My landlord asked me what I thought of the house he had for rent.
I was a realtor who looked at rentals before listing them.
The maintenance man went to the house with me, and I was aghast even before walking in. The smell that came from the house was enough to make your eyes water. I asked the maintenance person what he thought about the property, and he only shrugged. He said he had been doing general contracting for years, and a property like this gave him job security. I didn’t think the landlord could be a slumlord, and I was worried. I had been his tenant for years, and he had always taken care of the properties. I took about twenty pictures and headed back to the landlord. When I showed him the pictures, he almost cried. He told me it was his father’s house, and he couldn’t believe the mess. No one had lived in the house for two years, and although he had heard squatters were there, he didn’t believe. I told him his maintenance man was the owner of a general contracting company. When he said he didn’t have a maintenance man, I just stared at him. I asked who the person was that had accompanied me to the house. He said he was the guy he had fired six months earlier. He was damaging houses, so he had more jobs for his general contracting company. I now understood why the owner of the general contracting company shrugged when he looked at the house. I hated to think he may have had something to do with the damage to the house.