Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.
 

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz, too.
 

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz. (See you.)
 

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.
 

Stratton has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.


 
 

GOODWILL HUNTING

by Bert Stratton

Eviction notices, I buy them by the carton. I go to court every two months.  The deadbeats rarely show up, and if they do, there’s nothing to talk about.  They didn’t pay the rent; they have to move.

I have a friend who is a nice-guy landlord.  He knows all his tenants and sometimes they screw him out of four months’ rent because he’s so nice.  I know another landlord who takes some of his tenants out to dinner.

At Christmastime I used to buy chocolates for tenants.  Spent over $1,000.  I got thank-you notes from 1 percent of the tenants.  My dad thought I was nuts.

I used to keep a folder called “goodwill,” in case the media phoned and said, “Can I speak to the slumlord?”   I’d whip that folder right out.   Haven’t needed it yet.

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3 comments

1 Richard Grayson { 06.16.09 at 6:36 pm }

Do you have tenants who consistently pay early? Like way early? Or pay you like three months of rent in advance? I know people who do this, um, very well… I find it freaks out some landlords. Why?

2 bert { 06.17.09 at 6:38 am }

Richard,

I have tenants who pay early. One pays six months’ upfront. Another pays three months’. A forced savings plan on their part. Yes, it is a bit unsettling to me, because I’m of the don’t-pay-till-you-have-to school. I mean, why not collect some interest — minimal as it may be — on your money instead of giving it to the evil landlord.

You know who always pays late? The U.S. Gobierno. They pay in arrears, meaning they pay after the month is over.

3 Richard Grayson { 06.17.09 at 10:12 am }

I guess that’s why you have money and I don’t.

Of course, if your landlord is also your friend, it just seems easier. And I don’t like writing checks.

In Florida, when I couldn’t pass a credit check and would rent for 4-6 months and spend half the year in NYC, sometimes I’d just pay the whole thing up front to know I was done with it, and didn’t have to budget for rent.

But I guess you don’t have short-term or seasonal rentals in Cleveland? I’ve lived in South Florida, North Florida and Phoenix, where snowbirds are common, and it seems a lot of these seasonal rentals pay up front — like my friends in Fire Island and the Hamptons get for a week in the summer at their beach houses. (Only what I paid for 6 months in FL, they get for a week in the Hamptons.)

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