The Time My Friend Wanted To Be My Tenant

I’ve slowly started to spread the word amongst my friends and family that I’m about to have a vacant property available for rent (as soon as my current vacates).

While I’m undounbtbale going to market my rental on Rightmove and Zoopla, I couldn’t resist making it public knowledge to my peers on Facebook.

All I did was mention that I’ll shortly have a 2 bedroom house available for rent, and if anyone was interested to contact me to discuss business. Facebook is always worth a shot, even if it means I have to deal with that awkward moment of notifying a dearest and nearest that I wouldn’t rent out my property to them if they were the last tenant on the planet.

I quickly received an interested response from a dude (let’s call him Arnold for ease) that read my status. He’s not a close friend, nor is he a stranger; he’s wedged in the middle somewhere, but closer to being friend than foe. I know enough about him to know he’s not a complete dickhead, consequently I didn’t dismiss his interest immediately. I provided him details of the property, which triggered his interest further. Fan-fucking-tastic, I thought!

Yesterday afternoon I showed Arnold around the property while my current tenant followed us around like a lost puppy (I hate it when tenants do that). Seriously, just give me space to do my job, i’m not going to masturbate on the bedsheets or pocket your loose change on the kitchen counter while no one is looking, you get me?

After the viewing, Arnold said he wanted in! He was very interested! thought this was my lucky day because I had effortlessly found a tenant with in a day of inactively searching. I couldn’t ask for anymore.

As we had come to the end of the tour, we both stood outside the property with smiles, shaking hands, and that’s when he hit me with a nuclear stink bomb…

I’m not employed at the moment, so I’ll be getting the money through the council. Also, are you willing to look past the deposit? That might be a struggle for me.

That’s cool, ain’t it?

Are you bloody mental? That’s literally the furthest fucking thing from cool.

Urgh. I felt he intentionally withheld those vital and bone-crushing details because he thought our pre-existing familiarity with one another would make me numb to his wildly undesirable circumstances. Perhaps if I was 16 and/or fell off the turnip truck yesterday his master plan would have come to fruition. Fortunately, neither was the case.

He could have mentioned his circumstances before we both got erections and started shaking hands over forming a new tenant/landlord relationship. I genuinely felt he put in a real awkward situation.

But hey, I guess I can’t fault him. He saw and opportunity and he tried his luck.

Long story short, I basically told him I have more viewings scheduled (which I didn’t at that point), and I will assess each applicant on their own merits.

“THANKS FOR COMING BY, I’LL CALL YOU!”

I won’t.

So yeah, I basically pulled the plug on the whole arrangement there and then. It was quite the anti-climax.

What Arnold and I had briefly experienced was a typical teen-relationship, which had a life span of two minutes.

Would Arnold have made a good or bad tenant? It’s impossible to know, but I wasn’t willing to take the chance to find out.

So it’s back to my original plan of marketing the property through online property portals. I’m still undecided on whether or not I should unfriend Arnold from Facebook, just to make life less awkward. Hopefully he’ll show me mercy and do us both a favour by unfriending me first.