GUEST COLUMN: A landlord who was once a renter, too

After two years of living in the Quad, I wanted to move. I needed a real place. A place with style. A place with atmosphere. A place with females. Yes, this was 1964, when the Quad still was men only. One option, of course, was a fraternity house. They had style. They had atmosphere. They had -- uh-oh -- men only. So I started looking at apartments. I answered an ad for a roommate. The guy's name was Leo and he was an engineering student from Italy. He spoke halting English and ate raw eggs every morning straight from the shell. I took the place, and, the egg thing notwithstanding, found Leo easy to live with. The apartment -- on the 400 block of South 42nd Street -- seemed OK, too, especially since my share of the rent was only $60 a month. There even were some women living in the building. Some problems, however, quickly became apparent. First, and I learned this the hard way countless times, you had to duck while going into the bathroom. For some reason the doorway was only five feet high. The hot water would run out after a three-minute shower. And the first person in the kitchen each morning was met by a bunch o' little critters who would quickly scoot to their homeland underneath the fridge. The walls also were in need of attention. The paint originally, I believe, was white, but that's just a guess. By the time I moved in it had taken on the hue of the various cooking oils used during decades of frying. One wall looked like a good virgin olive oil. Another seemed more like motor oil. Yet a third was a blend of the two, a medium brown that got darker as you looked toward the ceiling. Complaining to the landlord was futile. The only contact we had with him was when he delivered a notice that the rent would be increased by about 25 percent the next September. As a student on a tight budget, I couldn't handle that. I gave my notice and vowed that if I ever were to become a landlord, I would treat my tenants the way I wanted to be treated. And what do you know. Twenty-five years later, I found myself the owner of an on-campus house I didn't need. I had bought the large Victorian twin and moved in, hoping to start a new life after a divorce. A month later I met the woman I would ultimately marry. She already had a house, and we decided to live there rather than in the building I had just purchased. What would I do with that huge new place -- and the equally huge mortgage I had taken out to buy it? It was zoned for rental units, so I quickly got all the necessary licenses and started to advertise. Remembering the vow I had made as a student renter in the '60s, I made a few things clear to prospective tenants. (1) They would get my home phone number. Not that of an answering service or a rental agency. My real home number. (2) If something went wrong in the house, a problem with the electricity or plumbing or anything else, and the tenants couldn't reach me, they had the right to call someone from my "approved" list and have the repairs done. The people on that list had my blanket approval to do any work needed. They would bill me for the repairs and the tenants would have nothing to worry about. Renters seemed to like that idea. Apparently many had experienced the same problems with invisible landlords that I had in the '60s. (3) If you didn't like the color of your bedroom, you were allowed to paint it yourself -- any color except black. I won't go into why I had to add the "black" rule, but that particular tenant didn't last long for a number of equally quirky reasons. I told the renters they would buy the paint themselves, keep the receipt and send it to me with the amount deducted from the next month's rent. (4) I was very flexible with lease lengths and with security deposits. If a student wanted to stay in the house for a few years but didn't need the space during the summers, I would permit subleasing (to someone with my approval). And if I believed a student wanted to rent there but honestly couldn't afford the standard up-front "one month security and first-and-last-months' rent," I would make accommodations. And (5) -- the one that often clinched a deal -- I promised that anyone staying in the house would never have a rental increase. If you take a $400 unit as a sophomore, for example, you pay $400 right through the end of your senior year. Of course the rule also applied to non-students. As long as you live in the house, your rent stays the same. Turnover at the house, which I still own, is minimal. Tenants move out when they graduate, or when they get married and need more space, or when they've saved enough money to buy their own house. Very few stay just one year. The renters become my friends, too. Real estate professionals say that this is no way to run a business. Never become friends with a tenant, they say. But I'd rather rent to a bunch of folks I can call and schmooze with than someone who is just a name on a monthly check. Something quite rare is happening this month. Two rooms are becoming available at the same time. One guy found his dream girl and is moving on to larger quarters. Another is buying a house a few blocks away. I love it when people leave for reasons like those. I will start advertising the two available places this month. It should take, oh, one or two days to find people who like rental conditions like these. Meanwhile, if you're renting in the campus area and are experiencing some of the problems I had back in the '60s, perhaps you should clip out this column and send it your landlord. Hey, maybe the landlord will want to move in here.

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