Homeownership means never having to say “You’re a fucking lunatic!” to your landlord
For the year+ that we’ve been living in our house in Portland, GTB and I have been trying to convince our friends that our landlord is crazy. There was the porchlight incident, the dead squirrel in the basement debacle, and the ant fiasco. All frustrating, true, but the latest round of email correspondence with him takes the cake.
We found out yesterday that we will close on the new house June 1. The wedding is June 9. So we’ll get keys before the wedding, but have agreed that we won’t start moving until after. We’ll spend our honeymoon moving our stuff and cleaning the old house. When all is said and done, we should be out of the old house by June 15.
So yesterday afternoon, I sent this message to our landlord:
Hi Pat,
Greg and I are buying a house and I wanted to give you as much notice as possible that we will be moving out of the 2410 house in June. We will notify you in writing as well when we turn in our rent check for May, but I wanted to give you a head’s up.
Is there any way we can prorate rent for the month of June? We will be out of the 2410 house by June 15, so if we could pay for half a month’s rent, we’d really appreciate it. We’ll leave the house sparkling clean for your next tenants, who we hope will love the house as much as we have.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Best,
[The Girl]
Here is his NUTJOB response, verbatim:
The way it works, is you pay for may, june, …
I’m not going to accept a 1/2 months rent, because if your not out when you say you are it gets real sticky, the problem is that by law you have a contract and agreed to pay an amount on the first, the way the law works if I let you pay 1/2 then its impossible to come back after you, many times in these house things, things go wrong, and there are problems, and these are not my problems, I only rent houses, our agreement is that you pay month to month, and give a 30 day notice, after your out, if I owe you money, I’ll not delay in returning your money. { Out means everything is out, and the house is like you got it }
When you move you give a 30 day notice, it should be in writing, not by email, by law its called post and mail, which means that these types of notice should be in writing, not email, the reason I set up the email for you was to expedite problems.
Basically what you need to do is pay your rent month to month on the first, and 30 day before you know you’ll be out, give a written notice, if your out when you say you’ll be out, and if you return the house the way you got it, I’m more than glad to return ANY money I owe you promptly,
At this point I would just put in a written notice in my mailbox 30 days before you know you’ll be out, as you know in this real-estate stuff, stuff always goes wrong, and usually you don’t actually get the keys until a week after the so called closing, thus its best to just know when you’ll get the keys and have ALL your stuff gone,
In all my years of doing this most people try to set their closing 1-2 weeks before the end of the month, as getting stuff out, and cleaning up, is not a 1-2 day job. This is not new to me 90% of all my renters that move, its because they bought a house.
In summary give a 30 day notice in writing when you know that you have the time to get the house clean and the way it was, the day you return the keys and your ‘out’ is when your out, by law you must give a 30 day notice in writing, and be out when you say,
The payment of rent is due on the first of every month, if you return the keys, and you have moved, and there are remaining days in that month, then you’ll be credited your money.
Fuckin’ A, Bubba.
I’m resisting the urge to send him an email back that lets him know that I do, in fact, speak English and am not learning disabled by any stretch of the imagination. But then I remember that in approximately 50 days, I’ll never have to deal with this douchebag again.
April 27th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Wait. I’m not clear. Did he say he wanted it in writing? Or was that in writing or in writing?
April 27th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
And do things always go wrong with this real estate stuff, or do they always go wrong? Basically, I think you should give 30 days notice and be out when you say you’re going to be out. I mean really. You need to be out when you say you’re going to be out. But with this real estate stuff, things always go wrong. So you should probably be out when you say you’re going to be out.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Maybe you need to introduce your landlord to that marvel of grammar known as the period.
April 30th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
This is the funniest thing I have read in months.