Wow, be careful what I write here.....my note to me...

My entry yesterday was about my Sept. goals re; my lack of guts and follow through as a landlord. Well, guess what? My first opportunity actually walked in last night for a meeting with me!

The newest of the new tenants came in, carrying their total rent with them~ in cash even! I had a chance to visit with them a bit and I made it through half of the things on my list here! Yeah for me! They already made a couple of the changes this AM, and will be working on the others. I will give them the other half of my list after they finish this group. We covered parking places, dog barking, night time noise cut off time, neighbors & relations with them.........a biggy here........and the general mess around their unit. Plus the 4 vehicles that appeared in the horse pasture. We also covered the water hook up from the house, he will fix the leaky faucet for me! So, I managed to cover a laundry list of topics I consider to be Hard! (at least for me)

I do have to add one more to the big Sept list however..........I couldn't sleep well last night & came up with another issue. The gentleman that rents a parking space for a van here.....hasn't paid for Aug, nor has he been here this last month to work on his vehicle. So, contacting him, bringing it up to date, or having him move are now added to the list.

Since the parking rent sort of slipped by, I also will come up with a chart of some sort for me to use as a tracking tool each month. I have had a piece of paper I kept track of payments in my usual bill folder here, but it isn't detailed enough and it is too small for all my "people" here. So, that is on my list today too.

But, for the first day........I feel pretty successful & that is a good way to start on my new goal here. It reminded me what a useful tool this journaling is!!

I hate being a landlord. I love owning property and I love to make money with it, but boy.........I hate the landlord role with a passion. I'm not good at it, I end up with tricky little situations because I let stuff slide and hate confrontation.

So........my landlord role needs some work. And, I'm going to write about it so I actually feel compelled to do something about it all.

All of my landlord decisions are pretty directly tied to my finances. So....if I got better at one, the other would benefit, right?

Some things on my initial TO DO list here:
1) Call the horse lady who is boarding 3 horses now but still hasn't paid for August. Also has appropriated a parking space in the carport for hay, not paying for that either. Come to a workable agreement or give her 30 days notice to move 'em out.
2) Review boarding contract with new guy that bought 1 horse from 'horse lady'. He has paid rent through 12.31.06 and has asked to rent one carport space for hay. (need to work that out here, I'm giving one space away as it is, now he wants to rent one....ick)
3) meet with the new RV man & come up with a written rental agreement or have him move. He had agreed to pay rent, but so far I haven't seen it. Many more vehicles than we had talked about have shown up here. Plus a barking dog, no bathroom facilities and a long list of other difficulties. This will definately be my toughest task, as there is a young girl involved and I was in hopes I could assist to see that she got to stay in school.

September will be landlord in training month here.......I've got plenty of issues to work on. Good thing I've got 2 situations that ARE going well, or I'd feel like throwing in the towel.

And, the other goal related to real estate is to make contact with the previous owners of this place. She called last month saying she wanted to buy it back...and I've made 2 attempts to reach her, but haven't connected yet. I want to know if she is serious, so I can start making some headway on that deal. I've had the comparisons done on her current place as well as this one, so I've done my homework, just need to see if she has done hers.

My faith has been restored. (hadn't truly lost it, but it was on shakey ground)

My customer.........the owner of the Dreaded Black Sparkly Blazer showed up at my house today with the total owed.....in cash. On the first, the day she said she would return the money I "loaned" her, for the blazer she "paid" me to make for her.

What a convoluted deal this turned out to be. It started the first week in June and here we are at Sept first and I can now mark her receipt PAID. Finally.

Thanks for all the positive comments on previous Dreaded Blazer posts....it was a help to read the ideas and I did ponder more than a couple. However, I don't think I will be sewing for this woman again. Before the money even became an issue..........the actual project was a mess. She bought cheap materials and a pattern that wasn't what she really wanted so the whole event was unpleasant for me.

And..........Unpleasant I don't do on purpose. Seems there is enough of that around that just crops up; I'm sure not going to sign up for any on my own. I'll just be WAY too busy if she ever phones again.

I wonder if the episode this week was horrid enough for her....that she will change her ways and not spend money she doesn't have?? What are the chances?

At moms again for a short overnight stay.......we used the remaining gift certificate for a nice dinner out, and had it figured so close our total owed was .01. The waitress just zeroed out our bill...... Nice. This was one of the free dinners the restaurant sent us after I called & complained about moms meal.....that she was sick as a dog for 24 hours after eating there. So, she really did Pay for her dinner, just not with cash I guess. Anyway, we did have a fun time, great visiting and lots of laughs too. Nice to have a mom as a best friend.

I had brought the van full of items all priced for the new antique booth, and we stuffed all that into the booth prior to dinner. Couldn't see that anything had sold yet......but I still need to fill it in with more stuff. In my short bit of experience with this, things don't sell unless they are sort of crammed in the space. I've still got my things pretty spread out to fill in the booth...probably another couple van loads will make it just about right.
Hoping stuff starts flying out of there, making more $ than the rent that's due.

Took mom thrift store shopping again. I do think she's addicted to it now...but she won't go on her own. Funny about that. We did find her some tops, which is the only thing she will buy there. Again, funny. But, she found 5 this time and only spent $13.00 which is a pretty fair savings for her.

Another no spend day for me. (still thinking I need to figure out how many of these I have in a month....maybe I'll remember to keep track in Sept???)