The Time My Friend Wanted To Be My Tenant

So, like an absolute dip-stick, I tossed up a Facebook post, notifying my world that I’ll shortly have a 2 bedroom house available for rent, and if anyone was interested to contact me to discuss business.

In hindsight, I must have been drunk off my tits, or I must have missed lesson one of Landlord School, when the class learned rule #1: Renting to friends and family is virtually a self-prescribed death sentence, avoid!

In any case, I did what I did.

I quickly received an interested response from Arnold (that’s not his real name, I’m protecting my ass from a potential beating his identity). Eager as a beaver, he was. He made it clear everything sounded perfect, from the location to the property itself, including the price.

I wouldn’t say Arnold is a close friend, nor just a random pick-up (as so many of my “friends” are on Facebook); he’s wedged in the middle somewhere, but closer to being friend than foe. I know enough about him to know he’s not a complete dickhead. At least, I’ve never seen him blindly share some bullshit Britain First post, like withering uncle Bob. Either way, I didn’t dismiss his interest immediately.

I provided him details of the property, which only triggered his interest further. We arranged a viewing for the next day. Fan-fucking-tastic, I thought!

It all went downhill very quickly

Yesterday afternoon I met Arnold at the property and showed him around…. while my current tenant followed us around like a lost puppy. Tad annoying when they do that, innit?

I promise I’m not going to masturbate on your bed sheets or pocket your loose change on the kitchen counter while no one is looking, you get me?

After the viewing, Arnold’s interest didn’t sway one bit. In fact, he wanted in!

Once again, I want to remind you that I wasn’t of a clear mind, which is why I was delusional enough to believe it was my lucky day. I had effortlessly found a tenant within a day of inactively searching. What more could a simple and humble landlord ask for?

As we had arrived at the end of the tour, we both stood outside the property with smiles, whiskers away from engaging into a spit handshake, and that’s the exact moment when he dropped the hammer…

I’m not employed at the moment, so I’ll be getting the money through the council. Also, are you willing to look past the deposit? That might be a struggle for me.

That’s cool, ain’t it?

Are you bloody out of your loopy mind, Arnold? That’s literally the furthest fucking thing from cool I can possibly think of. And I have a particularly fucking warped mind; I’ve dreamed about drinking your urine before!

Not cool, Arnold, not cool at all.

I should have said that, of course, but I didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, I *should* have also referenced his sorry ass before the viewing, so I bought this shit-show on myself, and I’ll never make that mistake again. In my defence, I think I got carried away with the fact that I know him personally, so I trusted him not to waste my time with silliness. Boy was he silly, though.

It quickly dawned upon that he most likely withheld those vital and bone-crushing details because he thought our pre-existing familiarity with one another would make me numb to his wildly undesirable circumstances. Perhaps if I was 16 and/or fell off the turnip truck yesterday his master plan would have come to fruition. Fortunately, neither was the case.

He could have mentioned his circumstances before we both got erections and almost started shaking hands over forming a new tenant/landlord relationship.

But hey, I guess I can’t fault him. He saw an opportunity and tried his luck.

To get out of this super awkward situation, I had to think on my feet. So I thanked him for his time, and told him I have more viewings scheduled (which I didn’t), and I will assess each applicant on their own merits. Basically, I made it clear I wasn’t going to play favourites (implying he was my favourite), and I’m going to be completely objective in my selection process.

THANKS FOR COMING BY, ARNOLD. DON’T CALL ME, I’LL CALL YOU!

I won’t.

So yeah, little did he know that I basically pulled the plug on the whole arrangement there and then.

Would Arnold have made a good or bad tenant? It’s impossible to know, but I wasn’t willing to take the chance to find out.

So it’s back to my original plan of marketing the property through online property portals. I’m still undecided on whether or not I should unfriend Arnold from Facebook, just to make life less awkward for both of us. Hopefully he’ll show me mercy and do us both a favour by unfriending me first.

Lesson for life learned.