My Tenant’s Disgusting Taste In Furniture Has Ruined My Life

So the other day I took a viewing (generally, always a miserable experience), right?

My initial plan, as prearranged with my current tenant, was to take the viewing with the new prospective tenant, and then immediately after, pop back into the property to take a few glamorous snaps for marketing purposes. I planned on whipping it onto Rightmove to generate a flood of enquiries. That usually does the trick.

Pictures are probably the core of any BTL tenant finding expedition, so it’s important to get it bang-on. The consequences of lousy imagery will definitely reflect on the quantity and quality of leads. In fact, in the past, I did a small and highly futile experiment on how much difference images can make to an advert.

Ok, so, the property itself is in fabulous condition. My tenant is clean, the property is clean- there isn’t a hygiene issue. You could quite comfortably eat off the floor without contracting hepatitis or some other form of disease that will invert your penis.

However, the furniture and the general arrangement of items in the property left me in disarray, like someone had randomly kicked in the nuts.

Holy shit, I’m still bemused at how someone can have such disgustingly sinful taste!! As a general principle, I don’t provide furniture with any of my lets, so the furnishings and layout is left in the capable hands of my tenants. Of course, whenever a landlord leaves any kind of responsibility in the hands of a tenant, there’s always margin for error. Needless to say, tenants can say the same about landlords. On this occasion, however, I, the landlord, fell victim.

The furniture was timelessly awful, straight out of a seedy motel from the 60’s. To add insult to injury, everything was staged so awkwardly that it made mobility around the property extremely difficult. I had to turn sideways and suck my tummy in, to navigate through certain areas.

I’m not claiming to be an interior design diva, but I can at least competently buy a collection of items knowing they’d match, suit the property, physically fit the rooms, and have some appeal to “normal” humans. What I witnessed was a pile of junk crammed into a house.

Here’s a short break down of why the decor/furniture made me cry

• Total mismatch shambles! It was so bizarre; initially I thought my tenant was just trying to make some kind of moral stand by being controversial, like a hippy or some shit – “Fuck fashion” But he smelt clean, had short hair, and I didn’t see any tie-dye clothing. Sadly, there goes that theory. I think this boiled down to genuinely poor taste.
• Hideous focal points – the main living room is bought to its death by a bright red Persian rug, with silhouette donkeys. I’m not joking. Silhouette donkeys!

  The colours were similar to the shades scouring the verruca growing under my foot. The rug pretty much covered every square inch of the surface, removing all signs of the beautiful hardwood flooring. Tragic.

• Over sized furniture – the living room was also shadowed by a relatively enormous computer desk that was located in the corner of the room- so big that it managed to reach into the centre of the room, creating a nice and inconvenient obstruction. So basically, the main chilling area of the property was taken over by an ugly Persian rug and an obscenely over sized computer desk.
• Attack of tupperware – there was empty tupperware stacked up EVERYWHERE. It’s like he’s using them as substitutes for household ornaments. There was even tupperware in the bedrooms. What the fuck? Why would anyone have tupperware in the bedroom?
• Polyester wardrobe – the master bedroom was swallowed up by a wardrobe, which was made of fabric, and reliant on the technology of Velcro – that’s how the doors were kept closed.
• Waterproofing shit – the dining table was covered with a “easy wipe” transparent plastic sheet. The funny thing was, the table it was protecting was already battered. Chipped to shit.

  On a sidenote, I use sheets like that to have sex on when I bring home prostitutes. Enough said.

While I was showing my prospective tenant around I felt deeply embarrassed. I was actually thinking, “no way would this dude want to rent this pile of shit”. Fortunately, the prospect managed to visualise the property without the hordes of mismatching shit scattered everywhere (he’s a better man than I am), hence why he wanted the place.

Anyways, there was NO WAY IN HELL I was going to take photos of the property in that condition!! That’s how aids became a global pandemic – an infected monkey was unleashed into the public. That property is currently definitely defected.

So the plan now is to wait until my tenant moves himself and his crap out of the property before I take any new pictures. Fortunately, I didn’t plan on taking anymore viewings until my tenant moved out because I want to fit new kitchen units. However, I did want to start marketing the property and arrange viewings in advance, so the property is kept vacant for as little time as possible. But I suppose I’ll have to take a hit there.

Don’t suppose this has happened to anyone else? I’ve decided that bad furniture/decor imposed by tenants is landlord-cancer!!!