We closed two days ago on the property I walked through the other week. I wasn’t sure we were for awhile. The closing documents credited a prorated June rent to us for the 28 days in June that we’d own the property. The assumption is that the landlord had collected June rent.
I knew they hadn’t. Heck, I knew they hadn’t collected May rent. So I was delighted that they were scheduled to pay us our prorated amount so I wouldn’t have to hassle the tenant for it.
They weren’t delighted.
In fact, they wanted that line item removed from the closing docs. When we said no they claimed they were collecting May rent “this week” and wanted to delay closing until they could collect June rent. We weren’t about to sit around waiting for them to collect rent from a tenant that’s chronically late, so we gave them 24 hours. They chose closed as scheduled on Monday.
The only thing the sellers provided us was an old lease signed in 2017. The tenants phone number of the lease was clearly no longer active. We had no keys, no email address for the tenant, no documentation on a lease renewal (the 2017 lease was for a year), nothing. Clearly the previous owner was running a tight ship.
I finally had the chance to drive down to the property last night. The freeways were a mess as we got pounded by a thunderstorm. In fact I should have been in a car wreck on my way back when I had to slam on the brakes, course corrected as I slid forward, then across two lanes miraculously making it to the shoulder without hitting anyone. That was fun.
But before that I was able to meet with the tenant. She’s super nice, and I’m excited for her that she has a new full-time job. We cleared everything up, got her phone number, email, etc. (I forgot to mention the keys), and we’re setting her up with online rent payments. There’s still a ton to do, but the first one seems to be in the bag.