You’re a good landlord. You’re out there working your tail off trying to provide a nice product to your great tenants.

Then wham! Along comes some tenants that have been trained how to be bad tenants by bad landlords. They’ve been taught that it’s okay to pay the rent late. It’s okay to party and disregard the quiet enjoyment of their neighbors, etc. Heck, that bad landlord might even have paid the bad tenants cash to get out of the last apartment instead of doing an eviction. The bad tenant has been rewarded for his bad behavior by bad landlords, and thinks bad behavior is the way to get ahead. [You always get what you reward!]

Here’s an example: I recently got some great new tenants that moved to one of my apartments because their last landlord would not take action to stop the all-night-long heavy traffic and partying going on in the apartment upstairs from them. Their last landlord just let my new tenants out of their lease instead. Now that former landlord has bad tenants upstairs from a vacant apartment he’s trying to rent! Where’s the logic in that?

I don’t have any of that kind of crap going on in my units. All of my tenants know that I have an evil twin…and none of them want to meet her. 😉 There’s a sort of “ethics presence” in knowing that I have the will to confront bad tenants if I have to, and that I intend to protect the quiet enjoyment of my good tenants. Consequently, I rarely have to bring out my evil twin. [Perish the thought!] More…