What's going on, YouTube. It's Matt Faircloth. So I got a crazy story to tell you guys today,
and this has to do with this insane coronavirus that's going around and just the crazy stories
that are coming out of landlording. So that's the marriage today, is crazy landlord story
in line with COVID-19, aka coronavirus, that's sweeping this country right now and causing
a lot of problems and also just causing people to behave a little erratically. So here we
go. Here's the story.
It just goes along with the line of just things that happen as a landlord. You just can't
make this stuff up. There are insane stories that I've heard landlords tell that come up,
but it's not just because tenants are crazy, but just because landlording exposes you to
the inner workings of how people live and you get to see all kinds of crazy stuff. And
so there's crazy interactions that happen, not just for tenants being crazy, but for
landlords being crazy, too. So I've heard the most nuts landlord tenant stories in my
career of landlording for the last 15 years. But this one maybe takes the cake.
Before I go, if you guys are watching and want to commiserate and have some awesome,
crazy landlord story, please, please, please, please tell your crazy landlord story, your
crazy tenant story in the comment section below. We would love to hear it. Let's all
commiserate and tell some great stories together. So tell some stories in the descriptions below.
And don't forget to stay till after I tell the story. Because what I'm going to do is
I'm going to say what I would've done as a landlord if I were the owner of this property
I'm about to tell you the story about. So here we go.
New Jersey gets such a bad rap, but this did happen in New Jersey because there's just
a tendency to do some wacky stuff here. So this tenant here in New Jersey, this is a
newsfeed, this tenant had a corona party in their apartment.
A corona party, complete with a DJ. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy says he has no tolerance
for those not taking the pandemic seriously.
This is a 500 square foot, one bedroom apartment, 550 square foot, one bedroom apartment. In
that one bedroom apartment, they had 47 people come by for their corona party. Now this is
when everybody's supposed to be on social distancing. Everybody's supposed to be on
quarantine. They had 47 people come over to a one bedroom apartment. Now 550 square foot
is absolutely a small space. It's fine for a one bedroom apartment for one to two people
to live. But it is not fine to come to cram 47 people in. This is nuts.
Now, of course, the state of New Jersey came down hard on this tenant. The governor even
came out and made a statement about this corona party that happened in this property. So I
can only imagine what the tenant was thinking. And this is a multifamily. This is a four
unit property.
So here's where this thing gets even crazier, guys. I used to own this property. Check this
out. This is a video I shot for our YouTube channel a while ago, standing out in front
of this property right before we sold it and I was telling the story and this is an interesting
story.
... for today anyway, because we're selling them today. Today's the day of closing. I'm
actually leaving this site right now to drive to closing after this.
The story here goes like this. We used to own, my wife Liz and I used to own a duplex
in Philadelphia. We sold that duplex and did something called a 1031 exchange. We'll make
sure to put some notes in the descriptions on 1031 exchanges on some other videos I've
shot about that. But the 1031 exchange allowed us to sell that property in Philly and roll
it up into a larger deal, which was two of these four family apartment buildings. Over
time, we acquired several more of them and to the point we had acquired five of them
and we were able to sell them as if they were a 20 unit apartment complex. The buyer was
willing to view them that way and this buyer took them and bought them and did renovations
and cash flowed them what we think to be fine after we sold them. This was a win for us,
win for them. But the moral of the story was we took a duplex and turned it into a 20 unit
apartment complex over time. Great video. Make sure you guys check it out. There's a
link in the descriptions on that one.
So that's the crazy story was, this apartment building that this guy had this crazy corona
party in, in his one bedroom apartment and had 47 people come over with him and a DJ
in this apartment, I used to own this apartment building. Now obviously, I did have to share
a laugh. There was a little bit of this, jeez, glad that wasn't me. I hate to say it, but
I think anybody would have done that. And I'm not wishing ill will upon the person that
bought the apartment building from us. But there was a moment where I said, "Jeez, at
least it wasn't me this time", because there's been plenty of times where it was me that
had to deal with something like that.
So the question comes up, what if this had happened to me? At the end of the day, crazy
things like this happen to landlords. I just happened to have it not happen to me, happened
to this poor landlord of this property. God bless him. I hope he ends up well with it.,
ends up unwinding whatever ramifications come on that one. But let's talk about what we
as landlords can do when there's major crisises or tenants make really, really bad decisions
in our properties.
So here's what I would have done if this were my property when this crazy corona party with
47 people and a DJ showed up in one of my units. If I were self-managing, I would've
gotten on the phone with the tenant immediately and gotten the tenant's side of the story.
What happened? What did you do? What did the authorities say when they showed up? What
did the other, you know, get their full story and document every little bit of it. If the
tenants will let you record the conversation, you record the conversation. In most states
you have to have permission to record conversations. So I would get their permission to do it.
Then I'll record the conversation for my records. That's number one.
If the property is managed by a property manager, I would ask the property manager to do what
I just said. Call the tenant up, have a phone conversation with the tenant, get permission
for it to be recorded. Perhaps even I stay on that call. I'm on that call, too, with
the property manager and we have a three-way conversation.
But it's really just a matter of getting the tenant's story, not reprimanding them yet.
Not cracking down on them yet. Just getting what happened. Was this your sister-in-law
that threw this party and it wasn't you. Was it your roommate? Are you going to point to
somebody else? Were you just as innocent as everybody else here? Get their side of the
story.
The next thing I would do as the owner is I would call the authorities. I would get
ahead of the authorities, get ahead of any fines that may come out, get ahead of the
authorities cracking down on me as the owner and try to drag me into this thing. So I would
call the authorities up and say, "Hey, guys, I'm the owner of that building, the one that
was just on the news with that article that everybody just saw, that was me." Turn myself...
Not turn myself in, I mean, I'm at fault, but say, "How can I as an owner, Mr. Authority,
local police, local fire department, local everyone that's involved in this thing, what
can I do? Give me some guidance on things that I can do with this tenant. Is the tenant
going to face legal action? Are you planning on facing legal action to the property and
how can I cooperate with you to avoid that?"
So I would not... The worst thing you can do in circumstances like this is bury your
head in the sand and wait for the authorities to call you or go dark. Not the right way
to do. I like to face adversities and things like this, the potential legal action like
this, head on. And it might cause a difficult conversation at first, but I've always found
that if you avoid the legal, avoid the difficult conversation, you will have an even more difficult
one later. It's much better to have the difficult conversation and have it early as you can
and it becomes less difficult when you have it in the beginning. So call the authorities.
The next thing I would do is to make some commitments to the authorities and get some
recommendations from them, what actions you're going to take. It's very hard to remove tenants
these days. So you can't say, "Okay, authorities, I will evict the tenant." You can't do that
now. "I will remove the tenant." I probably can't do that now either. Where are they going
to go? And so you probably have to take remedial action with the tenant in place. So what can
I do? I'll tell you some things that I would do with approval from the authorities is I
would install cameras at the property, just to prevent something like this from happening
again. Maybe the tenant is just really out of their mind and they're going to try something
like this again.
But I would also, remember this is a multifamily, so you've got to honor the quiet enjoyment
of the tenant's neighbors. Now, they're going to be up in arms. I mean, if I lived next
door to a tenant that did something like this, unless I was in on it, you can imagine what
somebody would have to go through to have something like this happening next door to
where they live. Can you imagine? And that's just with coronavirus going around. But just
having your next door neighbor have a party with 47 people in a tiny little one bedroom
apartment. But you know, so I would install cameras and I would also contact all the neighbors
in the property and make sure, "Hey, listen. Just so you know, we're taking action, I've
contacted the authorities. We're on this, we're ahead of this thing." People just want
to know that you're not going to bury your head in the sand, that you're going to be
aware of it and stay ahead of this thing in and stay ahead of any ramifications that can
happen and make sure that they know that you're wanting to take action.
So I'd install cameras. I would send letters and I would have your PM do regular perimeter
walks or just social distancing-approved inspections of the property just to make sure everybody's
behaving themself in that unit moving forward. And then once the quarantine is over, once
courts open back up, then you can investigate ideas on evicting that tenant that made the
bad choices. There's other choices you can make down the road. But these are all actions
you can't take right now. You likely can't throw the tenant out. And so I would act within
the confines of what you're allowed to do. So, that's what I would do in these circumstances.
Again, landlording causes some, you get to know the inner workings of how people live
and how people abide in properties, and so you get to see the full spectrum of how people
live, which causes some crazy stories both on the landlord side and on the tenant side,
too. So make sure you share some stories in the description box. I've got plenty more.
So if you guys want to hear more crazy landlord stories from Matt, leave that request in the
comment box and I'll gladly oblige you and share some, absolutely stuff that'll blow
your mind. You really can't make these things up. This is just one of the many things that
have happened to me over the last 15 years of landlording and that just so happened to
not be me this time.
So that's what I got, guys, I hope you enjoyed this. A corona party in a property I used
to own. You cannot make it up. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. As I said, as I always
say, have a great and profitable week.
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