NEXT!!!

Can someone please explain to me why it is so difficult to find a "normal" tenant? Surely not everyone out there is a lunatic!? The past 24 hours have been an exercise in complete frustration.

Let's rewind a bit. Three friends of mine are renting out my house back in Austin. Two of them just bought their own place and are moving out at the end of August. The third, Casey, wants to stay so we're on the hunt for the ultimate roommate. Scratch that, we WERE on the hunt for the ultimate roommate, now we'd settle for someone that's at least half "normal" and a personality fit. Though, I'm not entirely sure I know what "normal" means at this point.

Casey posted an ad on craigslist last week and of course we received the anticipated onslaught of responses. Have you all ever seen History of the World Part I? There's that scene where Madeline Kahn playing Empress Nympho has to pick her escorts for the evening based on their "manly prowess". She walks down the row of men singing, "yes, no, no, no, no, no, no, YES, no, no, YES, no, no"..and so on. Watch the clip here if you haven't seen it...great scene. In any event that's how we felt sifting through these e-mail responses. There was the obligatory crazy, the predictably boring and a very short list of candidates that appeared to fit the mold.

Casey ultimately selected someone, let's call him George, for a one on one interview. George and Casey hit it off instantly. He was called back for a Sunday night bar-b-q to meet some of our friends. They too approved of George. Great! We had a roommate/tenant. I sat down Sunday night to draft up the rental agreement and e-mailed it to Casey, though I entirely forgot to PDF it. This was an oversight atypical of me but it turned out to be a fortuitous mistake. I soon received a signed copy of the contract from George in PDF format with a copy of his drivers license and a copy of two checks for the first months rent and deposit. Thus began trouble.

I gave a cursory glance over the contract and something quickly jumped out at me. There was some wording that I knew I never had in there. George had edited the contract to state his rent covered use of a second bedroom as his personal office (for the same price of course). My blood pressure immediately went through the roof. Don't screw with me George. Having noticed this glaring discrepancy I decided it would be prudent to scour this "new" contract for additional changes. I printed out the original version and George's version, placed one behind the other and held them up to the light. Instantly I found several sections that did not line up. Not only did he give himself another room, he removed all clauses pertaining to loss of deposit. He also changed the dollar amount for the late fee for rent.

WHO DOES THIS??? Did he think I wouldn't notice and blindly sign??? Needless to say I brought this up to Casey who was definitely disappointed but just as annoyed. Can we say red flags? I wrote a strongly worded e-mail to George citing my anger and stating that I would not be signing him as a tenant. He of course wrote back several times to try to weasel out of the situation. Every e-mail he sent only spurred additional lies and further solidified my stance. He finally threw in the towel when he saw I wasn't budging.

So we're back to square one. BOO. If any of you out there in blogger land know of someone in Austin who is looking to rent out a room in a cool house with a cool roommate...send them to this ad on craigslist. It's ultimately going to be Casey's decision who is selected but we're definitely on the look out for sane, fun applicants. Save us from tenant search hell!!!