end building'. Which it was for the first couple of years...

Then the market crashed. A lot of the people who had bought units while my building was just a hole in the ground, suddenly couldn't flip them.... you know what that means.... RENTALS, and lots of them.

So instead of having 'Club EuroTrash' bumpin' next door, I got a grow op. Oh, and before that, just down the hall, some associates of a well known gang were renting out a unit. Now that was fun :( Seems to have gotten a bit better the last year or so, but I'm still amazed at the shit that goes on in these big complex's...

Personally I'd just tell her flat out that I was going to hit on her until I found out what makes her sound like she did last night. The awkwardness should get her to STFU.

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Awsome stories, thought this post was dead after it went to the bottom of the list.

Every once in awhile I get inspired by something to write about. This was inspired by the thread about negotiating rent and Dino talking about desperate people at the end of the month, or in the case of that building I wrote about-their base.

It amazes me that people with so little business sense are in the financial position to own a twelve unit property, they must not be self-made, more likely they received an inheritance from someone more intelligent than themselves. I'll bet they blow it all within their life times.

Not wanting to bother with a twenty dollar rent increase amazes me more than anything; twenty dollars, across twelve units, over sixty months, equates to fourteen thousand dollars in lost potential revenue.

That was what was frustrating. You have: no money to maintain the building, no money to pay me, no money to allow for renting a shit apartment for reasonable rent.

And then scoff at raising rent to do what? Make more money!

So you are going to rent this thing to trash, who in turn is going to a) not pay you, b) trash the place and then not pay you. Security Deposits are shit. I burned through $300 at Home Depot on an apartment yesterday, and walked out with 2 bags and some blinds.

As I said above-I'm more than open to any type of creative idea. Hell, I'd be willing to work on spec. Here's a plan: Don't pay me anything. I'll take a percentage on increased revenue. As long as that percentage works on paper, in that I'm going to see payback at some point down the road-I'm still good. But I would need to have a level of trust for the person in this type of arrangement. We have an excellent relationship with our core, I call them clients, but technically they are employers. They asked me to take on a second building. I didn't even talk money. Worked for 2 months before we could sit down and talk it out. I knew, implicitly, that they had my back, just the same as I had theirs. As a result-after 2 years in the building-we've made our salary free with the increased revenue. My company, on the other hand has been very fucking far from free :)

This was my favorite.

Gridlock,

Your last story reminds me of a unit we looked at 2 years ago. I forget the name of the building now, but it is just off of Barnet Hwy and just before St. Johns st. Port Moody. This is the area that is right across the water from the sulphar piles.

As a possible investment opportunity, there was a bunch of units for sale at discounted prices during the 09 recession. The builder kept 20+ units and was renting them out but due to financial reasons, they defaulted payment on taxes and they were forced to sell off some of the units to pay back the Government.

First thing we noticed as we entered the building, the walls were in really bad shape. They haven't seen paint or repair in ages. Someone opened one of the security doors, and put the door knob through the wall and now there is a huge gaping hole.
The doors to some of the other units looked like they were reused from a busted grow-op. ie the police used a battering ram to open the door and this building was able to buy these pre-owned doors at discounted prices.

We go inside the unit and you can see the carpet is new and the walls had just been repainted. The ceiling had a 4x6 section that was just fixed as the white popcorn material was a different colour from the rest of the ceiling.

We go out onto the deck, and nearly fall off. The deck is at a major pitch, down and away from the door. If you fell, and broke through the fence, you would have a nice tumble since this was a ground floor unit.

Lastly, the tour took us to the underground garage. Normally concrete underground garages are either grey or some painted colour. The walls were grey with some areas that were bright rust orange, just under 1 inch wide cracks that run all the way down the wall . Did I mention, this was an underground garage?
Even the concrete stairs leading out of the parkade was orange coloured.

We decided to skip this unit and later on we find out that we knew someone who had lived in this building and her stories were worse. The wiring in her unit was beyond shoddy. There was a few times autumn storms blew out the power, but for some reason, the power would out for half the building. Sometimes it was the right side units, and other times it was the left side units that were without power. Sorta reminds me of that episode of friends where Joey and Chandler was playing with that light switch that would turn on/off a like in Monica's unit.

Keeping up with a building is a shitpile of work. And there are buildings like the one you described everywhere.

When we started at the first building, I couldn't believe the condition of some things. We did an inspection on month 2 and came back with a massive list of repairs. A lot of them heat, sliding door and window related.

The problem was the owners were busy, and previous managers were good with the status quo. It was us that started pushing for our new strategy. I saw a hole in the market for a mid-range building, where you could live in a place that was inspired by condos, but not pay the price of renting a condo. I don't really think I was original in the thought, there are a few other places in the 'hood doing the same thing lol.

The owner has told us that he always wanted to own buildings that he can take pride in, and not shitty ones, but was lacking someone that could actually run the show. He barely comes out once a year...he is not going to come out weekly to check up on construction projects.

Buildings like the one you describe are scary.Thankfully, I was left with a lot of cosmetics, but little structural. If I had to spend a year overseeing the garage being broken up and re-concreted before we can even get to the fun stuff, it would be nuts.

Aside from the financial loss involved with the unrentable dead space, does the owner not realize that mold is a living thing?

It's not like it's going to sit there stagnant, waiting for the owner to have an epiphany that he's losing a substantial amount of money each month the unit sits vacant and that he's a bit of an idiot not to have had the first crew do the repairs. It's going to grow and spread to other units, if it hasn't already, increasing the cost of repairs exponentially. Some people truly amaze me, he and the girl from the previous story should get together to discuss management philosophy, they sound like they have a lot in common.

Um...most, if not all the top floor if I had to make a somewhat uneducated guess.

I think thats the problem. You start getting into this, and the project instantly goes 10x the size in minutes. Shit man...you want a good laugh? The roof still fucking leaks. It leaks to the 1st floor. How that happens I have no idea, but going past the top floor and showing up downstairs is impressive, fucked up wise. There is a puddle that doesn't dry for 8 months of the year. The mold is centered down a line right below it.

So, instantly, with my little paint job we discover that the apartment needs to be re-drywalled. Can't do that without having the mold removed. Let's add in at least 2 adjacent units because come on man, you know they're fucked. Shouldn't bother with that until the roof is replaced. Shouldn't bother with that until whatever structural issue causing the puddle is fixed. That would be the penthouse btw. I'm no roofer, but I have to be pretty deep past 100k, and I haven't even taken a measurement :)

This is a nightmare case of a guy who knows the system.
He comes in with the manager from another place helping him move in. Drove all his stuff over moved it all in while joking and laughing with this tenant. He claims that he's moving here because it's too noisy at his old buildling that has a bar underneath. (later found out the manager gave him false referal just to get him out of his hair) Sure we could ask for two referals but most of the people we've dealt with have just moved into BC.

After the first month he doesn't pay rent, file for a 10 day non-payment standard procedure. Get delayed 2 months before we even see a courtdate, they really need to bump the nonpayment ones. As currently there is no priority it just sits inline with all the other claims. Get a telephone trial date, serve the papers to tenant with a witness. He shows up at the trial on time and says he has no idea what he's doing here. He never recieved the papers and that we never served him. Judge asks if we have the witness there and we didn't at the time. Just as the judge was going to give him the win..... witness walks in. Judge then listens to the witness statement on serving this guy, this guy is still calling us liars. So judge says how did you know to be here at this time if you never got served? Guy couldn't answer.... thats how crazy the judges are and was sooo close to siding with the total douchebag tenant.
Now that we won the case we see the guy hiding in his room so we can't serve him the papers for the bailiff. Next thing we know he filed for an appeal so if the appeal takes another 2 months we are out 4 months rent + bailiff costs because I know it will come to that and he will drag it out as long as he can. After a judges decision we've never had anyone file for an appeal before but thats just how loaded the tenant based system is. This guy knows full well he doesn't have a leg to stand on there is no arguement for nonpayment, yet he is able to delay this for at least 3+ months. Imagine if there actually was something to argue about to get rid of this joker? HAH

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Yes we have the order of possesion, never had to wait more than two weeks after filing usually. I would love to verify if that 10 day thing is true on monday. So far as I can tell other landlords just pay this guy a couple grand to get him out of their hair, which really blows because it's rewarding him for douchebaggery and working the system. It's going to cost more to deal with him the legal/proper way and most landlords just buckle under and let guys like this slide.
Most frustrating now is to claim for more months of rent since this has dragged on for so long.... I would need to pay and file it under a seperate case.

meh

Guy is 6'6 270 not sure what you mean by bailiffs on the street, as they only deal with court orders. In the end the owner always has more to lose vs worthless scumbag. Guy doesn't pay rent legal system sees that as you making less profit vs Guy losing his home and getting thrown out on the street. They are for sure going to let tenant get away with just about anything.
Guy has nice stuff too, guess thats not hard to do when you dont have to pay rent.
Yeah the previous manager already apologized saying he couldn't get rid of the guy.

This was a redone suite so thats not an issue, in my experience people that move into a crappy place never knew how to work the system the way this guy has.

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Dinosaur the appeal process now is anywhere from tommorow to infinity. Thanks for the info tho we waited about 3 weeks before we got a courtdate as well. We served him on the oct 6th for nonpayment figured he would pay since he has alot of nice stuff moved in, 10 days from that was the 16th which we filed and from there courtdate on nov 8th. In the past we've gotten courtdates in as little as 5 days for nonpayment.

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Here is my story from a renter's pov. Currently renting a basement suite. A month later a single mom moves in along with her bf. They leave their bike in the middle of the walkway. The landlord son comes down and tell them to move it as it's in the way. They were like what I don't understand what you're saying because of your accent. They also keep puppies at the place even though the tenant agreement clearly states that this is not allowed.

I personally don't talk to these guys but for some reason they continue using the laundry every single day even on our assigned days. They leave dirty shit in front of our door way for some reason even though we don't deal with them at all as we're usually working. They tend to have sex loudly with their door left open. We complain to the landlord about the laundry situation and he tells us we should talk to them as they're nice people too. The very next morning both my gf and my car windows were smashed. They messed everything up in the cars but nothing was stolen even though I had cash and other valuables in there. The other renter's cars was parked on the same street but nothing happened to their's. We would of moved out already if we didn't sign a 6 month lease and now it's gonna be a hassle finding a new place.