His Brother Was A Bad Tenant After Already Paying A Breakeven Rent Rate, So He Decided To Sell The House That His Brother’s Family Was Renting And Evict Them
A few years ago, this guy’s brother needed some living arrangement help. So, he generously decided to allow his brother to move into one of his rental properties.
Now, the entire rental was done legally– with a lease agreement and everything. But he did decide to rent his brother the home at a breakeven point, meaning that he did not make any profit.
Due to this, he and his brother agreed that his brother would be the one responsible for maintaining the house as well as the yard.
It was not just his brother that moved into the home, though. It was actually his brother, his sister-in-law, and his brother’s four children.
So, the hot water tank was not sufficient to support the water demands, and his brother wound up wanting a new one.
He was not opposed to this, either, and told his brother to go ahead with installing a new hot water tank.
But, it appears his brother did not understand their initial agreement– because after the hot water tank installation was complete, his brother deducted the cost of the tank and the service from that month’s rent payment.
At that point, he reminded his brother of their agreement– that he was responsible for all maintenance costs.
However, his brother refused to make any improvements to his property for free. And he took great issue with that statement.
bmak – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
“I said that the old hot water tank was fine, and he made the decision to replace it,” he recalled.
Afterward, a massive argument ensued. And since he really did not want to fight, he just said his brother was no longer allowed to make any additional changes to the house without his explicit consent.
While he thought that was a fair request, though, his brother apparently didn’t– because his brother just decided to stop doing maintenance on the house out of protest.
“And the house itself is not pretty, but it is solid. It is old, and the wiring in it was not meant for all the modern electronics we have,” he explained.
So, eventually, his brother wanted to add a new breaker box and run some more outlets. He turned down that idea, though, and claimed he couldn’t afford those upgrades after not making any profit on the house.
Still, his brother did not understand that. Then, his brother started paying the rent late– seemingly out of protest again.
At that point, he tried to confront his brother about the rent. But his brother just claimed that since he needed to buy stuff for the house, he was low on cash.
And after dealing with this headache for too long, he ultimately just decided to sell the house.
He revealed how while the actual house is not great, it is located in an older part of his city with a quarter of an acre of property.
So, every time a house sells in that neighborhood, it is snatched up by developers and converted into multifamily units.
“Or one guy built a McMansion on his land,” he added.
Anyway, he already knew a bunch of developers from the community. So, he actually did not even need to list the house in order to have it sold in under a week.
Afterward, his brother ultimately found out about the sale after being served with an eviction notice. And if you could not have guessed, his brother called him up to ask what the heck was going on.
At that point, he just admitted that the property had caused him too much stress. And since he realized he had an opportunity to make some money off the house, he took it.
Surprisingly, though, his brother was furious that he did not offer his brother a chance to buy the home.
But he found that pretty rich and pointed out how his brother was already having trouble making the rent. So, he asked how in the world his brother was going to qualify for a mortgage.
Once he said that his brother just called him a jerk. His brother also claimed he had the money all along and had just been waiting to make him an offer.
“So I asked him if he had money, why was he late on his rent?” he said. Yikes!
That pushed his brother to just start bad-mouthing him to the rest of their family. And shockingly, a few of his family members actually took his brother’s side and accused him of being a jerk.
Although, he wound up telling all of those family members to clear his brother’s debts to him if they really wanted to share their opinions. And no one ever took him up on that offer, obviously.
His parents have taken his side, thankfully, and believe that he should have never rented the house to his brother in the first place.
Still, though, he just feels bad for his sister-in-law and his brother’s children, who got dragged into the mix.
So now, he has been left wondering whether selling the house that his brother’s family lived in was a jerky thing to do or not.
Do you think it was generous of him to offer his brother breakeven rent? Was his brother a good tenant? Should he be required to lose money in order to help his brother out? If you had been in his shoes, would you have done the same thing?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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