Christian Osgood describes a rental applicant who broke into his building, barricaded himself in the laundry room, and squatted after refusing to complete an application. Police removed him. Osgood's takeaway: vet tenants carefully, stay kind but firm, and never compromise your safety for a rental.
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And armed forces are on the way to remove another person from my buildings. So safety comes first. And by the way, yes, I'm wearing no shirt. I just got back from a run. This is not a hermosi thing. Comment section, cool down. First of all, this guy comes in, his daughter drops him off outside our building. He hasn't filled out an application. He calls 30 times and says, hey, I need to move in, I'm going to be homeless, this is horrible, I can qualify for rent. We couldn't get him to fill out an application. He asked if we can drive down and bring him a physical lease application, print it. This just sounded super weird. And one of the biggest things in real estate, it is not worth getting physically harmed, shot, or killed trying to run your rentals. This guy seemed off, the situation seemed off. I told my team, hey, do not engage, don't go down there, we're just not going to lease to this guy without a full application. We then get a call this morning, hey, uh, that guy took all his stuff, broke into your laundry room, barricaded the door, locked himself in, and moved in. Like, okay, that was the most predictable thing ever. Guys, if you have weirdos, just don't deal with it. Be kind, but don't be nice. If we were nice, he would have a place to live, he'd be vandalizing our property, there's no way he would have paid rent. Lessons learned from a long time landlording: stay safe, be kind, don't be nice.