Lesson one: People will flush anything down a toilet
March 6, 2017 8:39 AM   Subscribe

 
Rental stories? So we were renting an apartment where the rubber gasket on the toilet tank wasn't 100%. Toilet just leaked a little bit into the bowl all the time. It was a bit annoying but not a big problem ...until the toilet clogged. Water kept running, but now it had nowhere to go. Which we didn't realize until 2 in the morning, after the water had overflowed the bowl and filled the entire bathroom with about an inch of water. We were on the third floor, so that water then made its way down two additional floors before it finally stopped.

It was a good day to be a renter, and not an owner.
posted by leotrotsky at 8:48 AM on March 6, 2017 [9 favorites]


securities don't make you do this shit

if you own enough of them they make you do other shit but there you go
posted by hleehowon at 8:51 AM on March 6, 2017 [5 favorites]


can't leverage as hard on securities but do you really want to leverage that hard for anything
posted by hleehowon at 8:52 AM on March 6, 2017 [3 favorites]


What a pleasant article! The position of landlord fascinates me- what's a "good" landlord, what's "bad" landlord, and good or bad for who? I dug how this got into feelings about landlording more than renter horror stories.
posted by Secretariat at 9:02 AM on March 6, 2017 [8 favorites]


And the poor hawk in the art studio!
posted by Secretariat at 9:03 AM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


I have a great landlord! sold my house. Renting condo. Refrig too cold and turning to lowest setting the lettuce freezes. Called landlord. Said he would have it fixed. He called next day and said he will simply replace it. Next day: brand new refrig installed. Two more small issues soon after with minor things. he rushed out and fixed them for us. The week we moved in, sent big box of candies and flowers. We just renewed lease for another year.
posted by Postroad at 9:07 AM on March 6, 2017 [16 favorites]


what's a "good" landlord, what's "bad" landlord

I think I know this one.

A bad landlord is one who, like a previous landlord of mine, when told that a corner of my bathroom ceiling had collapsed and water was pouring through, responds "So what?"

and good or bad for who?

People who are having their bathrooms flooded from collapsed ceilings.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:08 AM on March 6, 2017 [15 favorites]


idiosyncratic relationships with the sort of people who felt inclined to go into the landlording business seems like a terrible way to secure something as fundamentally necessary to survival as housing, but here we are. pray you get the "good" kind that doesn't drive by your place looking for soda bottles every day, I guess
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:12 AM on March 6, 2017 [21 favorites]


Lesson one: People will flush anything down a toilet

I have been a resident manager of a complex. This is a very, very true statement.
posted by rocketman at 9:20 AM on March 6, 2017 [8 favorites]


I once got blamed for our apartment being broken into. I was already reeling from the revelation that they'd taken a gun, hand been in my room while I was sleeping, and stolen my laptop and phone from beside me as I slept. They'd broken a window to get in. I told the landlord and he said, "Who have you been bringing home?"

Yeah.
That's a bad landlord.
posted by domo at 9:21 AM on March 6, 2017 [35 favorites]


We had a lovely tenant in our basement apartment at our prior house, who had come with the house. Our conversations were all at the back kitchen door, and we could see her dining table with a plastic tablecloth under it. Since she had young kids, we thought wow, so considerate of the carpet!

One day my husband was checking out the furnace and stepped on it. Squish. Water had been leaking into the basement for months and we lived right over her and she never said anything!

In future leases we did build inspections in. Not a landlord any more.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:01 AM on March 6, 2017 [4 favorites]


I used to rent an apartment here in the city where I live from a rental agency, and when I signed the rental papers, I read them pretty carefully to see if there were any specific requirements I'd be liable for. One clause mentioned a noise curfew, and being a musician, I asked about it. I was told the clause was added after a tenant decided to practice his tuba at 1 in the morning.
posted by LN at 10:05 AM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


What I learned as a landlord: Charge a bit below market and you get your pick of the tenants. So far, a year and a half later, our tenant in CA is still paying our mortgage for our house here in MA.
posted by Talez at 10:17 AM on March 6, 2017 [7 favorites]


I used to do a lot of tax and accounting stuff for people who owned rental properties, and what always surprised me, somehow, was how surprised they were by this kind of thing. Risk exists, and part of running a business is learning how to manage it. Like:
The climax of a story belongs to the tenant. The denouement is the landlord's burden alone.
I mean, this sounds pretty and all, but is it true? You get the responsibility for fixing the thing, and the tenant gets the responsibility for paying you whatever was agreed under the lease. This is mostly because I've heard these same complaints like a million times, of course, but it has started to strike me like a restaurant owner being grumpy that people spill stuff and leave their dirty dishes on the table. If a customer stiffs you on the bill, that's a problem, but as long as they're paying, yeah, cleanup is part of what you do. If you're running a business, you shouldn't be upset by the mess; you should be upset by the lack of payment. A lot of landlords seem to conflate the two and let it get way too personal.

All that said, over and over again, the pattern I've seen is that residential rentals don't actually tend to make enough money that I'd personally consider it worth the effort. So it's not something I'm in a hurry to get into, any more than I want to run a restaurant.
posted by Sequence at 10:22 AM on March 6, 2017 [21 favorites]


My husband's father is a super for a high-rise apartment building, so he's always had a different perspective on the landlord/tenant relationship than I have. He was a lot more likely to fix things on his own, while I was always wary of doing anything more than unclogging a toilet because then I could be considered liable for the damage. I remember having to convince him to call the landlord and tell them we were putting mouse traps in the attic, and then seeing if we could get reimbursed for the cost.

I mean, I get it, it's just easier to take care of things by ourselves, and he already knew how to handle it from shadowing his father on the job.

For the first couple of years, he used to give our landlord a holiday bonus, because his father always got one and he felt like it would get us better service. I pointed out the differences in regional customs (and the difference in rent/class between what we were living in and where his father worked), but it was his money. It didn't get us better service (or really any service), but the landlord occasionally treated us as friends. We got invited to his holiday party. He'd complain about all of his other tenants filth and classlessness, arguing with them. Mind you, in the time we were living there, there someone using the basement studio for prostitution, a couple of art students that were pretty cool except for the drumming and the sheer amount of pot they'd smoke, and the couple that snuck in a pit bull but at least did their pot smoking in the garage. It was a cheap apartment, and we were in the nicest unit he maintained. Dude was a slum lord who didn't do background checks.

But then it came time to move out, and it was a nightmare. There was the garage door he never fixed - that had not worked for nearly a year - that he wanted to charge us for. There was the fact that he wanted to redo the floors while we were still living in the apartment. He went into the apartment without our permission or telling us he was going to drop by beforehand. He refused to put anything in writing, and failed to even put the end date on the lease. He would call about showings two hours beforehand and then become angry if the apartment was not clean. I eventually had to try to sue him to get our security deposit back, and there was little else I could do about all of the other illegal things, because again - he refused to put anything in writing.

Hearing landlords talk about tenants and tenants talk about landlords - I would never willingly become one. Housing is too personal, too emotional. And there's shit you just don't know about a person before you get into that relationship.
posted by dinty_moore at 10:25 AM on March 6, 2017 [7 favorites]


  When I was a kid, I used to accompany my dad to work on weekends, where I would sabotage the tab-sets on his secretary's Selectric and toss every drawer in her desk in a frantic search for the cinnamon hard candy she favored.

Does that not scream “FUTURE LANDLORD” to you?
posted by scruss at 10:53 AM on March 6, 2017 [27 favorites]


The position of landlord fascinates me- what's a "good" landlord, what's "bad" landlord, and good or bad for who?
Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold.
—John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 5
This weekend, I idly googled to see if това́рищ was still something Russians called each other (as it turns out, not really), and this took me down a rabbit hole that traced the etymology of comrade, which is related to the word camera in the sense of a closed room. In the various Romance languages, a comrade was originally someone trusted to share one's room and its contents. (Landlord also has an interesting etymology which is humorously discussed here.)

With this fortuitous digression, then, I think that perhaps a bad landlord would be one who did not consider a tenant a comrade but would rent to that person anyway. That type of bad landlord is bad for the souls of both tenant and landlord.
posted by infinitewindow at 10:57 AM on March 6, 2017 [14 favorites]


It was a bit annoying but not a big problem

Did you inform the landlord?
posted by IndigoJones at 10:57 AM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


People will flush anything down a toilet

case in point: my 3 year old son flushed a fork down the toilet at night, which required me to pull the whole toilet last night at 9 PM.
posted by Dr. Twist at 11:03 AM on March 6, 2017 [6 favorites]


pull the whole toilet last night at 9 PM.

Toilet augur says that is not auspicious
posted by thelonius at 11:08 AM on March 6, 2017 [27 favorites]


When we moved to New Place 5 years ago, we rented for a year from the most incompetent landlord ever.

Backstory: We are two middle aged boring high-wage people with a single cat. We have rented since many years, pay on time, don't ask for much, take care of a place, always gotten security deposits back, etc. I caulked my last place's formica counter/wall seams so they wouldn't swell up from ordinary use, just as an example of 'take care of a place'. I was a landlord myself for 5 years.

We were up-front about having a cat, and looking for a pet-ok place. Signed a lease after a 3-day visit to New Area, landlord cashed a check, executed, done. It was a new-ish 4BR townhouse, and only the two of us, so very little wear & tear.

Two days before move-in, landlord, who is a new landlord, calls us: 'oh, my husband didn't realize you had a cat. He wanted to cancel the lease, but we settled on a non-refundable deposit.' Wha? No. Illegal, already executed lease with cat written in, No. See you in court if you insist, but, no.

Landlord pestered us at least monthly. Inspection after move-in, and was going to replace a WALL because there was a 1/2" ding from furniture; literally, she was going to charge us to replace the wall. And then more inspections to make sure there wasn't damage from the 8-pound middle-aged cat. Just a constant drip of pain in the ass.

At eight months in, landlord insists that we re-sign or decline (that's 120 days notice, and not legal). Because we declined to respond either way, landlord trucked people in & out for two weeks. You can imagine how much notice we got (none).

It was a nice enough place, and we would have stayed and paid on time and not made a fuss indefinitely, but ... we couldn't get out of there fast enough. The next tenants were 5 college kids.
posted by Dashy at 11:25 AM on March 6, 2017 [36 favorites]


Lesson one: People will flush anything down a toilet

I was flipping through some random magazine once while waiting at a train station, and came across a list of weird things plumbers have pulled out of clogged toilets; one of the items was a comforter, and this shattered every single one of my "act normal in public" circuits. I laughed long and loudly, gasping for air, tears streaming down my face, and I couldn't even explain to the friend I was with what my deal was because I was laughing too hard to speak.

A COMFORTER!!! DOWN A TOILET! You couldn't possibly do this on purpose ... right?? Was there like a tiny corner that somehow ended up in the bowl just as the flush was pressed, and did a tug-of war happen that was won by the commode? I'm picturing someone flapping their hands and making flustered little noises as their toilet clugs and gurgles and slooowly consumes this big puffy comforter, while they know there's just nothing they can do but watch. Even though it's their favorite comforter.

"My comforter!" **glorrrrrggggghhleglorglgluggg**

... and now I'm laugh/crying again, but at least this time I'm at home by myself.
posted by DingoMutt at 11:26 AM on March 6, 2017 [59 favorites]


what's "bad" landlord

I wish to nominate a jovial, avuncular retired couple I rented from fifteen years ago, who among other things: thought it was just fine to let themselves in to use the shower when tenants were out; got furious to the point of wordless pointing horror that the bedding in one bedroom was the wrong colour; called my mother to rant that there were used condoms under the bed (there were not); and eventually ended up with a police warning for screaming at me on the doorstep and threatening to "bring round heavies" because I didn't have my (useless, to be fair) flatmate's share of the rent on me in cash, on the day they'd chosen to arrive with no warning to collect it.
posted by Catseye at 11:35 AM on March 6, 2017 [14 favorites]


I serve as a commissioner on our local landlord-tenant board, and my god. I never, ever, ever want to be a landlord, but also, wow, a lot of landlords are either maliciously awful, or just plain don't know what they're getting themselves into. One of our duties is to arbitrate disputes as an alternative to small claims court and oh my gosh, the knots people tie themselves into to justify whatever demented thing they've done, and the emotions that flare up. I've been relatively lucky with my landlords, and I have seen far too much.
posted by bowtiesarecool at 11:38 AM on March 6, 2017 [10 favorites]


favorite bad landlord story: the guy who would legit lurk in the bushes in our front yard almost every weekend morning, presumably to get away from his wife

he evicted us for "being such good tenants" and i made a semi-serious offer to buy the shitbox duplex we were in from him... dude carted up some printed out excel spreadsheets to a dismal wendy's nearby and said the #VALUE errors on his where "where the value was"

now i am a landlord but im renting rooms in my house to my comrades which is different... but the law really wants you to be a dick

i can't express this enough to you o my brothers, landlord-tenant law really favors you being a dick
its a strange world
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 11:40 AM on March 6, 2017 [7 favorites]


pray you get the "good" kind that doesn't drive by your place looking for soda bottles every day, I guess

I don't understand. You think it's bad to pick up trash around a place you rent?
posted by msalt at 11:42 AM on March 6, 2017


the pattern I've seen is that residential rentals don't actually tend to make enough money that I'd personally consider it worth the effort. So it's not something I'm in a hurry to get into, any more than I want to run a restaurant.

My parents picked up a couple of rental properties cheap (as in, $8,000 to buy a house, in the 1970s - not down payment, entire cost) and my dad always said that it doesn't pencil out unless you do most of the repairs yourself.

I rent out my basement now, which corrects a lot of the incentives. I want good people as tenants, because they share my house, and I'm motivated to keep the place in very good repair because it's my main asset in life and any problems affect my living space pretty quickly too.

Also, it's a great investment because unlike stocks, you can put in effort to improve the value -- try volunteering at Apple to bring to stock price up -- and the first $250,000 in capital gains is tax free ($500K if you're filing jointly).
posted by msalt at 11:50 AM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


Toilet augur says that is not auspicious
toilet augar said "yer screwed, get your hand in there bub."
posted by Dr. Twist at 11:52 AM on March 6, 2017 [3 favorites]


Flushing things down the toilet: Once again I get to share this frame from Leisuretown.

As for bad landlords, a bad landlord would be the one who sent me a nice typed business letter to the forwarding address I'd left for the return of my security deposit informing me I wouldn't be getting my security deposit back because I hadn't left them a forwarding address, complete with a copy of the form I'd filled out with the forwarding address circled. (I got it, finally, after threatening to take them to small claims courts.)
posted by lagomorphius at 12:08 PM on March 6, 2017 [5 favorites]


The best landlord is one you never meet.

(Thus my preference for renting in large anonymous corporate apartment blocks)
posted by madajb at 12:08 PM on March 6, 2017 [20 favorites]


If you're running a business, you shouldn't be upset by the mess; you should be upset by the lack of payment. A lot of landlords seem to conflate the two and let it get way too personal.

It's so true. I run a small business and dealing with my landlords over the years is interesting. Some are total pros, but most are amateurs in way over their head. I would never think to blame my clients for incidental costs to my business, much less take it personally. Yet you can see most landlords eyes glaze over as they move the numbers around on their LANDLORD_RETIREMENT_FUND.XLS when you tell them something broke.

Every once in a while I sort of run the numbers back of the napkin on owning a rental property, and I can't ever imagine it being worth what the potential pay out is, unless it's multi-unit and you live in it.

Also, it's a great investment because unlike stocks, you can put in effort to improve the value

I consider this mindset the problem for most landlords. It's not an investment, it's a service business that involves a large asset. And for the return on that value-added effort, I'd rather do anything else. This is what the faceless corporate landlords/property managers get right and the mom and pop shops don't.
posted by bradbane at 12:11 PM on March 6, 2017 [14 favorites]


Having been a facilities manager in places from large scale museums to the small apartment building in which I am still, after twenty-nine years, the building super (which is how I can afford to live in a nice neighborhood), I can say without reservation that nothing will illustrate the stupidity, statistically speaking, and also the thoughtlessness, also statistically speaking, when factoring in the error percentage, of every living human.

I've seen things you wouldn't believe, and watched otherwise apparently civilized adults walk casually out of bathrooms after having undertaken their bathroom crimes.

You will not win an argument with me about flushable toilet wipes, and if you believe that it's okay to hover over a toilet seat while shitting, I will make a mental note about you in my litany of crimes.

I've had bad landlords, though, and the combination of the impossible stupidity of renters and the blamey, overwrought arrogance of bad landlords is greater than the greatest French surrealist theater ever.
posted by sonascope at 12:14 PM on March 6, 2017 [25 favorites]


nixon's meatloaf at 11:40 AM
This exactly describes my first landlord as a newlywed. Except he just hung out on our porch because the house was on an alley and had no front landscaping.

When we moved in they were living in the other side of the duplex, we sat on the couch to fill out forms and he said "don't worry if there's a lump that's just my guns". Should have noped out at that point.

Later when his wife left him she asked us to stop putting the rent through their mail slot and to mail it to her elsewhere instead, because he would just buy drugs. That's when he got really weird, living in the single garage between the two halves of the duplex and leaving his two vehicles in the spots supposedly reserved for us.

We realized after moving out and living elsewhere we were probably paying the water bill for the whole building. Wow we were such trusting babies.
posted by buildmyworld at 12:22 PM on March 6, 2017 [3 favorites]


What I've learned by becoming a landlord is that every ugly thing I ever thought about landlords while a tenant is even more obviously true when you see them interact with peers. A condo association meeting among rental property owners is like a Marx Brothers film, but without all the genuinely entertaining Harpo physical comedy bits.

It's no surprise that a career whose only qualifications are having rich parents and nothing more productive to spend your time on attracts useless idiots. But, the density of idiocy is shocking. I've yet to meet a landlord who I'd hire for any job under any circumstances, whether I've interacted with them as a tenant or a co-owner. I'm sure there are thousands of competent and thoughtful landlords in the world, but the odds sure aren't good.

The tenants, though, have been great: people with real skills and outside interests and entirely reasonable expectations, engaged in a straightforward business arrangement. When we occasionally interact, I enjoy hearing their stories.

(Getting out of the landlord business is a high priority. It's a long story.)
posted by eotvos at 12:27 PM on March 6, 2017 [15 favorites]


I've always thought the best place to be a landlord would be one of those super high end buildings in London where no one actually lives because it's just a place for Chinese and Russian plutocrats to stash value after illegally looting their countries.
posted by leotrotsky at 12:34 PM on March 6, 2017 [5 favorites]


My rent went down $9 this year and I have no idea why.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:44 PM on March 6, 2017 [3 favorites]


One thing I learned from my worst landlord is that it's a good idea, if you have the time, to do a quick search of your local county court records and see how many lawsuits they've filed or had filed against them
posted by Existential Dread at 12:48 PM on March 6, 2017 [26 favorites]


but the law really wants you to be a dick


What do you mean by this?
posted by the agents of KAOS at 12:52 PM on March 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


I rent a place from a small-time landlord (two buildings with maybe 6 units total), and I happened to get the place right after some tenants he had to evict for never paying their rent. In New York, that's an incredibly difficult and lengthy process.

So now, all I have to do is pay my rent and he fucking loves me, because he's so grateful that I'm not a gigantic deadbeat. I'm never leaving if I can avoid it. (Even if we did have an absolutely awful mouse problem for like a year (lol New York))
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:52 PM on March 6, 2017 [3 favorites]


My worst landlord was a perfectly nice older French guy in Quebec, who I thought was pretty chill until I discovered he'd been seeding the back yard with small apples to attract deer from a forested area a few streets away, and bear traps.
posted by Shepherd at 12:53 PM on March 6, 2017


I consider this mindset [that you can put in effort to improve the value] the problem for most landlords. It's not an investment, it's a service business that involves a large asset. And for the return on that value-added effort, I'd rather do anything else. This is what the faceless corporate landlords/property managers get right and the mom and pop shops don't.

Wow, I really don't get your point here. Why would fixing up the house rule out service to the people renting part of it?

Do you think faceless property managers with no stake in the maintenance of a property are better caretakers than an owner living in the same building? Thorstein Veblen would heartily disagree. That's the fallacy of modern capitalism, assuming that bureaucratic managers share the incentives of owners.

Or are you saying that property manager/owners care too much about fixing up the place and so can't extract maximum profits the way a slumlord would?
posted by msalt at 12:57 PM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


I don't understand. You think it's bad to pick up trash around a place you rent?


Definitely the most logical inference.
posted by listen, lady at 12:59 PM on March 6, 2017 [10 favorites]


Why would fixing up the house rule out service to the people renting part of it?

I mean every terrible landlord I have ever had treated me as a very inconvenient part of their retirement portfolio diversification. This almost always go hand in hand with treating every request as a personal affront to their livelihood instead of what I would call simply doing the job they signed up for. But I understand how a landlord can get jaded after years of late night phone calls to fix an overflowing toilet, because the return on their "investment" isn't actually all that great. That's why I'm not a landlord.

If you want an investment, buy an index fund.
posted by bradbane at 1:10 PM on March 6, 2017 [19 favorites]


Wow, I really don't get your point here. Why would fixing up the house rule out service to the people renting part of it?

I think the point is that this mindset leads to landlords viewing their properties as dollar amounts from which tenants can only subtract by causing wear and tear rather than people's houses. If landlords improve properties just because they want to have a nicer property to rent, sure, go nuts (although there are definitely negatives that come when this is accompanied by jacking up the rent to get a number they feel they are now owed), but if the end point of this investment is that it would be a really great way to make some money if only you'd didn't have to deal with those damn tenants, it sounds like what you really want is a bank account, because that's a place where the dollar amounts will only grow and you won't be upending people's lives because they spilled some wine on YOUR carpet or did something kind of stupid to YOUR sink.
posted by Copronymus at 1:11 PM on March 6, 2017 [16 favorites]


This whole concept of landlord is very alien to me. I can't imagine a landlord in Chile fixing a toilet. If somethings breaks, you (the renter) call and pay somebody to fix it.
If there's like some major damage to the roof you might go 50/50 on it, or on painting the place, maybe. But a toilet? No way.
posted by signal at 1:16 PM on March 6, 2017


Wow, I really don't get your point here. Why would fixing up the house rule out service to the people renting part of it?

It doesn't rule it out, but the way most people have been sold the idea of residential rentals is this: You own a thing. You let someone else use the thing because you're not, and money shows up! Yay money! If you put work in, you increase the value of the thing to sell it later! Yay more money!

Which contains several problems: One, real estate does not always appreciate. The building part not only does not appreciate, it depreciates. People take this depreciation happily on their taxes and ignore what it means: that you have to be continually investing more resources into this asset, not to make it worth more, but just to keep it worth what it used to be. The fact that the real estate value generally might appreciate for other reasons does not actually fix the roof or replace the furnace. Entropy is a reality a lot of people are not ready to grasp. Some effort you put in will yield permanent value increases, but that's more the exception than the rule. So, when people have to replace the carpet, they think of it as the tenant having destroyed the carpet. Occasionally? Occasionally, that's true. Just as often? They bought the cheapest carpet they could find and it's completely ratty after a couple years. The cheaper you get, the faster everything wears out; people will take this into account with their own home remodeling, but they aren't so generous with their rentals.

I definitely agree that the "this is my retirement plan" people are the worst. Nobody expects their 401k to need repainting every 12 months. It's certainly not a universal problem or anything, it's just... way more people than I would have expected when I started work in accounting, I suppose.
posted by Sequence at 1:20 PM on March 6, 2017 [30 favorites]


A COMFORTER!!! DOWN A TOILET!

That's the kind of detail that Stephen king could turn into a novel. In what state of mind or set of circumstances would cutting up a comforter and flushing the toilet all night be the best way to dispose of a comforter?
posted by Mr. Yuck at 1:21 PM on March 6, 2017 [6 favorites]


This whole concept of landlord is very alien to me. I can't imagine a landlord in Chile fixing a toilet. If somethings breaks, you (the renter) call and pay somebody to fix it.
If there's like some major damage to the roof you might go 50/50 on it, or on painting the place, maybe. But a toilet? No way.


Damn, the ROOF? That sounds awful.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:23 PM on March 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


One, real estate does not always appreciate. The building part not only does not appreciate, it depreciates. People take this depreciation happily on their taxes and ignore what it means: that you have to be continually investing more resources into this asset, not to make it worth more, but just to keep it worth what it used to be.

When people tell me I'm throwing away money by renting, I always think about when I moved into my first rented house, and two days later the landlord wound up having to get the entire driveway dug up with an excavator to replace the main sewer line. I wonder how many months of my rent that wound up costing. I've lived in two places that needed complete boiler replacements, one place that had to be treated for bedbugs, etc etc. To just plain not have to worry about any of that crap is so entirely worth it to me.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:27 PM on March 6, 2017 [19 favorites]


the agents of KAOS -- this is just me being a total unprofessional speculating weiner here -- when started looking at landlord/tenant law and the economics of the situation as a landlord it just made me realize all at once why there are half-assed slumlord type people abounding, because there aren't a lot of limits on what you can get away with as a landlord, so if you are willing to be a shit you can get away with a lot and "make money". this is not a particularly deep, learned, or meaningful opinion, i just remember it having a certain kind of emotional weirdness hover about my skull for a bit as i became an land-lord
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 1:29 PM on March 6, 2017 [8 favorites]


In what state of mind or set of circumstances would cutting up a comforter and flushing the toilet all night be the best way to dispose of a comforter?

First, be smart from the very beginning. (And don't clog your toilet.)
posted by asperity at 1:36 PM on March 6, 2017 [8 favorites]


My wife and I have been renting the same place for going on 16 years now, in part because the landlord is great (and has only raised our rent a grand total of $10/month in the past decade); we're one of the lucky ones, but we're also great tenants. A friend of mine bought a brand-new condo unit a few years ago and decided to rent it out...his very first (and last) tenant stopped paying rent after a few months and when he was finally evicted after several months of court proceedings, he trashed the place on his way out (said trashing included defecating in every single room in the apartment). After going through that my friend just fixed the place back up, sold it and got out of the game.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:38 PM on March 6, 2017 [3 favorites]


but the law really wants you to be a dick


What do you mean by this?


Even if you're not an outright dick, you have to be fastidious in order to protect yourself. Send late notices the next day, note damages, no matter how inconsequential, etc.

Because when time comes to collect or evict, or any other worst-case scenario, you need evidence and the clock starts often from first communication. Which means being a nice guy and giving leeway can lead to you just getting trampled over if your tenants suck.
posted by explosion at 1:49 PM on March 6, 2017 [4 favorites]


"Toilet augur says that is not auspicious"

I chuckled for five solid minutes.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:50 PM on March 6, 2017 [6 favorites]


Then my father gave me his first piece of landlord advice. "You never let the tenant start telling a story," he said. "That never ends well. A story always leads to an excuse or to an explanation, some reason you should give them a break."
I just knew "landlord advice" would be some nugget of amoral, dehumanising garbage.
posted by robcorr at 1:57 PM on March 6, 2017 [24 favorites]


case in point: my 3 year old son flushed a fork down the toilet at night, which required me to pull the whole toilet last night at 9 PM
Toilet augur says that is not auspicious

Result unclear. Flush some chickens down there to be sure.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 1:59 PM on March 6, 2017 [3 favorites]


"I've yet to meet a landlord who I'd hire for any job under any circumstances"

I would LOVE to see my current landlord in a job interview. Several people have independently compared him to Goofy, the cartoon dog.
posted by kevinbelt at 2:07 PM on March 6, 2017 [7 favorites]


My landlady is great, although the guy (I think it's her brother in law) who acts as our super is slow to get anything fixed if it's not a major issue. We have a window that has the bottom part of the frame hanging off one corner of the rest of the frame. But it's not harming anyone, so it hasn't been fixed in two years. On the other hand, we had our first rent increase a year ago and that was because we moved up to the newly renovated apartment (same floor plan, but now with ceiling fans, dishwasher and all new appliances).

We're the ones who were never raided by the SWAT team. I think that still counts for a lot after all these years.
posted by Hactar at 2:08 PM on March 6, 2017 [3 favorites]


Once, when living in a basement apartment, I came home to a big flooded mess. The on-site maintenance guy told me it was caused by a clogged sewage line. Apparently, the upstairs neighbors cleaned out their fridge by flushing everything down the toilet. This included a "barely eaten" rotisserie chicken. And no, they didn't have kids.
posted by galvanized unicorn at 2:14 PM on March 6, 2017 [4 favorites]


I never wanted to be a landlord, but since I am one I decided I wanted to be a "good" one. To me that means leaving my tenant in peace, but as soon as something's broken I get it fixed. My crowning achievement was getting a call Wednesday morning to say the roof was leaking and getting a new roof the next day.

A great landlord would be one that does all that and actually makes some money.
posted by welovelife at 2:19 PM on March 6, 2017 [26 favorites]


I have had precisely five conversations with my landlord in the past ten years. Three of those five conversations were instigated by me and followed this basic script:

ME: "Hi, I was just looking at my bank account online, and I noticed that it doesn't look like my rent check was cashed yet."

THEM: "....okay?"

ME: "So....can I confirm that you....RECEIVED it, at least?"

THEM: "Oh! Oh, yeah, we did, you're okay. We just haven't taken it to the bank yet."

ME: "ha ha - okay, thanks, I just wanted to check!"

I only have these conversations becuase we all periodically get these Very Stern Form Letters which discuss how getting the rent in on time is Very Important and that if we don't get them in on time that Fees Will Be Charged, so every time I see that they haven't cashed my rent check I end up paranoid that something got lost in the mail and I'm about to be Charged A Fee and I call them only to find out that the building manager just hasn't gotten over to make the deposit yet or something.

Although the building manager messed up the rent increase calculation in my favor last time so I'm inclined to forgive him
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:21 PM on March 6, 2017 [4 favorites]


that water then made its way down two additional floors before it finally stopped

Were you my neighbor? Heh. I had this exact scenario except I was the bottom floor apartment and the toilet two units above me was flooding. I woke up and was like "Why is it raining inside my apartment?"

That was not a fun day :P I got fairly lucky in that it at least didn't rain over my computers or TV...
posted by thefoxgod at 2:24 PM on March 6, 2017


explosion i'm not talking about documenting any of the interactions that need documenting ie lease infractions / late rent / bounced checks / whatever...

also lmao it cracks me up when landlords, it's always landlords, are like OMG. U CANT EVICT PEOPLE. NEED TO DOCUMENT SO MUCH. ALL THE TIME. OTHERWISE: SQUATTERS and usually people are so freaked out by eviction that they dip out if a landlord tells them to even if the tenants could contest. or stay longer. like, yes, i recognize it's important to follow these protocols so if shit really does fuck up you are left with a leg to stand on but... boy oh boy...

anyway
posted by nixon's meatloaf at 2:55 PM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


Has anybody tried the Johnny Jolter? This thread seems like a good place to ask.
posted by lagomorphius at 3:01 PM on March 6, 2017


If I hadn't spent 70% of 2016 being unemployed, I would have moved out months ago, because the garbage situation has become so ridiculous and just. I can't even. My landlord refuses to rent a dumpster, and instead has a wooden box with a lock. Tenants are only allowed to put trash in the box monday - friday 7am -5pm. Some people have just started putting household trash into the recycling bins. I don't want Saturday's house cleaning trash (that includes cat litter) to sit in my kitchen all weekend, so i put it on the back porch. But then I'm so tired of being scolded for attracting racoons that I don't even reply anymore.
posted by janepanic at 3:18 PM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


Corollary: People will put anything down a drain.

I've never been a landlord, but I learned that as a tenant when I sliced my finger on a razor cartridge that a previous tenant had dropped down the bathroom sink drain. Never in my life have I reached for antibiotic so fast. (Also I now know better than to stick my finger down the drain.)
posted by egregious theorem at 3:24 PM on March 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


I once flushed my keys down the toilet. It was an accident. An expensive one that involved a mobile locksmith.

My worst landlord story starts with me and my boyfriend driving home from putting down a security deposit on a summer rental having this conversation: "landlord's a little weird, huh?" "Yeah." "But not, like, a dick, just maybe a little incompetent." "I mean, it's just for two months. How bad could it be?"
posted by geegollygosh at 3:54 PM on March 6, 2017 [8 favorites]


I've seen things you wouldn't believe

Oh yeah ??? Like attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion ???
posted by Twang at 4:04 PM on March 6, 2017 [8 favorites]


I work in commercial property management after 8 years in low income residential management and yes that has made me a hard immoral person who doesn't listen to tenants stories.

A triple net lease (where the tenant pays taxes, insurance AND all the common area expenses ) is a wonderful thing.
posted by vespabelle at 4:33 PM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Low income housing subsidy scene is a great place for both tenant and landlord stories, but mostly landlord stories.

The lick the fire dectector batteries for a good one

Mr I only work shirtless in Chicago winters and my office is just one long sexual harassment lawsuit

To your black tenent has black friends (yes, I'm aware..how are you a landlord in chicago?)

Seriously could you not landlord on the treadmill in low cut shirts / our divorse is also your problem aka my mom is crazy. And I will evict... Next year. Okok.
posted by AlexiaSky at 4:35 PM on March 6, 2017


When my college roommates and I moved into a hundred year old farmhouse house right off campus (not a single straight angle in the place, due to the foundation settling), our landlord had just acquired it a few months earlier. We proceeded, through totally normal use, to break every single elderly appliance in the place, from the dishwasher on our very first night in residence, to the water heater, six months later. Every single thing we broke was replaced immediately with something brand new, and when we broke the very last thing, he bought us a fancy six pack of beer in celebration.

Just before we graduated, he let us know that he was going to start showing the place to new renters. We made sure to have chocolate chip cookies in the oven when he brought the first batch over, and they signed a lease on the spot.

Best landlord/tenant relationship of my life.
posted by merriment at 4:51 PM on March 6, 2017 [23 favorites]


I've seen things you wouldn't believe

Oh yeah ??? Like attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion ???


I've sometimes wondered how well the plumbing worked in J.F. Sebastian's apartment.
posted by lagomorphius at 5:52 PM on March 6, 2017 [4 favorites]


I just knew "landlord advice" would be some nugget of amoral, dehumanising garbage.

If you RTFA to the end, you'd see where the author cites several examples of how his father cut people breaks and went above and beyond what was called out in the lease. The reality is any good business person knows the law gives zero shits if you're a good guy. It only cares about what is in the contract and did you abide by the terms? An even better business person knows how to recognize a BS story from the real deal and that when they are cutting someone a break, it is a human -- not business-- decision.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 6:05 PM on March 6, 2017 [5 favorites]


Landlording is a fair living, a statement I feel confident making having spent the last ten years of my life being a landlord. I also grew up as the child of a landlord, so it's not like I'm still in the honeymoon phase. It's not a real classy sort of living, not like where you wear a suit and stand up in court to defend how come Jermayne had that twenty dollar bag of heroin on him (My brother is an attorney.) but it's a living.

Mostly, tenants do not call you because of imaginary issues. If the tenant is calling, the tenant has a real problem or thinks they do.

Sometimes it's inconvenient. That's part of the job.
Sometimes it's preventable idiocy. Also part of the job.
Sometimes it's on a weekend. Part of the job.

If you can't deal with stuff like that, probably you should get a different job.

This past Sunday, about noon, tenant called me b/c of no heat. "Furnace isn't working." says tenant. He is an older gentleman, probably somewhere north of sixty, but a decent tenant. It's cold, was down in the teens overnight, and wanting heat at this point is totally reasonable.

Me: "Do you have fuel?" (This is a small house. Tenant is responsible for buying his own fuel oil.)

Tenant: "Yes."

Me: "Okay, I'll be in to take a look at it."

(twenty minutes later I am in front of the non-running furnace)

I hit the button. Furnace does not light.

I go to bleed the fuel line. This is largely to see that there is fuel, that the filters (which we change every year in August as part of Heating Season Prep) are still good, and that the pump is actually, y'know, pumping the fuel to the furnace.

It blows bubbles at me. (For people who don't bleed oil furnace lines very often, the reason it is blowing bubbles is because the fuel tank contains AIR instead of HEATING OIL. If the tank contained heating oil, the bleed valve would be spraying out fuel oil instead of bubbles.)

"I think you're out of fuel."

"I'm not sure how that's possible."

"Well, let's look at the tank." I bang on the tank, which makes an "empty tank" sound as opposed to a full tank sound. I examine the fuel gauge, which says E. I take off the cap of the fuel tank and put a long stick down the tank to see if it comes back with any fuel on it. It comes back dry, having impacted the bottom of the tank without having encountered any fuel on the way to the bottom of the tank.

"Seriously, I think the problem here is that you need fuel oil." (Tenant looks incredulous.) "Tell ya what. Imma go get my cans and buy some off-road diesel, like ten gallons, and pour it in this tank here. And then I'm gonna bleed the line of air and see if the furnace fires up. And if it does, then you're going to pay me for the ten gallons of diesel, okay?"

(Off-road diesel is chemically identical (except for the dye) to home heating oil for oil furnaces. It costs a little more b/c of the taxes but it won't hurt your furnace or anything and it's the quickest way to get something to put in a furnace of a Sunday afternoon.)

"I guess so."

"Let's just try it, okay? If it doesn't work, I'll comp you the oil."

I go. I get the off-road diesel. I and the back of my truck now smell like off-road diesel. I pour it in the tank and bleed the line. As soon as the bleeder output turns from frothy pink foam to a clear stream of red, I shut the bleed valve and the furnace fires like a trooper. Immediately.

There is no benefit to be had in telling the tenant he is an idiot who has screwed up my Sunday. He's an older gent, doesn't bust up the place, pays his rent on time like clockwork, and there is no margin ragging on him. He's probably already embarrassed as hell.

"Looks like she's working now. I'll have M at the office send you a copy of the receipt for the fuel so that you can get it paid. Glad it wasn't anything more complicated than that. Call me if you have any more problems with it."
posted by which_chick at 6:37 PM on March 6, 2017 [26 favorites]


I've had exactly one good landlord, although in retrospect he was probably a building manager or something. He was in his 90s, and his apartment was right next door to mine, so I got to know him pretty well.

He'd pretty much just have his door open and his coffee pot on all day long, and people would come in and sit around his kitchen table. It was mostly older and younger people, not many people in their 30s through 50s or so. He knew and seemed to like everyone there, and he always had these affectionate little stories about everyone, so most of us kind of got to know each other through him. For example, before I moved in, he warned me that the woman who lived below me whistled all the time, but he assured me that she was a really good whistler, so I was lucky to be right above her where I would get the best acoustics, and I'm pretty sure that that played a big role in my not being bothered by it. He made the whole place just kind of friendly. Sometimes, we'd all have our doors open in the afternoons, going and out of each others' apartments like in a sitcom. One day, I had a friend over and we all had our doors open because the guys across from me were trying to win radio station contests, so one would get on the phone, and another one would run out into the hall shouting trivia questions that we were all pitching in to answer. I don't know if I even would have realized that was unusual if my friend hadn't told me. (I was young, so my notion of normal was pretty malleable.)

It was a weird old building, the apartments were all really strangely set up, and the rents were cheap, so it was probably the worst maintained rental I've lived in, but he was a great landlord or manager or whatever he was.
posted by ernielundquist at 6:49 PM on March 6, 2017 [18 favorites]


Aww, you know, fuck this guy. No pets? Where are people with animals meant to go? This is what security deposits and regular inspections are for. People flushing fucking artichokes down his toilets, but somehow pet lizards are a big no-no. Show me a pet cat who has kicked a hole through a door or a dog that smashed a sink out of the wall. No, that's all people. Concerned about your precious shithole property? Ban people from it.
posted by turbid dahlia at 7:06 PM on March 6, 2017 [12 favorites]


to defend how come Jermayne had that twenty dollar bag of heroin on him

excuse me?
posted by listen, lady at 7:12 PM on March 6, 2017 [12 favorites]


What I learned as a landlord: Charge a bit below market and you get your pick of the tenants.

In some jurisdictions, this might not be legal. Seattle recently passed a ruling that forces landlords to select the "first eligible tenant", aimed at reducing discrimination.
posted by rh at 8:24 PM on March 6, 2017


It was very strange for me when we bought our place--previously a house that had been being used as low-income rental property--and moved into it with our roomie, promptly going from tenants to landlords without much transition at all. (I mean, we also live here, but the roomie pays rent.) It was and is a slapdash sort of affair, with the bare minimum put into it since it was built thirty years ago, and the previous landlord was fairly clearly some sort of slumlord asshole who didn't care much about the property itself.

I mean, half the reason we bought the place was because my parents belatedly and guiltily passed us the same $5,000 gift "for our honeymoon" two years after I got married that they intended to give my sister and her fiancee ahead of me, shortly before they slapped down an additional $20k for my sister's wedding. (I got guilt trips and warnings that my wife was using me for the green card for mine, like all those foreign Canadian scoundrels in same-sex relationships, but what the hell ever.) And I wanted to put that money somewhere where I could not be expected to use it to go and visit anyone, so... home ownership seemed like a not-bad idea, especially in a rental market that raises the rent about fifty to a hundred bucks every year for the past five. And this place was what was in our budget, pretty well.

So when the previous tenants moved out, demanding a security deposit back in full "because we bought the place as is" despite mountains of garbage by the back alley, walls covered in crayon, a broken window that needed to be replaced, shoe prints on the ceiling, a kitchen so filthy I was afraid to touch it, and most mysteriously, a large dead cichlid fish in the front garden.... I suddenly had a touch more sympathy for the skeptical landlords I'd dealt with over the years. (We did not refund said deposit.) And when the main water line unexpectedly burst, or when my cat decided he was going to wander around in the ceiling, or when the HVAC broke and we were all without air conditioning for most of July in Texas because we'd been contracting for a new one with a company that kept mysteriously not being able to install the one we had contracted to purchase to start with or even repair the one we had....

...well, I've had some regrets about home ownership and being responsible for my own place, let me tell you.

On the other hand, renting a spare room to our roomie has worked out very well--I'm with whoever pointed out that offering rent slightly below market rent is the best way to ensure that you have the very best tenant, and the roomie was a friend first anyway. We joke that her rent is really just paying for improvements on the house, and it's been a real win for everyone. We'll see if finding a second tenant in a few months keeps us on the same path, but I'm optimistic. That said, if we opt to rent the place out instead of selling it when my job inevitably makes me move, I'm damn well going through a rental management service.
posted by sciatrix at 8:28 PM on March 6, 2017 [2 favorites]


I have been a renter my entire life, since childhood. I guess that means my parents were renters but you know what I mean. We were always paycheck to paycheck people so I grew up being made to answer the phone when my folks thought it might be the landlord because we were late or something. We always rented houses from individual owners who owned as a sideline. My folks set me up to always think of landlords as being essentially evil, who will do the absolute least for you in any situation. Then I grew up and I worked for a large property management company.

We had 500+ unit buildings owned by investment corporations or by the company itself as well as managing smaller properties for individual owners. The smaller properties were almost all really cool older buildings with a lot of character. (This was in Seattle during the late 90s so I imagine a lot of these buildings are actually gone now, think Capital Hill and Queen Anne areas if you are familiar with it.) The big properties were boring, soulless boxy ugly places out on the edges of the metropolitan area that were immaculately maintained because they were large enough to offset problem renters and units going out of service for a period of time. Those properties made big money. The small properties had so many problems and had shitty maintenance because the owners would not spend any money unless they absolutely had to. They had slim profit margins because if one unit went down in a ten unit building for any amount of time due to renters fuck ups or simply old age or a busted main, well, you have to eat it. The individual owners of small properties thought of their renters as an enemy that was eating up their money, and the renters thought of the owners as the enemy that was not providing a good product but still taking their money. But, people still wanted to live in these properties because they were attractive cool old buildings in good locations. Not the best situation.

When I left, that company was trying to get out entirely of the small building gig because it was so hopeless. They had excellent large properties that were run professionally and made money and then the small buildings where every expense had to be ok'd by the owners so they ended up kind of shitty. They could not be made to see how preventative maintenance would save money in the long run. It always, always turned into disaster management and nickel and dime bullshit. The only small buildings that did well were the ones where the actual owner was completely hands off. We provided monthly, quarterly and yearly reports. They should definitely have gotten rid of at least monthlies for the small owners because it made them crazy.

Even still, now I've been out of the business for many years, I still struggle with the ingrained feeling that all landlords are evil, even though I know different. It really doesn't have to be that way. It really makes a difference who you rent from and where you want to live and what you are willing to put up with. I think one of the major problems are people going into the rental business without realizing what business means. If you are dealing with the amount of money that even small investment properties mean you kinda need to understand business, finance, construction etc. Everybody seems to think it is just something everybody can do. It is not.
posted by Belle O'Cosity at 8:30 PM on March 6, 2017 [6 favorites]


In some jurisdictions, this might not be legal. Seattle recently passed a ruling that forces landlords to select the "first eligible tenant", aimed at reducing discrimination.

Well we picked the Brazilian engineer with a wife and kid who works at Google so anyone who wants to claim discrimination is going to find it difficult. Nice guy. It's kind of self regulating though, the sticker price of $2850/mo would scare off most people with bad credit.
posted by Talez at 8:30 PM on March 6, 2017


In what state of mind or set of circumstances would cutting up a comforter and flushing the toilet all night be the best way to dispose of a comforter?


Well, I just sat and thought about it for a bit, and I came up with.... Getting rid of murder evidence. Granted, that had a really high chance of backfiring. But... Maybe they panicked?
posted by greermahoney at 8:36 PM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


Renter my whole life. I've usually moved every 1-2 years. Was never shy about calling in landlords to fix stuff. I figured, this is why I rent and don't own, right? Then came bay area housing boom, my city doesn't have rent control, and I'm stuck where I am. It's not a super-nice place, but man, they've only raised the rent $50 in 5 years, and this place was$500 undervalued when I got it. So...I just shut up about anything wrong. Toilet clogs, I fix it. Burner stopped working, I live without it. I just don't want to do anything that could possibly call attention to the fact that I'm still here and paying this little. The neighbors in my building literally pay twice what I do.
posted by greermahoney at 8:50 PM on March 6, 2017 [6 favorites]


Aww, you know, fuck this guy. No pets? Where are people with animals meant to go? This is what security deposits and regular inspections are for.

First thing I did when we bought our home was buy a basketball hoop for in front of the house. Second thing was get a dog. We have two now and it's a constant battle to keep them from wrecking the place. I love em both but there's no way I'd rent the place to someone else that had mutts like these in tow.
posted by The Hamms Bear at 9:51 PM on March 6, 2017 [1 favorite]


14 years of on site management + on call for other properties, the super who the owner/managers called to go look at problems at all the properties because I could diagnose electrical, plumbing, HVAC, structural problems, and FIX the ones that did not require a licensed electrician, plumber, certified boiler repair welder, etc. And, frankly, a lot of things that technically DID require a licensed contractor.

Anything that will fit (and hella stuff that didn't!) has been flushed down toilets... The kids who broke the TV remote while parents were out and tried to hide the deed by flushing the pieces were merely amusing. Worst thing? Dental floss, a couple years worth from 2 legal adults. Hung up in old cast iron waste pipes in many places, all the way from 3rd floor bathroom to sewer mains- randomly clogging by catching (and later releasing) the paper and, ah, other matter... The lower clogs resulting in the downstairs neighbors being flooded when upper floors flushed or showered. The dreaded intermitent problem, only happens when no one is there to agree that there IS a problem, goes away by the time a plumber (or myself) could show up. Fecking idiots who were so outraged at the occasional/random backups and toilet water slopping onto the bathroom floor, repeatedly calling or banging on my door to complain at low single digits in the am, on weekends, holidays, any time at all? Angrily claimed that EVERYONE they knew always flushed their WAXED NYLON TOTALLY NON BIO-DEGRADABLE dental floss, it was the correct thing to do with it, and why were they being billed for all the hours and pulling/replaceing of the toilet, many cleanups of their downstair neighbor's bathroom floors, including my hands picking up the fore mentioned 3rd floor floss tosser's turds from floors of basement, first and second floor baths.

Yes, still bitter.
posted by bert2368 at 10:07 PM on March 6, 2017 [4 favorites]


I'm amazed how many women have told me that they had no idea it was bad to flush tampons or even pads. (Spoiler: very bad.) Hell, a wet wipe is a very bad thing to flush. I don't even think paper towels are a good idea.
posted by msalt at 12:21 AM on March 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


In what state of mind or set of circumstances would cutting up a comforter and flushing the toilet all night be the best way to dispose of a comforter?


Well, I just sat and thought about it for a bit, and I came up with.... Getting rid of murder evidence. Granted, that had a really high chance of backfiring. But... Maybe they panicked?


Can't remember the details, but at least one serial killer was caught because they didn't realize chopping up their victims into tiny pieces and putting the pieces down the toilet and the sink wasn't a good idea.
posted by lagomorphius at 6:29 AM on March 7, 2017


the pattern I've seen is that residential rentals don't actually tend to make enough money that I'd personally consider it worth the effort.

After a job change, we rented our house from halfway around the country. Turns out after taking into account expenses and repairs, we should have been charging about $300 more per month.

Really there were only 2 advantages: we were able to deduct every expense from our taxes. Garage door repair, pest control, etc. None of that is deductible if you're not landlording. The other was that we were able to wait out the housing slump (no offers in two months--cut to 2 years later--4 offers the first weekend it was listed, with all its obvious rental glory).

(I'm also pretty proud of the fact that both our renters and the people who bought the house were families of color, the house was located in an 80% white zipcode. Of course that was really only luck as we didn't meet either of the families until after contracts were signed.)

Do you think faceless property managers with no stake in the maintenance of a property are better caretakers than an owner living in the same building? Thorstein Veblen would heartily disagree. That's the fallacy of modern capitalism, assuming that bureaucratic managers share the incentives of owners.

It's not so much that they are better caretakers, more that the corporate culture is more likely to follow the law to the letter, where someone who is personally renting their own property may feel like they can skirt the law, either because they don't know the laws that well or because they don't care. It's kind of the same as the difference between working as one of a few employees for the owner of a small company and working in a corporation. When there's an HR problem, you have an avenue for recourse with the corporation, not so much with the small business owner.
posted by LizBoBiz at 6:38 AM on March 7, 2017 [4 favorites]




I laughed at the title of the post because I've actually said that one of the main reasons I never want to be a landlord is because so many people fuck up toilets by flushing the most ridiculous things. I know this from years of experience with dozens and dozens of roommates and many toilet malfunctions. I have given many this is how a toilet and pipes work lectures after either fixing the problem myself (faster then getting someone in) or after the fixer has left.
posted by Jalliah at 6:56 AM on March 7, 2017


my landlords live on the second floor, i live on the third. They think our cats' 4 am buffalo stampedes and our cockatiel's 7 am screeches are cute.
posted by superior julie at 7:33 AM on March 7, 2017


superior julie: my landlords live on the second floor

Are they named Luka?
posted by hanov3r at 8:48 AM on March 7, 2017 [3 favorites]


I don't even think paper towels are a good idea.

I recently learned that one shouldn't even be flushing facial tissues.
posted by Lexica at 8:53 AM on March 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


I had a guest over last year, a couple of months into renting my new apartment. Somehow she managed to flush the toilet roll holder down the toilet. Not the toilet roll - it was empty and she was trying to be a good guest and replace it with the spare! No, the actual toilet roll holder, that little springy tube thingy. It went all the way in.
I only have one bathroom. Its not that big of an apartment.
My building manager got me a plumber right away who snaked the toilet, but we never did recover that toilet roll holder. Its still sitting in the pipes, somewhere beyond the plumber's reach. He said it was likely in the city's pipes now.
I did have to pay for it, since it was my fault (well, my guest paid, because accidental toilet roll holder flushing aside, she's a pretty decent human person). But that is my story of weird things in toilets in rental properties. Its not always on purpose.
posted by sandraregina at 8:56 AM on March 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


There are lots of good reasons to make toilet-lid-closed the default position at all times when you're not at that moment using the toilet for its intended purpose, but accidental flushings are probably the best reason.
posted by asperity at 9:04 AM on March 7, 2017 [4 favorites]


In my dorm in China we weren't even allowed to flush toilet paper. There was a little trash can next to the toilet for it.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:00 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


A bad landlord is one who keeps the circuit breakers for the building under lock and key but then refuses to send the person with the key over if one of them blows. Which they do at least twice a week, because the building wiring is definitely not even remotely up to code, and basically if more than one apartment (out of eight) turns on a toaster oven, hair dryer, or a/c unit at the same time, that shit is gonna blow.

And a worse landlord is the one who literally sends a dude to stand outside your door menacingly for an entire day when you finally, after 24 hours of no power, call the city to get the lock removed and the circuit breaker flipped.

We didn't make it through our whole lease there, not even close. [shudder]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:42 AM on March 7, 2017 [5 favorites]


In my dorm in China we weren't even allowed to flush toilet paper. There was a little trash can next to the toilet for it.

When I worked in Iraq, we had the same issue (pipes aren't designed for it and aren't big enough, I believe). We had signs up, but no one (American) believed them, because ha ha of course you can flush toilet paper that's what it's for how silly.

I added it as a slide to the orientation packet. And I put it in the welcome letter. And I told people when they signed in. And I had the housing manager remind them when she showed them to their room.

And we still had about one new person out of five who ended up clogging a toilet. People are dumb, and they're particularly dumb about toilets.
posted by Etrigan at 10:52 AM on March 7, 2017 [4 favorites]


In my dorm in China we weren't even allowed to flush toilet paper. There was a little trash can next to the toilet for it.

"The little bin" is SOP in South America. But the advantage is ... you can use those otherwise pipe-clogging moist wipes!
posted by lagomorphius at 11:27 AM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


My building manager got me a plumber right away who snaked the toilet, but we never did recover that toilet roll holder. Its still sitting in the pipes, somewhere beyond the plumber's reach. He said it was likely in the city's pipes now.

A general question (for which this may or may not be the appropriate place): if something inappropriate gets flushed (by a guest of course), but there is no backup or any other sign of a problem, should one still call their landlord/a plumber?
posted by R a c h e l at 12:01 PM on March 7, 2017


I'm amazed how many women have told me that they had no idea it was bad to flush tampons or even pads. (Spoiler: very bad.) Hell, a wet wipe is a very bad thing to flush. I don't even think paper towels are a good idea.

I'm flashing back to when my office had to put up 'DO NOT FLUSH TAMPONS DOWN THE TOILET' signs in the bathroom stalls. I started wondering how people to get to employment age and not know that already, but then one of my (female) coworkers just says "It wouldn't be a problem if we worked in a building with decent plumbing".

So. Not only are there people who can get to adulthood without knowing this, but there are women out there who don't believe it once they are told.
posted by dinty_moore at 12:12 PM on March 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


which required me to pull the whole toilet last night at 9 PM

Having been a (commercial) property manager for a while, I can tell you that leaks of any kind are required to occur at night. Preferably when one has a long-planned vacation scheduled to start that evening, or concert tickets.
posted by vignettist at 12:17 PM on March 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


I didn't realize tampons were a no until someone told me as an adult. I'm still not sure precisely WHY it's bad but I mean, I believe it.

People with plumbing knowledge, how do you feel about coffee grounds down the toilet?
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:19 PM on March 7, 2017



People with plumbing knowledge, how do you feel about coffee grounds down the toilet?


Good to the last drop?
posted by lagomorphius at 12:25 PM on March 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


I'm flashing back to when my office had to put up 'DO NOT FLUSH TAMPONS DOWN THE TOILET' signs in the bathroom stalls. I started wondering how people to get to employment age and not know that already

FINE, I'll own up: I was one of these people into my twenties, because for some reason I thought "do not flush tampons" meant "do not flush tampon applicators". I don't know why I thought this! You learn about tampons at 12, and somehow the impression that the mandate was about the giant plastic thing instead of the tiny cotton thing stuck with me, despite, in retrospect, this being abject nonsense. I dutifully did not flush tampon applicators, but tampons seemed about as dangerous to plumbing as a cotton ball. (I never NEVER flushed pads.)

Anyway, I eventually learned my lesson, the end.

Plus, not to be a downer, but I (like many adolescent girls) had at least a few instances of being scolded because I put a used pad in the trash, and didn't wrap it enough, and my fragile brother saw the glimpse of a red edge and FREAKED OUT, and obviously that was my fault for not taking his delicate sensibilities into account. Anecdata, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of women flushed tampons to avoid the menstruation-shaming that goes on in the world. Women get yelled at/broken up with for keeping unused menstrual products in closed bathroom cabinets. Amp that up quite a bit for products that have served their intended purpose.

My apologies to any former landlords who suffered at my hands. I thought I was following the rules, I swear.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 12:35 PM on March 7, 2017 [9 favorites]


Here's the thing about tampons (or floss, or candy wrappers or condoms or anything other than TP, which is designed to dissolve immediately in water and is made of recycled paper to boot):

Sewer pipes are not large. What, 2-3 inches? You get a clogged toilet if anything solid catches in one. They can catch on a lot of things, a little scrap of metal on the side of the pipe, a pipe joint, or tree roots that have invaded the pipe. It then easily makes a dam, and all the water and bad stuff had nowhere to go but back up the nearest input.

But toilets are on a stack, one over the other. Bathrooms will be in the same place on every floor and all go into one shared pipe. If you're in a tall building and you're on the bottom, everybody else's stuff pours down the stack until the blockage, and then water pressure pushes it back up the nearest outlet, which may be your toilet or even shower drain.

If it's raining, the gutters probably pour into the same pipe and add a lot of water pressure. They don't dilute the waste nearly as much as you'd hope, either. And that water can turn a standard plugged toilet into a brown geyser. (ask me how I know).

What's confusing is that you can flush tampons or condoms or whatever for years with no problem, until something catches on that little notch just right. (Maybe a condom caught in floss traps a tampon.) And then your night is ruined, and it costs several hundred dollars as well. Naturally the problem is worse the older your plumbing or building is.
posted by msalt at 12:46 PM on March 7, 2017 [3 favorites]


but I (like many adolescent girls) had at least a few instances of being scolded because I put a used pad in the trash, and didn't wrap it enough, and my fragile brother saw the glimpse of a red edge and FREAKED OUT, and obviously that was my fault for not taking his delicate sensibilities into account.

This.
posted by vignettist at 12:50 PM on March 7, 2017 [3 favorites]


Plus, not to be a downer, but I (like many adolescent girls) had at least a few instances of being scolded because I put a used pad in the trash, and didn't wrap it enough, and my fragile brother saw the glimpse of a red edge and FREAKED OUT, and obviously that was my fault for not taking his delicate sensibilities into account. Anecdata, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of women flushed tampons to avoid the menstruation-shaming that goes on in the world. Women get yelled at/broken up with for keeping unused menstrual products in closed bathroom cabinets. Amp that up quite a bit for products that have served their intended purpose.

See, part of my disbelief was that I learned this by having clogged toilets being blamed on me as the only teenage girl in the house who probably flushed a tampon down the toilet.

I also had the brothers freaking out because of used pads (and clean pads!) - for the longest time I threw away the actual tampon wrappers in my bedroom trash instead, but the horror of causing a shitsplosion because of my dirty, dirty menstrual cycle was worse.
posted by dinty_moore at 12:54 PM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


Actually, now that I think of it, I got blamed for the flushing the tampon down the toilet back when I was exclusively using pads (and not flushing those down the toilet, either).
posted by dinty_moore at 12:56 PM on March 7, 2017


People with plumbing knowledge, how do you feel about coffee grounds down the toilet?

Why would you do this?
posted by thelonius at 1:26 PM on March 7, 2017


Why would you do this?

Poorly designed french press that left the grounds too liquidy to throw in the trash. Couldn't figure out what else to do with them (apartment, so no easy access to composting facilities). (I have since replaced the french press. I'm curious because it had never crossed my mind that this might be a bad thing to do until a friend scolded me, and I don't know which of us is right.)
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:37 PM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


We keep getting told you should only flush toilet paper but speak to any sewage worker and they'll talk about all the cocaine and condoms and fish heads they're constantly finding at the plant so obviously it's perfectly fine to flush whatever the hell you want.
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:17 PM on March 7, 2017


Poorly designed french press that left the grounds too liquidy to throw in the trash. Couldn't figure out what else to do with them (apartment, so no easy access to composting facilities). (I have since replaced the french press. I'm curious because it had never crossed my mind that this might be a bad thing to do until a friend scolded me, and I don't know which of us is right.)

So, generally, you want to only throw away items that will quickly break down in water down the toilet (but also not drugs, which don't really get treated in sewage treatment plants, so then we end up dumping those drugs into the waterways). Coffee grounds don't really break down, but on the other hand, they're likely to move along with a good plunging or a little bit of force - so long as there isn't another object for them to cling onto. So not ideal, but also probably not going to cause any issues further down the road without a little bit of help.
posted by dinty_moore at 2:37 PM on March 7, 2017 [2 favorites]


all the cocaine and condoms and fish heads

that was a fun night
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:46 PM on March 7, 2017 [6 favorites]


I think you have to distinguish between single family home rentals and reasonably large apartment buildings. SF homes are not priced as rental property but it is easy to get a loan and buy one, therefore there are a lot of people who are landlords who don't have either the personality or training to be a good one.
posted by Pembquist at 3:07 PM on March 7, 2017


My dad was a landlord while I was growing up, although to be honest, in retrospect he was more of a really kindly slumlord (these were really cheap rooms, and the rental market back there back then was mostly just poorer people, as houses were cheaper at the time.). He had two buildings, both big old houses that had been converted to have 3-5 one bedroom apartments, and he rented almost exclusively to college students and the shadiest people you will ever meet in your life. The apartments weren't great, but dad is the sort of landlord that everything is at least functional, if not pretty. I used to tag along with him a lot. The shady people generate the best stories, here's a few:

Dad is renting out a room to a couple, young, no kids, they seem like good tenants for a while, no problems, pay the rent on time. Then one night at about 1 am we get a phone call from the police, who are informing us that they have followed some robbery suspects to his building and would he please come there now? He gets up and spends the entire night dealing with the situation, which was that the couple had decided to rob a store and had taken the safe up there with them and were trying to break it open, yelling at each other and the cops and really just having a good-old fashioned meth-freakout. Things go nuts, she shoots him once and he cuts her up pretty bad with a knife, and the police storm the building and take the doors off the hinges and everyone is under arrest. The police seal the scene for a couple days, and then tell dad that it's his apartment again. Dad inquires as to what exactly he's supposed to do with an apartment with a carpet utterly soaked in blood and a doorway that was put in, and they tell him that they call in a bio-waste remediation place from out of town. Bio-waste remediation place is incredibly expensive, cut to my father, his partner and myself rolling up a blood soaked carpet and scrubbing and scrubbing the wood. I was around 12.

Dad's got this one long-term guy, been renting for years, which was rare for his buildings, decent tenant, sometimes a little flaky on rent but it always shows up. Dad's only issue with him is that he smoked a ton of cigarettes inside, which was allowed, but this guy was like a 2 pack a day smoker while he was home, I went in there with him to check on something and there were mounds of butts. The building is having electrical issues, so my dad is looking everywhere trying to figure out the ancient wiring, and discovers the issue, that this guy has a full-on little grow-room in his closet with a bunch of marijuana plants. Now dad is faced with a conundrum, he'd rather this guy not be doing that, dad not being a fan of drugs or the production of them in his buildings, but this is in SD, where this guy would be getting the full-on felony treatment, decades in jail, and he's been a fairly good tenant up till now, and those were hard to come by. Dad decides to just tell the dude to stop, he's messing up the rest of the building with brownouts and that he doesn't want to have to deal with the police over this. Guess what, dude didn't stop and also eventually got caught somehow, leading to another call from the police, but this time with awkward dad lying about his total lack of knowledge.

For about 3 years we had a guy, living solo in one of the smallest rooms we had. He was about 6 foot and weighed about 110, just skin and bones, working at a butchering plant. He was a decent enough guy, but he developed the creepiest habit. At some point dad had told him our address so he could drop off his rent instead of just leaving it in the box at the apartment, and that reminded him why we have that box, as this guy started showing up to drop off his rent in person every time, and he also started coming at around 4:15, when my mom would be home from work cooking dinner and dad would still be gone, and he'd just sit at the table and make the most inane of small talk, all the while angling to get a dinner invite. This is all strange, but he would also always come straight from work, so he was a gaunt looking, unkempt man in a bloody smock with blood still staining his hands, and my mom is a smaller lady and very afraid of most things. There was no degree of hinting that would work on this man, it took dad getting home and damn near pulling the guy out of his seat every single month. Looking back, I can feel more charitable, the guy was probably just really lonely and wanted a real dinner with other people, but at the time it was the tensest day of every month.

Dad goes to one building to open the vents and turn on the ancient furnace (I swear to god it was part cast iron), and over the next week gets calls about a smell. He figures it's just normal old furnace stuff and tells them it'll get better. It doesn't, and he has to go check it out. Somehow an entire nest of squirrels has fallen deep into the furnace, and have been being slowly cooked and reheated a couple times a day. They were the grimmest looking thing.

That's just on top of all the normal, people-are-idiots style problems. I can back up that toilets and plumbing are founts of misery, but also consider the humble communal washing machine. People will put things in communal washing machines that they wouldn't let in their house, clothes caked with clay and mud and the worst of bodily fluids, and they'll leave the lint trap uncleaned until it starts to smell smoldery and sometimes, just sometimes, they leave their own damned clothes in the machine until they just start to smell moldy, damning that washer for eternity.

In summation, renting space to someone isn't just a consideration of upkeep costs and rent, it's a consideration of how insanely criminal or creepy someone who seems perfectly normal on a walk-through can turn out.
posted by neonrev at 3:59 PM on March 7, 2017 [1 favorite]


Coffee grounds are fine down the toilet...or most sinks, too. They don't flag on rust burrs or rough joints, which is the biggest problem. In general, if you intend to flush something down the toilet, the rule is simple--it just needs to have the consistency of shit. If it's not of a shitlike consistency, or as delicate as wet toilet paper, then NO NO NO.
posted by sonascope at 4:46 PM on March 7, 2017 [3 favorites]


What sonascope said. Coffee ground particles are tiny, so less of a problem (but why not the kitchen sink, ideally garbage disposal?) Teabags would be a much bigger problem what with the mesh and the string.

speak to any sewage worker and they'll talk about all the cocaine and condoms and fish heads they're constantly finding at the plant so obviously it's perfectly fine to flush whatever the hell you want.

Uh, no. And you should have to spend a week snaking clogged toilets just for saying that publicly.

As mentioned above, clogs don't happen every time. It's about things catching on rust burrs, or pipe joints that settled badly or were poorly made, or hot stuff that solidifies and cools, or floss, etc. Restaurants and nightclubs might have bigger and possible newer pipes, but they also tend to have grease build up that can cause problems. Older buildings even have clay pipes that can crack and settle.

So it's not every time, but a blocked pipe even once a year is a horrible thing. Please don't encourage people to flush things in the toilet.
posted by msalt at 6:24 PM on March 7, 2017


I think part of the tampon thing is that MANY actual tampon packages list flushing as a way to properly dispose. Count me as another one of the giant pile of women who didn't learn until way into adulthood that it wasn't okay.
posted by augustimagination at 10:47 AM on March 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


Do they really?! That's horrible. Encouraged by Big Plumbing no doubt.
posted by msalt at 10:51 AM on March 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


I found the article pretty offensive to tenants. Some of us are great tenants who don't break anything, clean trash, maintain the yard, etc. I know many.

I know renters can be horrible, as can landlords, but the basic premise of landlordism is offensive at its foundation, just like capitalism. The landlord is always at fault because she/he is propagating an unjust system.

Coffee grounds are fine down the toilet...or most sinks, too.

Um, no. Counterpoint: "Nothing causes more blockages and clogged pipes than coffee grounds and grease."

Coffee grounds are usually tiny but they clump together like a mofo.
posted by mrgrimm at 11:15 AM on March 8, 2017


The four things clogging your drain: coffee grounds, hair, paper, and grease.
posted by mrgrimm at 11:18 AM on March 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


Or, as I think of it, junior year.
posted by Etrigan at 11:23 AM on March 8, 2017 [5 favorites]


I think part of the tampon thing is that MANY actual tampon packages list flushing as a way to properly dispose.

Don't trust wet wipes/baby wipes that advertise themselves as "flushable," either. It's a filthy lie, and IMO the manufacturers of both products ought to be liable for the additional wastewater treatment expenses.
posted by asperity at 1:45 PM on March 8, 2017 [2 favorites]


Wow, I stand corrected on the coffee grounds. Thanks for that, mrgrimm.

Back to evil landlords, I guess I must have astonishing luck, because the half-dozen or so I've had have ranged from stupid but harmless to downright cool. About the worst incident was trying to convince a guy not to paint the hardwood floors of his beautiful 1912 Craftsman black because his girlfriend wanted him to.

Just like job interviews, we should teach young people that looking at apartments is as much about checking out and judging the person intervieweing you, as vice versa. Ask some leading questions like "Who do we call if the toilet clogs or a fuse blows?" and "Do you have any plans to replace these appliances?" (if old).

Maybe my perspective is different in renting out my basement because I ran a small business for years before I got into that. So it seemed only natural to me to estimate expenses against income, plan for capital expenses and have a risk reserve, etc.
posted by msalt at 1:58 PM on March 8, 2017


America is a really big place with lots of different rental customs depending on the location.

In Vancouver, Canada, there are "purpose built" rental units. These are usually managed by a corporate entity with or without in-unit property managers (as in, they live in the same property). They can own between one to a couple of dozen properties and may also deal in commercial rental/lease. Strictly electronic transfer for rent payment.

On the other hand, there are people who own multiple houses/condos or a basement/laneway and rent them out. Some contract a professional manager, and some real estate agents used to also manage private properties. Otherwise, they deal directly with the tenant. Mix of cheques (typically pre-dated) and electronic transfer.

When I was in college in the '00s, Mt. Vernon, IA (pop 2000) had a few people who owned a second house and would rent those out to visiting profs, rich students (mandatory food and board was part of the tuition), and fraternities/sororities. These tended to deal directly with the tenant. They dealt exclusively with cheques, delivered before the first of each month.

I suspect Australia's strict foreign real estate ownership laws and regulations probably leads to a situation where the majority of rentals are what we would call "purpose built" around here. It sounds like it's not common for people to own "rental properties"/second homes (like, in the same city)?
posted by porpoise at 7:12 PM on March 8, 2017


That's a really fucking cool experiment.

I'd love to see the outcome, might henpeck another without the suit.

The K-12 edu in the US is very dfferent than the k - 12 edu in Canada. Lots of it imparterted earlyy and more
posted by porpoise at 8:39 PM on March 8, 2017


Lesson one: People will flush anything down a toilet

And they will regard the garbage disposal as a kind of dare.
posted by cross_impact at 8:08 AM on March 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


The biggest incentive in Australia to have an investment property is what is known as “negative gearing”, which allows a landlord to offset any supposed losses on the investment property against their salaried income

No, that is a thing in the US, as well. The big thing is too many landlords don't think of renting as a business but instead view it as free money. The people who get into landlording as a retirement strategy or because they bought some jackass' DVD on investing in real estate off a late-night infomercial are probably 80% of the bad landlords out there.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:38 AM on March 9, 2017


I disagree on the coffee grounds, on the grounds that the problem isn't the grounds, but inadequate rinsing afterward. If you leave almost anything to just sit in the trap of your sink drain, it'll go hard, but I've been pouring grounds down my kitchen sink for 29 straight years in an old building with old pipes crusty with burrs and I've never once had a clog result. It's the aggregate flush of different things that's the problem, coupled with a lack of flow afterward. Of course, people who pour any kind of oil or melted grease into a drain are fools unto themselves.
posted by sonascope at 1:03 PM on March 9, 2017 [3 favorites]


I've been sending coffee grounds down my drain for decades as well, and I've never had them cause a clog. We use a French press so there really isn't any other good way to get rid of the grounds but to fill the thing up with water, swoosh it around, and run them down the drain with lots of water. I've had the pipes opened up for various reasons over the years, and have never found any evidence of coffee grounds sticking around. Hair, on the other hand . . . so many clogs of nasty, gooey, gloopy hair, even with the hair catcher on the bathtub drain.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:40 PM on March 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


Hair, on the other hand . . . so many clogs of nasty, gooey, gloopy hair, even with the hair catcher on the bathtub drain.

The last time I used a Zip-It in my tub drain... oh god. Like a tribble that got caught in an oil spill and then rolled around in a compost pile.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:47 PM on March 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


Relatedly, don't run an in-sink garbage disposal without running the water before, after, and during. The water should be cold to avoid overheating the motor. And if there's enough of whatever it is or it's not especially liquid, just throw it in the trash. Double-bagging it is OK if that's what you need to do to keep it from leaking. It's going to the landfill after it's sieved out of the wastewater anyway.

Be nice to your garbage disposal, and it'll be nice to you for years of rinsing out the residue from the salsa jar.

Of course, people who pour any kind of oil or melted grease into a drain are fools unto themselves.

Just don't do it. This is what you put in that glass salsa jar after you rinse it out. (You can use a plastic container in a pinch, but it's likely to get melty on you if you're pouring hot oil in there, so glass or metal are better bets.)

We could really do with better education in taking care of our homes. My upstairs neighbors, for instance, might do well with remedial courses in "not throwing cigarette butts on the downstairs neighbor's stoop" and "pro wrestling demonstrations are not indoors activities."
posted by asperity at 2:07 PM on March 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


The people who get into landlording as a retirement strategy or because they bought some jackass' DVD on investing in real estate off a late-night infomercial are probably 80% of the bad landlords out there.

In bad landlord mythology, they're living the american baby capitalist dream, and they would be rolling in it if only these pesky tenants wouldn't keep calling.

In any other business, someone who writes you a large check every month is your client. A lot of bad landlords think they signed up to be asset managers and didn't realize they were in the service industry.
posted by bradbane at 5:00 PM on March 9, 2017 [9 favorites]


"No, that is a thing in the US, as well. "

It is in the US, but only to a very limited extent compared to Australia, and with a LOT of restrictions on who is allowed to take advantage of it (essentially, you have to be doing active management of the property). There's also a pretty low ceiling on how much you can offset in the US, if you're eligible for the offset at all.

Negative gearing is really, really significant in Australian property markets and creates major distortions. It's a minor hiccup in US markets that has only marginal effects. (Compared to, say, the mortgage interest deduction.) It's also, as I understand, something that benefits a lot of older, homeowning Boomers in Australia at the expense of younger Millennials who can't afford to buy and are increasingly priced out of desirable rental markets, but because there's a big Boomer voting block who have set up retirement strategies around negative gearing, it's pretty entrenched even when it's clearly having profoundly negative effects on the community as a whole. (It also encourages property speculations and bubbles, and we all know how great those are.) In the US, any discussion of negative gearing would be a pretty technical tax-wonk "fiddling at the margins" adjustment and I can't recall it having come up in any election anywhere in the US ever. It's such a small number in the US it's usually not even broken out in treasury/budget reports/proposals. In Australia, tax revenue lost to negative gearing is about the same as what the country spends on higher education every year. It's seriously like AU$10bn (on a budget of about $450 billion -- 2.2%). For comparison, the US mortgage interest tax deduction is about $70bn foregone revenue on a budget of $3.8tn (1.8%).
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:37 PM on March 9, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'm not clear what you mean by "negative gearing."

AFAIK, in the US rental income is on a schedule E, and it's not uncommon to have a loss on your rental property depending on your mortgage and depreciation, especially if the place is a fixer that you're slowly improving. On the West Coast at least, the investment play is long term appreciation, not immediate cash flow. I'd be a lot more nervous in a place where population was flat or declining though.

If you're lucky, you can even hit that sweet spot where you get a cash profit and a paper loss to deduct against your taxes. And you can control the amount of profit or loss for fit your income and tax for a given year by how quickly you repair or improve it.

Is that different from "negative gearing"?
posted by msalt at 5:55 PM on March 9, 2017


In the US, interest paid on a mortgage on your home is tax deductible. In Australia, interest paid on your investment property mortgage is tax deductible. That's what negatibe gearing is about.
posted by the agents of KAOS at 8:54 PM on March 9, 2017


Interest on your home mortgage is deductible personally, on your schedule A.

But wouldn't mortgage interest on a rental property be deductible on Schedule D, treating the rental property as a business essentially? There is a line for mortgage interest on it.
posted by msalt at 12:47 AM on March 10, 2017


Generally in the US you can only deduct losses against the profits of the income stream it CAME from. So you can offset investment property losses against investment property gains. But your ability to deduct losses against your earned income from SALARY is strictly limited (you have to actively manage the property, meet certain criteria, and it caps out low). In Australia, you can reduce income tax owed on your salary by taking losses on your investment properties. Here's a decent explainer. Australia is a far outlier in how much it allows you to mix your income streams and use losses in one to reduce tax in another.

(I learned a lot about it because it was a big deal in the run up to the 2016 Aussie elections when I was too pregnant to sleep and all the new news in the middle of my night was from Australia, I ended up with several strong opinions on politics in Oz.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:44 AM on March 10, 2017 [2 favorites]


Ah, that makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
But your ability to deduct losses against your earned income from SALARY is strictly limited (you have to actively manage the property, meet certain criteria, and it caps out low).
I obviously actively manage my basement and have low income, so none of that ever worried me. This might also explain why you have so many amateur (bad) small scale landlords, because that income offset ability makes a huge difference financially.

At the extreme, a small scale landlords with 2 or 3 rental properties could move into each of them for 2 years before he or she wanted to see, and get $250K per spouse of capital gain tax free. Obviously that's not available for professional property managers with large scale apartment complexes.
posted by msalt at 8:36 AM on March 10, 2017


We use a French press so there really isn't any other good way to get rid of the grounds but to fill the thing up with water, swoosh it around, and run them down the drain with lots of water.

I also have a French Press and have recently had a couple of Incidents with my sinks, so I've started using a small sieve here - fill the press with water, swoosh it around, then pour that through the sieve and dump the grounds from the sieve into the trash.

My super (who is hands-down adorable, by the way, and much more approachable than the building manager) recommended that one way to lessen the impact of grease down the sink, if you really have no other option, is to run super-hot water down the drain with a squirt of Dawn liquid. But, better still, save a tin can from something and leave that near the sink, and then pour any excess grease into that before doing dishes. Then you just throw the can away. (My mother used to do that with the paper-like cans of orange juice concentrate, actually, which may be a better option.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:50 AM on March 10, 2017


(My mother used to do that with the paper-like cans of orange juice concentrate, actually, which may be a better option.)

Ooo, I've been meaning to start buying OJ concentrate again, and that would be ideal for grease since I wouldn't be making a recyclable container difficult to reuse for anything else. Can't recycle waxed paper. (Though in the event I'm saving grease I want to reuse, glass jar wins since it's easier to lid and put in the fridge so it doesn't go rancid.)
posted by asperity at 9:26 AM on March 10, 2017


My mother used to do that with the paper-like cans of orange juice concentrate, actually, which may be a better option.

My father still does this! And when they get full he freezes them to wait until trash day.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 11:53 AM on March 10, 2017 [2 favorites]


My french press solution, after so many unsuccessful attempts to scrape all the grounds into the trash, is to just pour them (mixed with water) into a paper coffee filter and throw (or compost) the whole deal away. I know it's a little wasteful. I'm sorry, world. I don't fully understand the sieve method - wouldn't you still need to clean the sieve?

Now I have a garbage disposal and I put them down that. But now I'm questioning that, so...
posted by R a c h e l at 1:07 PM on March 10, 2017


Enh. I'm gonna keep running the french press grounds down the drain until I learn my lesson the hard way. It's only one pot a day anyways. Espresso machine pucks get composted.
posted by fimbulvetr at 1:35 PM on March 10, 2017


I don't fully understand the sieve method - wouldn't you still need to clean the sieve

Well, yes, but first you would use the sieve to carry the coffee grounds to the trash can, and then you would dump them there. So yeah, you have one extra thing to wash, but you have spared yourself dumping coffee grounds down the sink.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:19 PM on March 10, 2017


In other words you still have to rinse the seive and some grounds will go down the drain, but a small fraction. I have a wire mesh filter in my coffeemaker and it works out to the same thing. But not getting grease down your pipe is the real key.
posted by msalt at 12:44 AM on March 11, 2017


I might also need to add the extra (and previously unmentioned, I noticed) data point that I use coarser-grind coffee, and I usually just need to give the sieve a couple of sharp taps on the edge of the trash bin and that knocks just about all of the grinds out because they're pretty big.

Although when my roommate is home and does his single-serve pourover coffee, if he leaves the fitting in the sink with the paper filter still in it I will sometimes secretly pour the rinsed-out french press into that. Shh.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:46 AM on March 11, 2017


All of this is just reaffirming that I made a good decision to just switch to a drip coffeemaker, because wake up->heat water in kettle->pour into french press->wait->press->drink->come up with incredibly convoluted way to dispose of wet grounds->wash several different pieces is, despite any improvements in flavor, vastly inferior to wake up->coffee just already exists because you set it up to automatically brew the night before->drink coffee->throw filter in trash.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:29 AM on March 11, 2017


We commissioned a stainless steel drawer liner so that we could create compost without having a container on the counter or under the sink. You open the drawer while cutting vegetables or making salad, deposit the waste, and then close the door. Usually we line the drawer with a paper towel to absorb excess moisture. Every few days we carry it out to the big container that lives behind the garage and empty it. The drawer fits on the top rack of the dishwasher.

Anyway, the system works great vis-a-vis coffee grounds: one hard knock rapping the permanent filter against the bottom and most are dislodged into the drawer. The remainder, I confess, get washed into the garbage disposal and then pulverized into a million little pieces that, fingers crossed, won't clog up the mound system.
posted by carmicha at 1:10 PM on March 11, 2017


Uh, no. And you should have to spend a week snaking clogged toilets just for saying that publicly.

Oh I wouldn't flush snakes, they are living creatures.
posted by turbid dahlia at 8:43 PM on March 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Showbizliz, I think for this conversation all that matters is that you're not dumping grounds down the sink so whatevs.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:18 AM on March 14, 2017 [1 favorite]


showbiz_liz: "I didn't realize tampons were a no until someone told me as an adult. I'm still not sure precisely WHY it's bad but I mean, I believe it."

My current job includes maintaining a small sewage treatment plant for a four season recreation resort. When we are at 100% occupancy upwards of a 1000 people phone me on the porcelain phone every day.

So the problem (from my perspective) with tampons (and of all the unflushables that people flush tampons with strings are a perfect storm of sewer undesirable features) is that not only do they cause blockages they also can't be broken down by biodigesters and so have to be separated out before they get to the tanks (along with everything else but feces, toilet paper and water basically). Our separator is an auger half wrapped with a sieve (picture). Sewage comes in the bottom of the picture and goes through the shiny screen. The auger (the yellowish coloured thing over the screen) takes the stuff that won't go through the screen and directs to a waste bin. The sieve has approximately 1/8th inch holes in it; anything smaller doesn't get through.

Tampons and wet wipes though can get caught either on the very end of the auger (where the screw shape starts) or can get stuck between the auger and the screen embedded in the wiping bristles. The string on tampons can also wrap around the auger at pretty much any point along it. When this happens someone (IE: me) needs to manually remove the item from the auger. I estimate about 5-10% of flushed tampons get caught up in our auger.

Even worse is tampons will tie themselves together (potatoe quality picture of mass of tampons I removed from our auger). These groups of tampons can either plug our 8" mainline or completely block the auger. Either event causes things to back up creating a bunch of work for operations.

sonascope: "Coffee grounds are fine down the toilet...or most sinks, too. They don't flag on rust burrs or rough joints, which is the biggest problem. In general, if you intend to flush something down the toilet, the rule is simple--it just needs to have the consistency of shit. If it's not of a shitlike consistency, or as delicate as wet toilet paper, then NO NO NO."

While a minor number of grounds flushed down while cleaning filters is unavoidable; dumping large quantities should be avoided. Even if they don't clog things up the grounds aren't digested by treatment tanks and end up as bio solids. This is a much more expensive waste stream to handle than regular garbage.

EmpressCallipygos: "My super (who is hands-down adorable, by the way, and much more approachable than the building manager) recommended that one way to lessen the impact of grease down the sink, if you really have no other option, is to run super-hot water down the drain with a squirt of Dawn liquid."

Anecdotally this makes little difference. Unless emulsified the grease will clump together on pipes forming grease logs that either free themselves to float down to the treatment plant to be separated out like all the other insoluble solids or block the pipe completely at some point. I'm guessing super hot water at best just makes the clog someone elses problem.
posted by Mitheral at 3:08 PM on March 29, 2017 [8 favorites]


Wow, it's like a rat king made of tampons.
posted by asperity at 3:20 PM on March 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


Holy hell, Mitheral! Thank you for this thorough explanation. I really had no idea.

One more reason to love the Diva Cup.
posted by vignettist at 10:28 AM on March 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


« Older Building hyperrealistic sculptures of insects that...   |   Oh, no, it’s Dave again. Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments