Opportunities in Inconveniences

As we wrap up the first week of this month's #GRIT, Julia joined me for a workout. Ryan Bragg and Teresa Chaney Threadgill are killing their first month, Robert Bell is back for #2, and Heather Reagor is on her 5th or 6th month if I'm remembering right.

On the inside, we talked about seeing inconvenience as an adventure which reminded me of a while back when my phone rang and a former client was on the line.

Technically speaking, he was a client of the firm rather than me personally because I'd never worked with him. He was represented by another agent when he purchased a condo that I had listed at the time.

“Listen,” Mark said, “remember that condo I bought? I need some help with a deadbeat tenant. He hasn’t paid his rent in months, and I just need to get him out.”

Long story short is that the tenant was supposed to have moved out and mailed the keys, but after many months still hadn't done it. Mark, who’d since moved to Atlanta, needed some boots on the ground up here.

I suggested we simply evict him, but Mark wanted to give him one more chance to do the right thing. When I talked to him, he confirmed that he'd moved out and would be happy to drop off the keys, but they never showed up. For weeks and weeks, he had some excuse.

“I forgot.”

“I had to work.”

“Nobody was at your office.”

“Blah, blah, blah.”

Eventually, Mark filed the paperwork to have him evicted, and I had to meet the sheriff, get the place rekeyed, etc.

The whole process took several months, and you would not believe what I found when I finally got inside. It turns out the guy had not moved out despite the power and water having been turned off for nonpayment six months earlier, and the entire place was full of beer cans, pizza boxes, and trash. There were dirty clothes, bags of garbage, and toilets that couldn’t flush, so they were, ummm, full.

Nasty does not adequately describe it.

Mark, of course, was disappointed. He didn’t really have time to manage a tenant, especially from Atlanta, so he certainly wasn’t interested in taking on a big clean-up project and having to find another one. And even though I could have done it for him and taken over the management, he was just ready to be done.

“I just want to sell it,” he said.

You know how sometimes things can be more of a pain-in-the-rear than they are worth?

This was one of those situations.

Months earlier, I’d mentioned that I had some interest in buying it, but, in the meantime, I’d tied up cash on another project, so I wasn’t in the same position. Still, I was interested and told him what I could do. Since cleaning it up and listing it would net him the most money, I figured that’s the route he would take.

To my surprise, he liked my offer. Not enough to take it, but enough to talk about it. We bounced around a couple of ideas and eventually found a way to structure the deal such that it was a total win-win for both of us. I took it off his hands as-is, he got his cash out of it, and I got a good price on an investment property.

During quarantine, we got it cleaned up. Trash-out, fresh paint, new flooring. As we wrapped up, one of my client’s houses went under contract, and they wanted to rent while they look for their next home. Having lived in the same neighborhood before, they were excited to see the condo and decided to lease it.

Bam!

I think back to the day Mark called me needing help, and I remember selfishly thinking to myself what pain in the ass it was going to be. I knew right away that it wouldn't be a straight forward eviction and would wind up being inconvenient as hell.

And it was, but...

I remind my kids all the time that they can’t control other people, but they can control how they react to them, and the same is true of life’s little inconveniences.

When shit happens, we get to choose how we react. We can let it derail us, aggravate us, irritate us, and throw us off course, in which case it's likely to get the best of us. Or we can roll with the punches, remember that inconveniences are only short term, and look for the opportunities hidden beneath them.

When Mark called, I could have easily said, “sorry, man, I don’t have time to hassle with this" and gone about my day as planned.

But if I had, I doubt I’d be the new owner of a lovely little condo with new carpet, fresh paint, and a tenant moving in next week.