New Tenant?

First off, I’m sorta thinking about steering clear of my blogspot journal altogether.  I’m in the “thinking about it” stages.  I have good reason to believe the ex has found it and I have no desire for her to be reading about my personal life – AT ALL.  I have no idea why she is continuing to pry into my personal matters – perhaps to use against me in some court action related to child support or my son?  No clue. 

I don’t believe she’s found this one, but then again, how would I know?  Well, I’m looking at Google searches with certain key words and my Blogspot thing comes up – oops, guess not. I thought this journal wasn’t coming up with it, but now it is.  I Google BenB and there it is, on the first page of results at the bottom.  I guess I could do friends/logged in only or something, I hate to do that because I love having my blogs open to the world for Googlers who are looking for specific information.  The journals I have the Feedjit thing on shows me people coming from all over the world, and a lot of that is people coming to my blogs from a Google search going to a specific post in the past. 

Usually that’s concerning some corporation I’ve had my version of dealing with. 

Anyway, I just got a call from a man who is looking for a room – paying weekly rent.  I posted an ad to try to get a broader market share looking at my ad.  It’s near the end of month and the Craigslist ads for room rentals are off the wall.  There are a LOT of them being posted, it’s a tight market.  But not everyone is willing to rent a room for a week, 2 weeks, a month only or take rent payments by the week.  I have one guy doing that now – he just handed over $100 yesterday.

I posted the weekly rental thing yesterday at $110 per week.  Yes, I think I should be able to charge more for a room that is only going to be used for a week, OR, a room where the person wants to stay on for a while but can only pay by the week.  The point is that that person can leave at anytime and then I have an empty room all over again.  That’s a risk in itself since a greater percentage of people looking for rooms are doing so at the end of the month to move in at the beginning of the next. 

So, this guy is allegedly heading over here right now, luggage in hand, money to offer.  Said he’d be over here before noon – a couple of hours from now.  It would be cool if this was reality. 

I’m using these people?  Of course I am!  It’s a business proposition, nothing more, nothing less.  There is absolutely nothing unethical about charging more for a room that a person could leave out of at any time.  Then the room is empty an if it happens to be the middle of the month, I don’t necessarily have any thought that I might be able to rent it again until the beginning of the next month.  So I’m sort of taking a loss – a renter that comes in here and pays up the month’s rent in advance is a much better deal than weekly.

But the interest is low.  I have to run ads every day sometimes for weeks before I get the room rented.  There are only so many renters and a LOT of rooms.  It wasn’t that way when I started, but when people started seeing the news reports of homeowners renting rooms to save their home – versus a foreclosure – it became an instant hit in these parts, at least from looking at the VAST increase of people offering rooms for rent.

I am further disadvantaged by having 4 dogs – 2 of them the size of small horses; teenagers; shared bathrooms (people like having their own, private bath when renting over having to share bathrooms); 2 other tenants besides the person that is considering moving in.  I don’t have a swimming pool or a garage which is also a deal-breaker for some folks. 

I have in my favor an EXCELLENT location.  I see a lot of ads that are well outside of Phoenix – which isn’t going to help a person who is working anywhere near the downtown Phoenix area.  I have large bedrooms, definitely something people like when they come in here looking – it’s  a big plus to have larger rooms than these little closet-sized things a lot of people are offering.  I am offering lower rent – I have to, I won’t get anyone in here otherwise.  I don’t ask for utilities extra -a BIG plus for people who want a fixed amount to have to pay per week or month and don’t want utilities as a variable. 

A large portion of people offering rooms are posting a monthly rental price and then adding a portion of the utilities on top of that.  Again, I’m also offering short-term.  I can do that with at least one room and take the gamble.  I can also offer work-for-reduced-rent to one renter – one only, though I don’t have that going right now.  I need cash – there is lots to do around here and bills to pay and money speaks right now.  I don’t have the reduced rent offer going right now and probably won’t until the next tenant leaves, which is the ex-Marine who is vascillating about what he’s going to do.

He was going to move in with his friend at his friend’s parent’s house, now he’s talking of moving back to Oklahoma.  Whatever the case, he’s promised the rest of this month’s rent and all of next month’s when he gets paid on Friday.  I have not seen him to be someone to make up stories, so I hope he’s being on the up and up.  He gets a disability check every month from the service and that’s what he pays rent with. 

Well, anyway, it would be cool if I could have this room that is going to be vacated as of today rented out right away.  The guy allegedly coming over moved back here from California and is living in a hotel at $50 per night.  Obviously the math is $350 per week doing that or $110 per week at my place. 

Anyway, I’m gonna get outside, clean up dog junk, continue digging out post holes for my fencing project, oh, cover  up the turkey, it’s nicely crisped now so it just needs to finish cooking and it’s good.  Ahhh, yes, early turkey dinner.  Nice. 

Have a great day, c’yall later.

ben