Wednesday 8 November 2006

Rental Property Blues (cont.)

A couple of month after our last tenant moved out, and we're getting a bit desperate - with the wife on unpaid maternity leave, getting no rent will mean the mortgage payments eat through the extra that we'd paid off our mortgage at an alarming rate. Finally, the estate agent called today to advise that she has someone wanting to rent - but only on a short (4 month) lease with an option to then continue on a month-by-month basis at the end of the lease, while their new home is being built. She'd already rung the wife, but just wanted my OK to lease the property for this term.

With Christmas soon upon us (and hardly anyone moves house over the holidays), if we didn't take this tenant the rental property could be empty till the end of January. So, better to take a short lease and hope that the building takes longer than expected and they stay a while, than hold out for an "ideal" tenant.

Anyhow, the worst* that can happen is that we are looking for a new tenant again in four months time, and have to pay another week's rent to the agent to find us another tenant.

*OK, the worst is actually that we have a "tenant from hell", who trashes the place and then moves out without notice owing some back-rent, and disappears interstate. (I've had this happen before...)

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