19 July 2009

Slum lords

Ed and I have a new role - slum lords. We bought a condo in Vancouver last June. It’s an investment property and the intent is to rent it out and hopefully, the property value will appreciate as the years go by. It’s our first investment property and we are understandably nervous about the whole thing. But we figured that if we are able to rent out the condo, we’ll be okay. On June 10, our offer for this condo was accepted by the seller and we got the keys to the place on June 30. We tried to get it rented out for July 1 but we had no takers. So we lowered the rent a bit and opened it up to owners of a small pet. We had more people show interest and finally, on July 13, we had four couples fill out the application to rent the apartment. I was getting stressed out about it because if the condo isn’t rented, it means that we’re paying for the mortgage for that month. We did the reference and credit checks for the applicants and decided to rent to a young couple who are looking to move in on Aug 1. They seem very nice and quiet, and their references had very good things to say about them. I’m really, really hoping that they turn out to be good tenants and that their cat doesn’t destroy the place.

Here are a couple of pictures of the apartment:


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