My 48 Hour Real Estate Investing Wake-up Call

By: Andrew Fink

Read time: 5 minutes

Welcome to The Ascend Archives Tuesday Tale, a weekly newsletter where I share a story about a transformation, revelation, or change in thinking that has helped improve an aspect of my life.

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It’s June 11, 2022 and I’m finishing up my first year as a landlord.

Overall, it’s been a pretty smooth year. The tenants only reached out for minor items like undelivered mail, a washing machine repair, and a broken dishwasher.

They paid on-time each month and I profited close to $7,500.

The current lease ends in 3 days. I already lined up my next tenants to move in a few days later. They are a nice, newly married couple that wanted to take advantage of my spacious 3 bedroom apartment for home offices.

No vacancy? I could get used to this real estate investment thing.

I wake up the next morning to the following text:

June 14th comes and goes….crickets.

June 15th is a Wednesday. I schedule a cleaning company to do a “Deep Clean” while I’m at work.

It’s now 6 PM and I pull up to 2150 W North Ave in Wicker Park, expecting to do a quick walk through and make sure everything is ready for the new tenants.

I open the door to Unit 8 and immediately know I’m fucked.

A massive steel coffee table is in the middle of the living room. The L-shaped sofa is pushed up against a wall. Empty boxes are stacked in the kitchen. Random school supplies and books are scattered everywhere.

I can only imagine what the bathrooms and bedrooms look like.

I’m supposed to hand the keys over to the next tenants tomorrow morning. “What the hell am I going to do?”

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I immediately called the tenants to figure out what the deal was. They all blamed each other and had no intention of getting any of this stuff.

I took a deep breath and said to myself “This is on me. I’ll stay here all night and do whatever it takes to clean this place up.”

I collected the garbage, dragged the heavy furniture to the dumpster, and used the only cleaning supplies I had (wet paper towels) to wipe down the counters.

It was close to midnight and the place was in decent shape, but not ideal.

Luckily, my new tenants had scheduled their moving company for Sunday. That gave me a 2 day buffer.

I would give them the access codes on the agreed move in date, but mention that there were still a few “minor items” that I would repair before the movers arrived.

Move-in day arrived and around 7 PM, I received the following email from the new tenants:

I must have re-read that email 20 times. I felt embarrassed. I felt defeated.

How could I have let this happen? Are they going to decide to live somewhere else or request a discount off rent? How am I going to address all those issues in 2 days?

I put myself in a shitty situation, but I was determined to get myself out of it.

I told my boss I was “working from home” that Friday and spent the next 48 hours getting the apartment ready for my new tenants.

• Multiple trips to Home Depot for supplies

• Hours scrubbing the refrigerator and freezer

• Cleaning up all the hair and dust

• Hiring a crew to patch the drywall and repaint

• Hiring plumbers to repair both toilets that were leaking

• Installing new shades and light bulbs

Miraculously, I pulled it off. It cost me close to $2,000 that I didn’t want to spend and 48 hours of stress. But I checked everything off the list.

To apologize for the inconvenience, I left the new tenants a bottle of Veuve Champaign and a hand written note saying to let me know if there was anything else they needed.

The following day, I received a note thanking me for quickly addressing their concerns.

I was in the clear.

Final Thoughts

This was a classic example of you don’t know what you don’t know.

Sure, I read the real estate books that told me about the process of tenant turnovers and that I should never expect my tenants to take care of my property like I would.

But there are some things in life where you just need to experience it to understand it and learn from it. This was one of those times for me.

Looking back 2 years later, all my concerns in the moment were irrational. These people were not going to find another apartment to move into in 3 days and leave me high and dry. If I had to discount them some rent, I would have been totally fine.

Luckily, I had friends and family who I leaned on in the moment to help me problem solve and bring me back to reality that I would get through this.

The married couple ended up staying as tenants for 2 years and sadly put in their termination notice this week.

This time I’m not going to assume they were a clean, nice married couple and will not be surprised when the place is a mess.

Thank you for reading! As always please reply and let me know what resonated, what didn’t, or what you question. I love chatting about this stuff!

Cheers,

Andrew