My rant for the day! GRRRR (long)

Well..... For a full year, we were paying a double mortgage payment because we bought this house, and couldn't sell the first house.... so, finally after a year, we decided to flip it to a rental. We just couldn't afford the 2 payments ($4,000 per month total). So, we placed an ad in the paper and got a call within a couple days. This guy that does accomodations for Military people answered. So, he said had a family that was interested and we would do the lease with him and he would do his own lease with them. So, we signed a 1 year lease. Well, the guy was an A$$HOLE. He complained about everything. He wanted us to carry the utilities for him. Even though the people said they were going to hang pictures, he wanted us to fill in 3 small holes (from nails), he wanted a professional final cleaning on the house instead of me and my daughter doing it ($200.00), etc... He complained cause he couldn't get a hold of Kevin (he works a lot), so he started calling me. Well, during one of our conversations, he told me I was insensitive and rude and uncaring (cause I didn't carry the utilities in my name for a week). So, we switched to email correspondence.... since I REFUSE to be verbally abused. (Yay for me) The tenants have been there for 1 month. Well, the JERK sent me an email at 1am this morning saying the tenants had an unexpected emergency, and they are gone, moved out of state, and he was terminated from the military, so he is giving his 30 day notice to terminate the lease agreement. He will pay up thru Dec 19th. I am soo angry. He was a waste of our time. Now we have to come up with a double mortgage payment just in time for Christmas. And today, I have to go by there, and see how the place looks. Since we only did a lease with the JERK, we only ran his credit, I don't know what kind of people the tenants were really. I am sooo worried they trashed the place. We did get a small deposit from them, but we will see how they took care of the place. I guess I need to call the paper today about relisting our ad. GRRRRRR. This SUCKS! I hate the market right now! Anyway....wish me luck on renting the place QUICKLY!!! I'm not sure why we just can't win the lottery Hehehe

Ok this is what I personally would do.. oh this is Debby.. we had the same issue with the house in STL .. couldnt sell it.. so we called a realtor that handles rentals.. they do credit checks.. handle ALL maintenance and even send the housepayment in every month etc for 10% of the monthly rental, now we do pay for the repairs but his folks do them and we pay for just supply costs and if a repair is going to cost a lot they call us first.. its easier this way on us and we dont deal with the BS of finding renters etc... Call a few realtors..and find out what they charge.. maintenance fee's etc... And big realtors like ERA, Century etc tend to get them rented faster because they handle people who are relocating etc... Good luck!!!

Hi Deb... Thanks sooo much!!! We started out doing it that way. We were having the realtor try to rent it... $100.00 a month fee. However. The payment on the house is $1,200.00....and we are only charging $950.00 rent. The HOA fees are $100.00 a month....So if we go that route, we will be paying out $1,400.00 and only getting $950.00. Since I am not working right now....I am trying to cut corners whereever I can...and I specialize in Admin/Clerical/Legal Docs for a living. I do agree though....it would be easier. Kevin does have access to a credit check at his job, so we did run the last guys credit. It was excellent.