I came across this tweet the other day.
Someone replying to this even suggested that a good (scammy) hustle would be to sublease out your apartment while not paying it yourself. You essentially become a landlord while waiting to get kicked out. With the current eviction moratorium, I wouldn’t expect you could kick someone out for more than a year.
A terrible situation, and mercy to anyone trying to deal with the NIMBY culture of high-cost areas like California.
However, soon after I came across this story:
Despite the irony of this seemingly pro-NIMBY story, what I’m really highlighting is the creative thinking. In essence, they prevented a problem (loss of views and therefore property value) by doing something totally legal, which is buying up properties in the adjacent building so the HOA would never disband.
I’m so impressed with whoever came up with that plan, much less executing it successfully.
If I was the landlord in the first story, I would do everything I legally could to be obnoxious to a tenant who was blatantly trying to take advantage of me:
- Blasting music right up till the minute quiet hour starts.
- If there’s street parking, actively making it so they have to move their car every 24 hours by letting the police know (a standard rule in a lot of cities).
- Setting up birdhouses right outside the tenants windows, but only obnoxious and loud ones. This wouldn’t work on me, because I would love it, but I’ve heard some people don’t.
- Do apartments inspections as often as possible (because you’re considering a renovation). These require 24-hours notice, so there is definitely a legal part of this to navigate to ensure you don’t open yourself up to litigation, ironically
I’m not a lawyer, so take all of those bullet points with a grain of salt. But I admire people who solve their problems creatively. Just because you can’t take adverse action legally does not mean you’re out of options.
