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Jul. 29th, 2015 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chhotiiSo, on the subject of Baitcon. Eeks. Baitcon takes place on the last weekend of August this year. In fact, if you stay until Monday, you leave Baitcon on the very last day of August.
Hopefully this does not mess with my plans too much. But, I have new tenants lined up to start September 1st. (Lined up, but not in the bag-- we still have to sign the lease. But it looks likely.) They want the house to be truly ready for them on September 1st. Not surprisingly, they want at least the yellow bedroom painted before they move in; hopefully the rest of the house can go another tenant with just a bit of touch-up, at most.
Hopefully, in the second and third week of August, before Baitcon weekend, I can get all the things done that are feasible with the tenants in place: general decluttering, gutter cleaning, get hot tub removed and re-decking, wasp nest gone, towel bar fixed, well dealt with, some yard work, and Mystery Barrel disposed of; and, also, arrange that Bella stay with me (or elsewhere) while her bedroom is painted, so that also gets done before Baitcon weekend. Then we go to Baitcon. Then we come back early on Monday, August 31, wave Matt's U-Haul good-bye, and then I frantically clean and have the locksmith come over and get the place ready by the time the new tenants show up on September 1st. But there is so much that could go wrong here. What if Bella won't stand for having her bedroom painted before things are perfect in their new house? And school doesn't start where they are going until September 1st or 2nd, so they don't need to move before Baitcon weekend for school. Bella is pretty laid-back, but, as landlord, I do not have a leg to stand on. Painting before the previous tenants have vacated is not something that a landlord is entitled to do. (Not that I haven't seen it happen.) What if the new folks get their current digs re-rented as of September 1st, and want to start moving in at 0:00 on September 1st? Their lease does start at that time. It would be nice to do the cleaning as Matt is moving out, so that things are ready as soon as the new tenants show up. But that could be on Baitcon weekend.
If the situation is just hopeless, the new tenants are willing to wait until September 15 to start their lease. This would mean that the house would be between tenants for half a month-- which would be a $1250 loss. If going to Baitcon means I have to absorb a $1250 loss, that makes it a very expensive Baitcon indeed. But wait, it gets worse. There's a dispute over who should have paid some utility bills, which never got paid. The debt is in Rich's name. As far as I can tell, the utility companies have sold this debt to collection agencies. The debt collection agencies have written Rich some Very Stern Letters but otherwise so far there has been no actual consequence. (After death you don't need a good credit rating, right?) But my lawyer thinks that as the surviving owner of the house, the utility companies will eventually go after me about that. So I don't want to talk to them any time soon and poke that beehive. But if there's a gap between tenants, I might need to talk to them, to cover the gap. (Or should I just risk a two week interruption in service? This would be in September, the house is not going to freeze.) Also, the end of August, maybe the first day or two of September, is my last chance to get work done on the house, not just so the new tenants move in and start to happily pay rent; because by the end of August, I will be entirely out of vacation time, so working on the house during the first half of September means not working and not getting paid. No rent, no salary, eat the utility bills?-- a very, very, very expensive Baitcon indeed. Oof.
It would be safer to just skip Baitcon and be on hand to put effort into transitioning the house from one set of tenants to the next. But, Sophia would be SO SAD if we skipped Baitcon. Sophia practically lives for Baitcon. (Well, Baitcon and Arisia.) If we have to skip Baitcon, poor kiddo. Motorcycle Dude has also indicated that he's furious with my life choices if I have to skip Baitcon, but, well, he can get himself to Baitcon, and if he hates my life he doesn't have to be part of it. So I have less sympathy there. But, poor Sophia, as a minor with no other parents, she is stuck with my constraints. Poor kiddo.
At least now I will have a car that I won't mind driving to Baitcon. New, reliable, everything works, comes with Roadside Assistance. I would like to recruit someone who could help with the driving in return for not having to put the miles their own car. (It would have to be someone who could drive stick.) But I'm not sure about posting to the ride board yet, when things seem so iffy.
Hopefully this does not mess with my plans too much. But, I have new tenants lined up to start September 1st. (Lined up, but not in the bag-- we still have to sign the lease. But it looks likely.) They want the house to be truly ready for them on September 1st. Not surprisingly, they want at least the yellow bedroom painted before they move in; hopefully the rest of the house can go another tenant with just a bit of touch-up, at most.
Hopefully, in the second and third week of August, before Baitcon weekend, I can get all the things done that are feasible with the tenants in place: general decluttering, gutter cleaning, get hot tub removed and re-decking, wasp nest gone, towel bar fixed, well dealt with, some yard work, and Mystery Barrel disposed of; and, also, arrange that Bella stay with me (or elsewhere) while her bedroom is painted, so that also gets done before Baitcon weekend. Then we go to Baitcon. Then we come back early on Monday, August 31, wave Matt's U-Haul good-bye, and then I frantically clean and have the locksmith come over and get the place ready by the time the new tenants show up on September 1st. But there is so much that could go wrong here. What if Bella won't stand for having her bedroom painted before things are perfect in their new house? And school doesn't start where they are going until September 1st or 2nd, so they don't need to move before Baitcon weekend for school. Bella is pretty laid-back, but, as landlord, I do not have a leg to stand on. Painting before the previous tenants have vacated is not something that a landlord is entitled to do. (Not that I haven't seen it happen.) What if the new folks get their current digs re-rented as of September 1st, and want to start moving in at 0:00 on September 1st? Their lease does start at that time. It would be nice to do the cleaning as Matt is moving out, so that things are ready as soon as the new tenants show up. But that could be on Baitcon weekend.
If the situation is just hopeless, the new tenants are willing to wait until September 15 to start their lease. This would mean that the house would be between tenants for half a month-- which would be a $1250 loss. If going to Baitcon means I have to absorb a $1250 loss, that makes it a very expensive Baitcon indeed. But wait, it gets worse. There's a dispute over who should have paid some utility bills, which never got paid. The debt is in Rich's name. As far as I can tell, the utility companies have sold this debt to collection agencies. The debt collection agencies have written Rich some Very Stern Letters but otherwise so far there has been no actual consequence. (After death you don't need a good credit rating, right?) But my lawyer thinks that as the surviving owner of the house, the utility companies will eventually go after me about that. So I don't want to talk to them any time soon and poke that beehive. But if there's a gap between tenants, I might need to talk to them, to cover the gap. (Or should I just risk a two week interruption in service? This would be in September, the house is not going to freeze.) Also, the end of August, maybe the first day or two of September, is my last chance to get work done on the house, not just so the new tenants move in and start to happily pay rent; because by the end of August, I will be entirely out of vacation time, so working on the house during the first half of September means not working and not getting paid. No rent, no salary, eat the utility bills?-- a very, very, very expensive Baitcon indeed. Oof.
It would be safer to just skip Baitcon and be on hand to put effort into transitioning the house from one set of tenants to the next. But, Sophia would be SO SAD if we skipped Baitcon. Sophia practically lives for Baitcon. (Well, Baitcon and Arisia.) If we have to skip Baitcon, poor kiddo. Motorcycle Dude has also indicated that he's furious with my life choices if I have to skip Baitcon, but, well, he can get himself to Baitcon, and if he hates my life he doesn't have to be part of it. So I have less sympathy there. But, poor Sophia, as a minor with no other parents, she is stuck with my constraints. Poor kiddo.
At least now I will have a car that I won't mind driving to Baitcon. New, reliable, everything works, comes with Roadside Assistance. I would like to recruit someone who could help with the driving in return for not having to put the miles their own car. (It would have to be someone who could drive stick.) But I'm not sure about posting to the ride board yet, when things seem so iffy.
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no subject
Date: 2015-07-30 04:38 am (UTC)In general, after someone dies, the estate is responsible for paying the debt. If the estate doesn't have money to pay the debt, the debt ends there.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0081-debts-and-deceased-relatives
For more about debt collection:
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0149-debt-collection
no subject
Date: 2015-07-30 05:21 am (UTC)In general, after someone dies, the estate is responsible for paying the debt. If the estate doesn't have money to pay the debt, the debt ends there.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0081-debts-and-deceased-relatives
For more about debt collection:
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0149-debt-collection
no subject
Date: 2015-07-30 08:48 pm (UTC)Friends of mine used to have a "therapy jar" into which they put $20 every time they did something that the kid was convinced would require therapy later in life. Eventually the jar paid for a chunk of college, and no therapy was required.
Which is to say, kids will get over it.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-30 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-01 10:57 pm (UTC)Well, the estate has a credit rating, but if the estate isn't going to borrow money, it doesn't matter. And as Ben points out, if the estate doesn't have the money to pay a debt, it doesn't get paid. (I'm assuming here that you have sole personal title to the house, so debtors of the estate can't put a claim on the house.) Eventually the utility company would like to get paid, but if the house is now in a new owner's name and the new owner is paying the bills, they're not going to cut the new owner off (and may not have the legal right to).
Of course, this is part of the mass of hassles of being a landlord. I've got no useful advice about that. But I see that you've got a good handle on all the details and are plotting out the pluses and minuses of alternative courses of action, so I'm betting you'll get it to work out OK.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-02 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-02 10:57 pm (UTC)Agreed that having sold the debt, the utility company has no business trying to go after anyone else for it. They may try anyway but given that there's been a different account in the house since then (or so I assume) I don't think they'll get very far.
So long as the collection agency's letters are addressed to Rich and not to his estate I believe they can be ignored (IANAL so check with one of course but I have dealt with similar stuff). The collection agency can go after the estate's administrator to attempt to collect the debt if they find out the estate exists. I would suggest not helping them do so; presumably the probate attorney knows how best to go about that. (Anecdata: I did have one collection agency come after my father's estate with a vague fishing letter. When asked by my attorney to validate the claim they disappeared.)