Author: Rae

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Friday Afternoons Are Rarely Fun

Today was fairly laid back. I had a couple of appointments past 4:00 so I went out mid-afternoon to do a deposit and grab an espresso. All was well and even with the late end to the work day, I was easing into weekend mode. Well…

My first appointment was for a move-in. I try to check the places ahead of time, but I knew this one was okay, having done a walk-through after the cleaning, so imagine my surprise when I walked in and discovered that someone from maintenance decided to be ‘helpful’ and mud some spots on the dining room wall, the hallway, and the bathroom door, then obviously forgotten to tell me to call the painter!

I was horrified! The tenant was speechless. I asked him what time he had planned to move in and he said 6:00. I promised that the paint would be done by then. I ran to our paint room and got everything I needed, then came back and did the sanding and painting myself. Thankfully, these were small areas, so by the time I got all the spots and doors done, the paint was dry enough to go over everything a second time. I cleaned up then raced by to the office to meet my next appointment.

As we talked, there came a knock at my door; the son of a tenant coming to inform me that he just got home to an inch of water in the storage room and a leak in a ceiling that looked ready to collapse. Maintenance was off duty except for dire emergencies, so I grabbed a bucket, a mop, and a garbage bag. The ceiling is essentially cardboard tile, so I knocked it all down into a garbage bag, mopped the floor, and placed a bucket under the very slow leak.

It was by this point that I was able to check my email and discover that Jody was having as wonderful an end to her week as I was. Hopefully, we’ll both get sorted out in time for us to go to a bloggable activity. I can’t promise you to stay tuned, but hopefully I’ll have something interesting later tonight. 🙂

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One Day In the Life of an Apartment Complex Manager

In which I try to sum up a fairly typical day for me…

9:55, I come into the office. I check for mail (ah, a payment from a tenant and keys from a moveout). I check my fax machine for a security patrol report and glance over it while I listen to the messages. I open my inbox and then glance at my list of to-dos. Ah, I need a couple of purchase orders, so I call head office for those, then I call for a repair on an exterior plug a tenant drove over and an oven that won’t turn on. I’m promised repairs on both by the end of the day.

My cleaning gal is in today, so I see how she’s doing and then I go to the vacated apartment to do a move-out inspection. A tenant comes with her rent and we catch up while I prepare a receipt. Next, I get a set of keys ready for my flooring guy.

Around 11:00, a couple of potential tenants, brothers, come in with the missing piece of the puzzle for their application. I approve them and send them off to get their damage deposit and first month’s rent while I prepare their lease. I’m interrupted when the father of another applicant comes in to find out what can be done to get his son approved. I have a brutally honest chat with him as I am leery of the candidate and the father puts my mind at ease.

It’s past noon by this point and I know I won’t get a lunch break, so I run upstairs to get last night’s leftover pizza, some juice, and a container of yoghurt, then munch as I finish up the lease for the two brothers. My maintenance guy comes in while I’m doing that and we shoot the breeze in between my getting updates on the work he’s done since yesterday, what he will get done today, and what I’ll still have on the list for him tomorrow.

The two brothers return and I accept money from them, sign receipts, and walk them through the lease. They are fresh off the boat from Kenya and have poor English, so this takes a little longer than usual, but I’m used to it since the majority of my tenants do not speak English fluently.

I finish up with them and my flooring guy arrives, so I give him the keys to the suite in which he’s putting new flooring tiles. The floors were actually done recently, but the last two tenants in that suite were terrible and wrecked everything. I’ve convinced the company to spend a little money on the suite to get a better quality of tenant and was able to compromise on new flooring and counters in the kitchen.

Moments later, the appliance guy arrives, so I take him to the suite with the problem oven. Thankfully, the stove is fixable; I’ve ordered enough appliances this week!

I return to the office to find the other candidate waiting with his father. They finally have everything I want, so I accept money from them and go over the lease. As we’re finishing up, I see another tenant waiting outside to pay his rent. He comes in and we chat for a bit. Done, I close up to bring tenants on the other side of the complex the new key for their mailbox and a rent receipt.

I’m back in the office just in time to get a call from another tenant moving in this week wanting to confirm that we can make an appointment for Friday evening for signing his lease and doing the walk-through on his place. So much for getting an early start to the weekend!

I do some bookkeeping and prepare a deposit and as I finish up, the previous manager comes in to see how I’m doing. We chat for two minutes and are interrupted by a tenant who comes in the rest of her rent for January. I have had issues with her and she knows that she has lost any chance of leniency with me. I chastise her again that her disorganization has cost her a substantial amount in late fees. She is one of those people who needs that sort of kick in the pants; I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t productive.

The previous manager and I chat for a few minutes then she heads out. By this time, my flooring guy is done. I head over to check his work but am interrupted when I see people hauling construction materials out of their truck and placing them in our dumpster. I inform them that the dumpster is private property and that I could have them charged with trespassing. They couple is suitably chagrined, thank me for letting it go this time, and promise to never do it again. My flooring guy says that I handled that well and that he couldn’t do my job. I reply that I never would have guessed I could do my job either!

The flooring looks great, so I sign off, then I return to the office only to find my electricians waiting for me. I tell them where to go and head out to meet them (it’s faster to cross the complex on foot than to go around the block by vehicle) so I can give them access to the boiler room where the electrical panel is located. I make sure to grab a pen because my cleaning gal is about ready to clock out and she’s going to need me to sign her time card. Sure enough, I cross her path and she has her time card in hand.

It’s 3:30 by this time and I need to go to head office, but I decide to hang out for a bit in case the electricians need me. I see them pull out by four, my usual quitting time, so I pack up and go to head office to drop off my deposit and move out report. When I get back to the complex, I remember that I forgot to fax my maintenance report for the next day, so I go back to the office to do that before going home.

This was a busy, but very easy, day in that I had no conflicts with tenants nor any nasty issues to deal with. I do promise to reveal some of those nasty issues in a little while. 🙂

(*with all due credit to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn for the title of this post)

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Vinyl Flooring Is Great

Remember how The Apartment’s tile floor broke my French press recently? These are not ceramic tiles but rather the kind I dub to be school tiles. I’m not sure what they are made of, but they are 12″x12″ and very thin.

Anyway, I was in Miranda today rearranging some things on the top shelf of the cabinet above the sink when I dropped this mug:

(this cabinet doesn’t look like that anymore!)

I broke another mug this week while rummaging in the rig (hint: do not hit the handle of one mug with the handle of another), but this one would have annoyed me. It has a ceramic lid, so it keeps beverages hot longer and it’s also great for taking outside. Anyway, I caught the mug, but the lid hit the counter then jumped onto the floor where it bounced twice before landing safely. It made such an awful racket that I was certain it was a goner, but nope!

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Not Terrible, Not Great

The caulking I applied yesterday didn’t dry as smoothly as it had been laid out. It looks okay; better than not having a finished edged, but not as nice as having proper trim. I will try to even out the edges with a straight edge and a razor blade and see if that makes a difference. Another idea I have is to put the caulking behind the wood trim to fill in any gaps. In that case, I would go with the paintable kind.

I can live with this better than I could with the unfinished edges, but I still have a ways to go to get a truly polished look.

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An Afternoon at Home

The promised thaw arrived today, right on schedule. I headed down to Miranda after lunch with a bucket of hot soapy and vinegary water and spent about an hour scrubbing every inch of the front room, including the inside of the cabinets and the ceiling.

The only lingering project in the rig is the $(%*) trim. What’s there looks great and what’s not there is because of odd angles and uneven flooring. I decided to try a cheap solution and bought a container of brown caulking. I applied some under the vanity in the dressing room and along the shower as an experiment. I’ll see how it looks once it has cured. If I like it, I will do the rest of the trimless floor. I really wish I had thought of this idea sooner. Caulking is super cheap, easy to apply, and if I hate the results, it’s easily removable. I’ll go check out the results tomorrow and try to remember to bring the camera. 🙂