Well, April 2019 thoroughly kicked me in the teeth. And it’s not over yet. By May 4th, things should be better, or at least less hectic.
It’s felt like a full time job keeping my thoughts from spiraling into the abyss. Knowing a bed bug infestation is right under our feet is incredibly stressful. Not feeling like we have any control over how it is managed is even more stressful.
We did heat treat our house. Five days later our tenant finally slept in the unit and immediately informed us he was still getting bit. We’re meeting with the pest control company again on Tuesday.
We have a consultation with a law firm that works with landlords next Wednesday.*
My guess is, we’ll have do an “owner move in,” eviction which requires we pay our tenant $10,000 to move out, after which we would not be able to rent our unit again (because we asked him to move out so that we could move in).
Of course our unit is not registered with the city. I don’t know if we really would never be able to rent it again. My husband works for the city and VERY MUCH wants to avoid bad optics, so he just might not feel comfortable renting it again. And of course, we’d need to deal with the bed bug issue, feel certain it had been eradicated (clearly just not living there for a year isn’t enough), and disclose that information to whoever else we found to rent it. We would probably only rent it to a good friend, which would bring its own issues. Ugh.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we ended up in this situation. About how the housing market is so crazy in San Francisco, that the only way we could afford a mortgage was to rent a unit (and to that point, the only reason we weren’t priced out of buying our house by higher bids was because it originally was put on the market with tenants living in the unit, which made it less attractive), and about how that put us in a risky position, which now is causing us financial distress. The whole system is so broken, two people with post-graduate degrees should be able to buy a house without renting out a part of it, but not in San Francisco, and increasingly not in other parts of the country either.
If we do have to pay our tenant $10,000 to leave, and then can’t rent the unit again, it will really change our financial situation. We were looking forward to a few years of having a little bit more money in our bank accounts (the post-childcare and car payment years), but it seems like those years are never going to come, and we’re going to have to carefully identify and prioritize our spending because we will never be able to pursue multiple goals at the same time. Some of our dreams will definitely have to be set aside, maybe only temporarily, but possibly forever.
It’s also spring, the time of year in teaching when you learn your colleagues (and friends) are leaving for better opportunities. My best work friend got a job at a high school, and I am especially aware of how I will never feel financially secure enough to leave my job, and that is a suffocating feeling. I guess I just have to find ways to make it as fulfilling as it can be.
I understand it could be much, much worse. One of us could be sick or injured and on disability. One of us could have lost our jobs. This financial set back is not the worst one in the world, but it’s significant for us. I just wish we weren’t in this situation. I have never loved our house, or living in San Francisco, and this just makes me resent the whole situation even more.
*{It was surreal to try to find a lawyer that works with landlords in this city – there are tons of tenants’ rights lawyers but fewer who are representing the bad guys. It is also surreal to be the bad guy. Blerg. We tried so hard to be decent land lords – we haven’t raised the rent on our unit once in seven years. We were just trying to offer a modest space at a decent price, just enough so we could afford our mortgage. And everywhere I look we are portrayed as the big bad Darth Vaders of the rental world. It sucks.}
tenant is the bad guy not you. Deeply sorry!!!!!!!! Really hope your landlord lawyer can come up with good ideas. Clearly tenant is only interested in bankrolling himself at your cost as clearly has not been living there for past year and may have re-infested the the unit when he slept there again. Does he need to prove he did not do this?
Such grimness. A reason some people with formal registered rental units in the city are currently not renting. They cannot afford the liability tenants bring. Which adds to the housing shortage and amazing costs to rent in San Francisco.
Hope very much the rest of your semester finishes up nicely and improves.
Who, if anyone, verifies that family has moved in? And how often?
SO SORRY!!!!!
If you can’t formally rent out the unit below, could you AirBnB it? That way you could get some money coming in.
You can only AirBnB a place for 30 days in SF. One of the reasons that do that is so people won’t take rental properties off the market to AirBnB them.
There are a lot of landlords in SF. I’m sure there are a lot of landlord attorneys – there is a lot more money in that! You just need to find them through talking to other landlords.
This is a crappy situation.
Damn lady. Saying this sucks only scratches the surface of the signage. I’m very sorry that you’re in the current situation you’re in. Given rent control and landlord-tenant laws, I’m familiar with what you’re facing. It blows my mind, though, that you have no course forward outside of paying your current tenant a huge amount of money to move out, given he brought in this problem (and I suspect will continue to bring it in until he’s gone).
Abiding with you as you tackle all of this.
Oh wow, this all sucks, I’m sorry you are dealing with it. Wish I had some wisdom to offer but I know nothing about the area or being a landlord. Sending good wishes and vibes
Sorry to hear that things with the tenant/apartment are still sucking.
“This financial set back is not the worst one in the world, but it’s significant for us. I just wish we weren’t in this situation. I have never loved our house, or living in San Francisco, and this just makes me resent the whole situation even more.” Is this a sign it’s time for you guys to seriously consider leaving San Francisco?
I know in the past you’ve said your husband has lived in San Francisco all his life, won’t consider living anywhere else, etc. etc. which would be fine if he were single but with a family you have to take into account what’s best for the family as a whole, not just one member of it.
When is your tenant’s lease up? Would it perhaps cost less than $10k to pay for him to live somewhere else for the remainder of the lease (just trying to think outside the box…)?
Also, where has he been staying for the past year and why has he continued to pay rent all that time for a place where he wasn’t living?!
Under rent control, a landlord can only choose not to renew a lease under specific conditions, one of which is that the owner or close family member of the owner will move in. They could also decline to renew (or evict) based on breaking the lease but that could ultimately be very expensive if the tenant disputes that he did anything wrong which caused the bed bugs.
If a landlord could just not renew a lease whenever they wanted to, rent control doesn’t add much protection. The less ends and the landlord raises the rent and the tenant needs to find new housing, which presumably would be with higher rent.
I’m in Georgia and we have no rent control here so this is all news to me. So the whole city is under rent control? And even though her unit isn’t registered with the city she still has to abide by rent control rules?
I don’t know how registration works. I think you still have to follow the rules. I don’t think every unit in the city is subject to rent control – just units built before a certain time. Down here in LA there are exemptions for landlords who have a small number of units but I don’t know what the rules are up there. It’s possible that her unit is NOT subject to rent control actually, but they are trying to avoid bad optics.