<\/p>\n
The meanest, baddest landlord<\/strong><\/span> in America is John T. Reed, a West Point grad in Alamo, California. \u00a0In Reed’s world, if you’re a day late with your rent, you’re on the curb with your cat and kitty litter.<\/p>\n Reed lost a ton of money in real estate, and made a lot of money writing about it. \u00a0I’ve read most of his books; he’s a good writer and smart.\u00a0 (There are many savvy landlords but not many can write.\u00a0 They’re too busy at target practice.)\u00a0 Reed shows you how to twist tenants’ arms until they say: “Here’s the rent, sir, and it’s a day early!”<\/p>\n Reed claims you can mail it in — not the rent, but your on-site supervision. \u00a0Reed, living in California, owned apartments in Texas, so he sent postcards to his tenants, instructing them to drop dimes\/postcards on his custodians and their job performances.<\/p>\n That long-distance supervision<\/strong><\/span> doesn’t work. \u00a0If I don’t check my buildings \u00a0at least once a week in person, the buildings will turn into dumps — Magic Marker on the mailbox labels, the exit lights burned out, and 100 cigarette butts on the stoop.<\/p>\n Nothing gets done if I don’t show up.\u00a0 The painter, his back goes out until I show up.\u00a0 I’m better than a chiropractor. \u00a0The Yellow Pages directories pile high in the lobby until I show up. \u00a0The grass doesn’t get cut until I show up.\u00a0 I understand all that.<\/p>\n I say to my building managers: “You need to take care of this right away.” \u00a0And I show up.<\/p>\n I conduct exit surveys. <\/strong><\/span> I ask my former tenants if my buildings and managers are good. \u00a0The ex-tenants, long gone, are totally honest because they face no repercussions from building managers.<\/p>\n Here is a sample of\u00a0 former tenants’ replies:<\/p>\n The apartment flooded.\u00a0 It was not my fault!<\/p>\n I didn’t know I would need air conditioning in Ohio. And there wasn’t any!\u00a0 [From a Californian.]<\/p>\n Water pressure — terrible.<\/p>\n Workers parked in my spot, and I was paying for it.<\/p>\n The marijuana smoke from the alley was very strong, and spending the summer with the windows closed was not acceptable.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The favorable comments,<\/strong><\/span> you don’t want to hear.\u00a0 Too self-serving, too bubbly.<\/p>\n Maybe I should write a Nice Guy Landlord handbook.\u00a0 That’s a niche John T. Reed won’t fill. \u00a0My title: How to Manage Apartments and Jam with Your Tenants, <\/em>with accompanying CD featuring the songs “You Tore Out My Window Screens, Now my Heart?”, “I’d Like to Go Month-to-Month with You, Baby” and “I Can’t Find the Handle (To Your Refrigerator of Love).”<\/p>\n John T. Reed could be my sound man at real estate conventions.\u00a0 We could share a booth. Do a good cop\/ bad cop thing and split the profits.<\/p>\n —- The meanest, baddest landlord in America is John T. Reed, a West Point grad in Alamo, California. \u00a0In Reed’s world, if you’re a day late with your rent, you’re on the curb with your cat and kitty litter. Reed lost a ton of money in real estate, and made a lot of money writing about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landlord-biz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1673"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8555,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673\/revisions\/8555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n1 of 2 posts for 7\/21\/10.\u00a0 Please see the post below too.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"