In this video blog, I sat down with my good friend Alex Williams, a seasoned property developer, builder, and investor to share some of the odd responsibilities you take on as a landlord.
We thought we would share these tenant stories to illustrate how being a professional landlord comes with huge responsibility. Often, newbies to the landlord game are shocked at the litany of issues that tenants (thankfully, infrequently) have, that need to be dealt with.
For those with bad connections, we’ve written up a brief excerpt of the stories in note form below the video. However, when you have time and a stronger internet connection, we do recommend you listen to Alex Williams as you would get more out of the stories.
The notes from our interview with Alex are below the video.
Roll With the Punches
Overall the best advice when dealing with tenants is that you’ve got to learn to let go of some of the digs and attacks you may get from a tenant. One of the hardest parts of being a landlord is being pleasant and nice at all times.
Alex told me one story about an especially difficult housing conversion. Next door to the property was a 60-year-old woman who was also a landlord and had done the same conversion on her property as Alex was trying to do on his.
Unfortunately, the lady next door got very angry about the contractors operating on Alex’s property. She got very angry even though Alex was operating within normal business hours and within government regulations. According to Alex, this lady was having none of it!
She said “no drilling, no hammering, and no skips,” and proceeded to call everyone that she thought would help, the council, solicitors, even the police sent a van down to monitor the site.
The life of a landlord is such, you’ve just got to deal with these people and complete the work that you need to do.
Another, particularly bizarre, story Alex shared with me was when one of his tenants got sectioned. A tenant of his was a lady from French Guiana who was in the UK studying. In the same property, there was a preacher who had Sunday service in his room and was overly familiar with people from his flock.
Later, several other people living in the property joined his flock, and he became overly familiar with them as well. He promised them marriage, and when his deception was uncovered it broke the lady from French Guiana and the lady ended up on the street.
She called Alex up and screamed in terror at him “the devils with long tails are coming out of his van”. It was his employee with a pressure washer. The other people in the property were having a really difficult time with this tenant. Eventually, the tenant’s family had to fly over to look after her.
“The Devils with long tails are coming”
Huge thanks to Alex for sharing so much of his time with us. If you found Alex’s story useful, do Like the video and subscribe to the channel for more property and financial insights and strategy.
And if you’re feeling super generous do write us a comment and share the article with your friends to help them become motivated and inspired too.
In the meantime, if you enjoy reading about people’s property success stories check out the following articles:
- Decades on and still loving property – Property anecdotes – Alex Williams
- Property secrets of a 26 year old millionaire school dropout – Ryan Windsor
- 23 jobs to becoming a property millionaire by age 23 – Stephanie Brennan
- Money or Passion – Regan Anne Hillyer
If you are starting on your own financial freedom journey, you will find the following articles from our library helpful in spring-boarding you into your life’s dream.
- Why being busy is a waste of time
- How your positive affirmations hold you back
- How SMALL means big success
- Priming to achieve
Oh the joys of being a landlord. I’ve housed tenants from the councils mental health team support project and it makes for a very challenging tenancy!
I’ve loaded up my car to help tenants move because they failed to book a van on leaving day and where trying to do it all by bus and cab!
I’m currently dealing with arrests, police raids and kicked down front doors. Oh the joys!
But you could say it’s all self inflicted as I am a sucker for a certain type of demographic who I believe deserve decent housing the same as anyone else. So no dought the challenges will continue.