The drug gang part 1

Imaging the worst case scenario as a landlord. The tenant from this particular case is probably on most people’s mind. So imaging the aforementioned tenant, then add a whole gang of gangsters. That’s the type who ended up moving into my property. If you read the title, you’ve probably already guessed it.

But how did that happen? How can I be so sloppy that I let this happen? Believe me when I said, I don’t know. As I have mentioned in the prelude, I was still in a trusting mood on humanity. And if you’ve ever gotten involved with a big regional gang. You know that their legal side and their underworld side are completely separate with a firewall in between just like a bank’s investment arm and banking arm.

I first got a call from a realtor. Let’s call this realtor D. D has relatively good command of English and appears to have been a resident for a long time. He comes, we talk and he tells me he is a realtor hired by someone. He is going to bring that someone over next. Right away, when you have a realtor looking for a rental unit for a tenant, you know it’s serious and most likely someone who comes from money. But in this case, it’s an exception.

That someone is a older couple from an Asian heritage who’ve also been a citizen for a while. They have dogs and is pressuring me to accept their offer on the same day. The only red flag that I didn’t consider red flag back then because everyone is aggressively trying to get a rental unit. After the ordeal with the previous tenants, I am ready to get back to the meek and all agreeing nature of most Asian tenants (I am saying most here because obviously, this one isn’t your typical one).

So after a good 3 hour interview where I go through their background and check IDs. I then went ahead and pulled a credit report and criminal report. Criminal report is squeaky clean, but credit score is average. That should’ve been a warning sign, but it happens to coincide to his story as the person is a business owners with a huge credit line. I then explained the rules and read through all the addendum to him (No smoking, no drug activities etc. etc.) just to make sure.

Mind you, the lawsuit in the prelude is still dragging on at this time, so since I don’t want to repeat my mistake I relied heavily on official data that I have to pay to get. So this is the tenant that I did the most amount of due diligence on. My gut feeling said something is wrong, but I couldn’t figure out why. It zoned in on how they kept on trying to figure out how I made it here and where my family comes from (in terms of work industry). Also they mentioned in passing that their son and daughter in law will be living there with them. I thought “Great, a happy family, even more stable.” My gut feeling is also distrustful of renters who claim to be business owners. But I checked the business and it is there. The month is passing by and the other applicants all have really bad credit. The property is bleeding money from the previous eviction.

So we shook hands, signed the lease and did the inspection.