Chance are if you are a landlord... you take care of your properties. I mean it only makes sense. Properties in good repair make better homes and rent for better values. So it makes sense to have nice properties. I have remained silent on the plight of one notorious Richmond, VA landlord that has been making the local headlines. But there are some lessons to be learned from this guy. So here it is Landlords...a Lesson in Bad Publicity.
Property owner complains to Richmond Voice about citations
Again Lawrence gets off lightly
Oliver Lawrence to finally get his due?
Owner of vacant buildings in Richmond fined $3,600
Richmond vacant-property owner is convicted
This is just a sample of the negative publicity one man received because of his property neglect. His face and the name of his company has been plastered across the evening news, local newspaper and of course the neighborhood BLOGS. Neighbors have staged demonstrations at some of his properties. Some have even used squatters rights laws to clean up the houses.
The lesson here...landlords- please take care of your properties. Only buy the properties if you have the cash reserves in place to fix them if they become vacant. One bad landlord can make a lot of us look really bad ....really fast.
I suspect this landlord WANTS the bad press and neighborhood pressure to ALLOW him to demolish this property. It appears to be in an historic area where bureaucrats want him to spend way beyond the value of the property to preserve it.
Nowhere in the headlines you provide does it identify the owner as other than the property owner...he may well NOT be a landlord trying to rent and gain income from the property.
Wallace...I really dont think he wants the bad press. If his houses were really in historical areas...I would agree with your statement. But most of his homes are in marginal areas that are heavy with absentee owners. The beauracrats really only want him to maintain his properties.
He wants to be a landlord...or I should say wanted. I just dont think he has the cash now to fix all his properties. He was kind of like Starbucks...he grew too big(hundreds of properties) too fast and just did not have the cash reserves to fix the properties when bad things happened.
I've witnessed this over and over with owners.... starting with one property, then heading onto the next and continuing. WE of course, were expected to take care of these poorly chosen investments. We had to cut them and others off.... just to preserve our name.
It's sad to see- the neighbors really would like to string this guy up by his toenails somewhere. I've met the man...even tried to buy some of his properties. He just really seems out of touch with reality.