Category — Landlord Biz

I rent to musicians.  I used to give them a break. Like one musician didn’t leave his forwarding address for his security deposit, and I mailed it to him anyhow.  He specialized in electronic music.  I put “please forward” on the envelope.  I never got a thank you.  He should have sent an email thank-you at least.  He messed it up for the next guitar picker.

I had an older blues guy who screwed me out of a couple months’ rent.  A guy in his fifties ought to know that “12-month lease” means 12 months, not six months.

Youngsters — say, 22-to-30 year olds — can’t envision what 12 months means.  They think that’s forever.  I felt that way when I was in my twenties.  These young tenants try to weasel out of their leases.  They say they need to move home to help Grandpa, who broke his hip.  They need to help him drink beer and watch the Three Stooges!  These kids are moving out for one main reason: to shack up with their girl/boyfriend to save on rent.
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2 of 2 posts for 9/16/09

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My father said job one was getting the rent checks in the bank.

He didn’t even trust the night drop.  Had to wait in line.

The worst was when a money order got lost.  It might take up to three months to get a replacement.

One time the bank lost 16 rent checks.  I used the night drop, and the envelope wedged between the metal chute and the bank’s brick wall.  Just got buried in there like a time capsule.  I thought I was going nuts . . . Did I forget to make the deposit?  Was the deposit in my car somewhere?  At home I spent many hours looking through file cabinets and garbage cans for that deposit.

The bank found the deposit three months later, and I said to my tenants, “See, I’m not senile.  It was the bank’s fault.”  It’s rarely the bank’s fault, so I had to brag.

I wrote the bank manager about my  predicament — my embarrassment telling 16 people I had lost their checks.  I asked the bank to waive its service fees for a year.  I wrote: “My late father, who started the business, began talking to me! . . . ‘You did what?  You lost the money?'”

The bank didn’t waive the fees.  They did, however, give me $110 to cover tenants’ tracer fees.
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2 of 2 posts for 9/2/09

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I like to pay taxes.  I like to do the forms.

My dad taught me to do taxes.  Some dads teach their sons to fix cars.  My dad taught me to fix taxes.  He even kept two sets of books: one pencil, one ink.

These self-made guys — like my dad —  often kept two sets of books.

The second-generation, like me, usually go legit.

I got audited.  I didn’t take an accountant with me.  I left with a credit.

Landlords handle a lot of cash — rents, security deposits.  That’s why I got audited.

Always count cash in front of the custodian to make sure the custodian isn’t skimming.  The custodian can “rent” an apartment for a couple extra days and not tell you.  You should pop in occasionally on those “unoccupied” suites.

Here’s some entertainment law: What happens if you wear a costume for performance and off-stage too?  If it’s just on-stage, you can deduct it — and dry cleaning — as an expense.

I like keeping records.  This is the age of documentation and investigation.  Enjoy.

My bandmates appreciate my attention to detail,  I think.  My musicians never seem to know what they’ve made until I tell them at the end of the year.
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2 of 2 posts for 8/19/09

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A landlord friend turned up his speaker phone to demonstrate how much he was loved.  Some kid, on the other end, asked if he had to hook up his own washing machine and dryer at the rental house.  My buddy said, “No, we’ll supply that.  Save your appliances for down the road when you buy a house.”  The kid was happy.

My friend rents houses in the Heights to medical residents, Case Western Reserve PhD candidates, and Cleveland Institute of Music students.  These people want to live near University Circle. They’re high achievers with no time, or inclination, to trash an apartment.

Has my buddy ever rented to a stripper?  No.  What about a stripper who uses crack? Doubt it.   How about a stripper who cracks a whip while using crack?

The West Side, where my properties are, is a little dicier than the ivory towers of the Heights.   Or can be — particularly if the landlord is lazy and plays the “show me the money and you’re in” game.

My company screens tenants big-time.  (OK, we did let the stripper in.  Make that exotic dancer.  Exotic dancer with child.  Pure innocence.)  We do criminal and civil court checks. Credit checks.  Previous landlord.

That’s called Keeping Up the Neighborhood. Sounds middle-class. True that.

We’re making a significant civic contribution — offering people a decent place to live in a decent neighborhood.  That’s probably a bigger civic contribution than what my band does.  In a nutshell, my plumbers and custodians keep up appearances.  Every day they create an art installation called Decent Neighborhood.

Is this art? The Webb building, Detroit Avenue at Webb Road.

Take the Webb building. It has a mother hen, concerned manager; Lebanese mini-mart guy on the ground floor; Korean dry cleaner; small-town Ohio Suzuki violin teacher upstairs; a Continental Express flight attendant, a truck driver, a welder, etc.

Some of these Webb tenants marry each other.  (That’s bad for business.  They move in together and I have an empty.)
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2 of 2 posts for 8/5/09.

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Highly sensitive people.  That’s a book title: The Highly Sensitive Person. These folks are bugged by eyeglasses that rub their temples; pillows that don’t fluff out enough; shoes that don’t breathe well.  Basically, they’re like Woody Allen but not as funny or famous.

Cleveland has its share.  These highly sensitive people shouldn’t live in apartment buildings.

When I lived in an apartment, I thought the guy upstairs was dropping weights all day.  It was probably Kleenex.  I bailed in three weeks.

In my real estate leases, I put an addendum: “If you’re a party animal, party elsewhere.”

Doesn’t work.

For example, I have a couple piano-playing renters.  Lou, he plays classical all day.  That’s OK.  But then there’s Ragtime — not so well-loved.  Ragtime’s neighbor periodically calls the cops and writes me letters about “headache-inducing, thundering piano music.”

I told Ragtime to go electric — get some headphones and play for himself.  And I told the highly sensitive neighbor, he could move out and I’d give him his security deposit back.

He didn’t move.  He just kept writing.  He could crank it: “Right now I’m hearing piano music at decibel levels designed to throw the planet out of orbit . . . No more piano music!”

He liked to write more than he liked packing.
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1 of 2 posts for 7/29/09.  Please see post below too.
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Yiddishe Cup concert:  Wade Oval, University Circle, Cleveland.
6 p.m. Wed., April 5
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Watch a new YouTube video of Yiddishe Cup playing  the blue klez classic “Joe and Paul.”
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Read a review of the CD Klezmer Guy, Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, 7/15/09, by Lee Chottiner.

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I employed a custodian whose family was “a bunch of  burglars,” according to the investigating cop.  Why the cop had waited so long to tell me, I don’t know.

All along, the custodian’s kids had pilfered tools and lawnmowers, but I couldn’t prove anything and, besides, I liked the custodian.  He was a hard-working “hillbilly”— his term by the way.

I was his “little bitty buddy” — and his kids were crooks.  They took the master key and broke into an apartment across the hall.

Then they committed a botched burglary down the street and confessed to that, plus my break-in.

My custodian and his family had to move out.  “See you in the funny papers.”  That was my custodian’s sign-off.  Six years with me, then bye because his kids were crooks.

“I’m getting better by the numbers.”  He said that too.  I never did figure that one out.

Twenty-four years later: A different custodian, Speedy: the hardest working man on earth.  Speedy climbed many a ledge and ladder for me — and upped my workers’ comp.  He fell off a lot of ladders.  And he had some crook relatives and friends.

One relative, his so-called niece, was a prostitute.  The niece took the master key and entered a neighboring apartment and stole the tenant’s checkbook, ID and ring.

At first I thought the burglar was Speedy’s “nephew” Dave, a felon.   But then my plumber  reported seeing a new woman around, Amber, sleeping on Speedy’s couch.  “A black guy is pimping her,” the plumber said.

I told the police about Amber.  The detective said, “Amber Carney.*  She’s a known druggie and thief.” [*Not her real last name but close enough.]

Amber, the “niece,” got caught at the bank, forging checks.

The victim — my tenant—was more upset about the stolen ring than the stolen money.  She said it was an Irish ring.  It was fenced.  It was gone.  She asked if I was Irish.

“No, I’m Jewish,” I said.

“Funny, I’m Palestinian,” she said.

No problem— for her.   She was, as my father used to say, one cool customer. Most females would have been out of that burglarized apartment in a day.  I changed the lock and she stayed another year, pressing charges against the whore.

Amber, the prostitute, went to jail.  Speedy moved out and took a job at an adult bookstore.  I know because I received updates about Speedy’s employment through his workers’ comp lawyer, who kept sending me claims — for years— about Speedy falling off ladders back in the day.
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1 of 2 posts for 7/22/09.  Please see post below too.

Yiddishe Cup concert: noon Sun., July 26, Little Mountain Heritage Festival, Painesville, Ohio.

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Real estate has cycles, but nobody knows what, or when, they are.  Real estate is like life.  It’s not orderly like music or tennis.  One day, two-bedroom apartments are moving; the next, nobody will touch them.  Some years tons of tenants move out in January.  Some years everybody stays in January.  There is no pattern to anything in real estate.  The only certainty is 10 percent of your tenants will give you 90 percent of your problems.

I try to avoid certain tenants.  If I say hi to some of these people, it’s going to cost me at least $400.  Could be a new stove.  Could be a bathroom tile job.

I had a tenant whose wristwatch played Beethoven. That was interesting. I talked to him and it didn’t cost me a cent.  He had moved to Cleveland from Buffalo to teach guitar.  And his family ran a musical gifts company, he told me.

A tenant lent me a beat-up clarinet and we jammed.  Horrible reed.

I had a tenant who included a poem with her rent about wildlife outside her apartment window.  “The hawk waits/a dignified duration./Flies.”  Not bad.  I told her to take $25 off her rent — once.

Those were the good tenants.

. . . I had a tenant who regularly won the Miss Cleveland contest for transvestites.  His apartment was jammed with beauty pageant trophies — and young guys who crawled in his ground-floor bedroom window.  The cops — and I — did not like that.  Too many visitors is a big negative.  William, my drug-dealing tenant, also attracted a lot of traffic.  Bad for the hallway carpet.  The cops told me to stand to the side of the door —not directly in front — when I gave him his eviction notice. The cops were right next to me.  William said he wasn’t dealing drugs.  But he did move; he didn’t like the cops bugging him.
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1 of 2 posts for 7/8/09.  Please see the post below too.
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Yiddishe Cup concert 7 p.m. Sun., July 12, Hudson, Ohio.

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How hard is this to understand: “If the applicant is approved and makes a deposit— and then decides not to move into the apartment — the deposit will be forfeited.”

Nobody gets it.

“I changed my mind . . . My mom just found out she’s terminally ill
. . . I’m going back with my wife . . . I should have told you I’m an alcoholic and need to move into a sober house.”

Bidness is bidness.  I hang on to the deposit.

Once a “changer” stopped payment on her deposit, a bank check.  That worked.  I didn’t know you could stop a bank check.  Nice move.  She got me.
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Next posting:  Wed., July 1.

Read an article about Yiddishe Cup in today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer, 6/28/09.  By John Petkovic.

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The electric company used to be my favorite utility.  They rarely raised rates, and I knew how to get a live person quickly on their phone system.

Then the electric company jacked up their rates 10-fold in one day. I was paying $3.50/month for a vacant store.  Now it’s $35.

So I told the electric company to shut off the power at my vacant stores, and I told my building mangers to buy the biggest flashlights they could find.

Vacant stores . . . I’ve seen them in Phoenix and Boca Raton, Fla., too.

I used to lament I didn’t have all commercial stuff.  Commercial,  you just collect the rent, nothing to it.  Commercial tenants are not drunks, druggies or nuts.  Now I’m glad I have a mix of residential and commercial.

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When you have a dead body in the real estate biz, go in with the cops.  The tip-off is the smell in the hall.

One time a tenant died without any heirs, so the tenant’s estate lawyer practically begged me to take a few months’ rent.  It was free money.

I once put an ad on Craigslist captioned “50-year lease available. Die here.”  Craigslist spiked that one pronto.  My point: the building had three tenants who loved the building so much they had clocked more than 50 years each and were going to go out on gurneys.

Reality check: one-third of tenants move out in a year; one-third move out in 2 years;  about one-third stay 3-to-8 years; and a minuscule fraction stay longer than that.  Doesn’t matter what you do.

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Maybe one in 50 tenants is a derelict.

Try this . . . I’ve rented to a Cavani String Quartet violinist, a dancer in the Cleveland Ballet, and a prize-winning chef.  Plus tons of engineers, teachers, waiters and social workers.

I have a tenant who is always on the road with his band.  For a long time I didn’t know what band, because he was always on the road.

So I Googled him. He’s with Big Brother and the Holding Company.  Some of the Janis Joplin’s guys are still out there doing it.  My guy—my tenant —is young.  Maybe he props up the original guys.

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If possible, avoid dealing with companies with more than 50 employees.  For instance, if your bank wants to show you a new “product,” don’t go in.

What product?  Banks don’t give out toasters any more.  I got a ski cap twenty years ago.  Last product I got was a bunch of  red tape.

Don’t make any errors when filling out bank and government forms.  If you make an error, you’ll spend months correcting it.

Good news:  IRS literature is decent reading.  If you want to read some clear prose, read the 1040 instructions.  It’s business poetry.  Engaging stuff about depreciation: 200 percent declining balance and straight line . . . “The straight line method is the only applicable method for trees and vines bearing fruit or nuts.”  Expands your vista.  The world is a more than just boilers and refrigerators.

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“I’m going to take legal action.” That’s a favorite line from the intelligent disgruntled tenant.  The favorite line from the average tenant is profanity.  The favorite line from a  23-year-old is “That’s really sketchy.”

Go ahead and sue me.

As my father used to say, “Let them call me pisher (a nobody, a little squirt).  Who cares.”

Ninety-nine percent of the time, nobody sues.

My father once withheld payment from moonlighting cops who botched up a floor- sanding job.  That flabbergasted me — messing with cops.  It didn’t faze my father.  “Let them call me pisher.”

The cops really screwed up that floor.  It rippled like Lake Erie on a bad day. We had to go to carpet.

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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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There are two kinds of musical chairs: the party game, and when tenants move from suite to suite within the same apartment building.

Typically, the tenant wants to step up from an efficiency (studio) to a one bedroom.  If you don’t let her, she’ll move out of the building entirely.  But if you do let her move across the hall, you have to decorate two apartments — the one she’s moving out of, and the one she’s moving into.

Do it.  Better than losing her.

And make sure the security deposit is brought up to the new rent level.  You never know, she could go ape-wire with new wall colors.  You can paint with neutral colors has many interpretations.  Tenants will not willingly use antique white.

I had one tenant who moved across the hall and left behind a pile of pizza boxes with maggots all over his pepperoni.  Luckily his new unit was close enough we had leverage to get him to clean up the old place.

Musical chairs — the bar mitzvah variety— is fun.  If you’re doing a job — any job, no matter how lowly, do it . . . blah, blah.  Yes, we’re glorified baby sitters, but we’re good glorified baby sitters.

For musical chairs we play everything from “Wipe Out” to “Moshe Emet” (Moses Told the Truth).  We try to rig the game so the bat mitzvah girl can win. Never stop the music when the kid is rounding a corner.

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Natural gas, car gas and human gas.  It’s all organic.

Natural gas is what kills landlords.  The bills.  My buildings are pre-World War II — built when gas was cheap— so the decrepit single-pipe steam-heat systems pump all the heat to the top floor first.  Stupid.

It would cost a zillion dollars to change.  Not a great ROI.  Return on Investment.

Gas bills . . . how badly are you getting burned? You have to adjust for HDDs.  Heating Degree Days.

Gasoline . . .  That’s easier to calculate.  When the price at the pump goes up a dime, that’s about 10 cents.  Gasoline costs are about the same as two decades ago, based on constant dollars, and natural gas has more than doubled.

Human gas.  That’s an ocasional bandstand issue. “Who did that?”  We’re in junior high again.  Cheap time-traveling.

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Nobody tells you why they aren’t renting. Nobody says the apartment smells like a rugby team slept there, or the fan blades have cat hair on them.

When I go into an empty apartment and it smells — even after being painted — my guys attack the unit with over-the-counter air fresheners.  The spray kind, oil kind, waxy kind. Odor-eaters too.

Odor is a deal killer.

Another deal killer is gray, the color.  Gray around the tub.  Gray caulk.

Also, if the apartment bathroom is not totally white — like a decent hotel suite — the apartment won’t rent.

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My father made money with leverage. He took $13,000 in 1965 and bought an apartment building — The Marlowe in Lakewood, Ohio.  Then he bought another building the next year, St. Ed’s, and a year after that, Lakeland.  He was flying.  Leverage works — if you’re lucky.  And he was lucky.

My dad’s mantra was “just make the deal.”  Pull the trigger.  Which is what he did — often.

I, on my own, pulled the trigger a few times. For instance I bought the Riverview building from the Chisling family.  Interesting name.  Maybe they were trying to tell me something.  I bought the Roycroft building from a man who was dying of cancer, he said.  He was “dying” like we’re all dying.  He’s still around, years later.
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Tomorrow:
“OVER EASY”AT THE BIG EGO . . . Musicians lunching at the Big Ego diner.

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Odds are actuaries have interesting jobs. What could be better than figuring the odds on everything.

For instance, what are the odds I’ll rent a store to somebody more substantial than a tattoo parlor if I hold out?  What are the odds I’ll get the gig if I reduce the size of the band?  (I rarely do that.  The guys who get “reduced” don’t like it.)

We’ve turned down a lot of gigs.  Takes guts.  Musicians like to play.  But you have to say no to low-paying gigs.  Sometimes the client will counter with “it’s good exposure.”  You’re supposed to respond with the old saw: “Many musicians have died from exposure.”

I’ve had stores empty for three years.

I had a barber who wanted to put photos of “fades” in her window.  No, it was more than fades.  Tonsorial art — artistic designs cut into hair.

I let her in.  She was a Puerto Rican Lesbian cage fighter.  She had a couple tattoos on her face, like Mike Tyson.  She said she was part Jewish.  Maybe she was looking for lower rent.

The odds are you’re not Jewish if you say, “I have some Jew in me.”
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Where are they now . . . The cage fighter, Roman, still rents from me.  She’s solid — pays on time and has a great business.  She was my building manager for a while but had to quit because she had no place for her dogs.

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Chag sameach
Tomorrow:
INTONATION OPTIONAL . . . What’s tuning?

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The Lakewood, Ohio, police chief offered me 20 percent less than the going rent to put in a police mini-station.  Fine.  No, Great.  There were apartments above, and single women love living near a police station.  Some women are fixated on intruders crawling through their windows.

A Jewish museum wanted to change a date, but I couldn’t accommodate them because one of my guys was leaving town for vacation.

Then a private garbage hauler wanted me to lock in for another year.  Not great.  The city was making all landlords pay for hauling; it used to be free.

A nurse wanted to rent an apartment. Great.  Nurse is top of the line.  Once every five years I’ll even get a doctor — usually a 28-year-old doc without a ton of cash.  My apartments have no garbage disposers or dishwashers.  Barebones.  But at $500 a month, or so, that’s the deal around here.

A woman from the Boca Raton, Fla., JCC called me “darling” and said we were her favorite klezmer band, so I gave her two comp tickets to our South Florida show.

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Happy Memorial Day
Tomorrow:
MY CLARINET NEEDS TILEX . . . How to keep your axe smelling fresh.

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