If turnabout is fair play, then landlords deserve their day in court, so to speak.
Tales of the misdeeds of negligent landlords make the rounds among renters and occasionally make the news. But when was the last time you read or heard about a tenant who hasn’t paid his rent-or turned down his stereo-in six months?
Chances are you haven’t.
Just as tenants have legitimate gripes against landlords, so do the landlords against tenants. The list that follows is the result of what several Chicago area landlords had to say when given an opportunity to air their more common grievances against tenants.
– Late or non-payment of rent. This familiar and common problem is self-explanatory.
– Physical damage to the unit. Often tenants don’t leave an apartment as they find it-or anything close to it. Holes in walls, water stains on hardwood floors and deep scratches in cabinetry are just some of the damages landlords encounter after a tenant’s departure.
– Failure to carry renter’s insurance. The majority of tenants do not carry renter’s insurance to protect their personal belongings from theft or destruction (and think the landlord is in some way responsible for compensating them for their loss), according to Jane Pavis, community relations director for Citadel Management Co. in Des Plaines.
– Conduct disturbing to other tenants. Any behavior that disrupts the lives of neighboring tenants can disrupt the lives of landlords in the form of complaints.
– Failure to report maintenance problems to management. Tenants often fail to report chronic maintenance problems-such as leaky faucets, pealing paint and plaster and plugged drains-until a situation has deteriorated into a major repair and disruption to landlord and tenant.
– Bringing animals into the unit after signing a lease. A landlord appreciates the opportunity to approve-before signing a lease-every living creature, two-legged or otherwise, residing under his roof.
– Slovenly behavior and habits that attract bugs, particularly roaches. Such behavior includes leaving remnants of food around the apartment and in the sink and garbage on the floors.
– Expecting landlords to perform maintenance tasks that are not stated in the lease. Some classic examples are hanging pictures or plants, repainting walls a color more to a tenant’s liking and opening apartment doors for tenants who constantly are losing their door keys. Landlords are caretakers of tenants’ welfare only so far as what’s covered under the lease. They are not parents or decorators.
A business attitude
Residential property management is a business like any other, says Pavis, who is a former executive vice president of the Chicagoland Apartment Association. “We provide goods and services in exchange for remuneration. The only difference is, our product becomes someone’s home. And that’s where the issue becomes sticky, because people believe that status brings with it certain rights.”
Which, she says, can lead to other, less tangible, problems more damaging to the tenant-landlord relationship than any listed above.
For example, tenants can become intolerant of the intrusions, however necessary, that landlords make.
“After a night of heavy snow, for example, tenants will call and complain when the noise from our snowblower wakes them up at 6 a.m. But can you imagine the phone calls we would get if we didn’t show up to clear the snow from the walkways and steps?” Pavis asks. “They aren’t willing to put up with even minor inconveniences.”
Albert Hartwell, who with his brother, Alan, owns an apartment building on the Southeast Side, recalls what happened when he asked his tenants to allow the warm water to run during a few miserable days in January when the temperature dropped well below zero.
“Not a single tenant left the water on. Not one,” Hartwell recalls. “And guess what? The pipes froze and busted. There was water and water damage all over the place.
“And the tenants blamed me, even though I had warned them to leave the water on,” he adds.
Pavis partially attributes this sort of apathy to confusion about where the landlord’s responsibility or liability ends and the tenant’s begins.
“Another prime example of this revolves around renters’ insurance,” Pavis says. “The tenant doesn’t always comprehend that in circumstances beyond our control, like in cases of robbery, fire or even an earthquake, we are not liable for damage to or loss of their personal belongings.”
Some tenants believe they owe no obligation to the landlord beyond general upkeep of their apartment and payment of rent, according to Tom Ragauskis, owner of T.J. Adams & Co., a property managment company based in Elk Grove Village with 10 apartment buildings in the suburbs.
“The same tenant who complains loudly if there is a leak in his kitchen sink will ignore a growing puddle of water outside the boiler room. And in the same vein, a tenant won’t call the management if he sees a suspicious person skulking in the lobby,” he says.
Hot over heat loss
Stephen Pedvin owns apartment buildings in West Rogers Park, Andersonville and the Edgewater and Ravenswood areas on the North Side. One of his pet peeves is tenants who carelessly throw his money-in the form of heating costs-out the window.
“In winter, when a tenant’s apartment gets too hot, rather than adjusting the degree of heat coming from the radiator, he or she opens a window,” Pedvin says.
Both Pavis and Ragauskis say that tenants are slow to confront the reality of rising rents.
“Renters don’t see where their rent checks go, so they don’t realize that every year we are paying higher real estate taxes, higher maintenance and repair costs and higher costs on utilities like gas and water,” Ragauskis says.
Pavis agrees: “(Residential property management) is a business with a low profit margin. Twenty to 25 cents of every dollar-or three months’ rent-goes just to increases in utilities and taxes.”
Preventive management
Ross LeBleu, the property supervisor at Kromelow & Tarre Inc., a Chicago-based property management company with rental buildings in Lincoln Park and Lake View, takes a rather unusual approach to eluding the problem tenant. He calls it preventive management.
“Ninety-nine percent of our tenants comply with management’s requests because we make sure from the start that they understand exactly what we expect from them,” says LeBleu, who claims he learned his management style from property management experiences gained in the South.
“We are very strict and direct, so that no one misunderstands our policies,” he adds.
But bad tenants or not, most landlords agree that the occasional problem tenant is a fact of life.
Through better communication and preventive measures, though, many landlords believe they are beginning to manipulate the odds in their favor.
