Contact CU Independent Copy Editor Cannon Casey at cannon.casey@colorado.edu and follow him on Twitter @cannon_casey.
In the midst of the exciting promise of moving in with the perfect roommate, you pick up the phone to tell your landlord that you found someone to sign the lease with you.
He responds by saying he found two roommates earlier to sign with you. You’re upset that you didn’t get to pick, but hey, at least you keep your room. Then another call comes.
Instead of leaving one space on the three-person lease for you to sign, the two potential roommates brought a friend and signed together. They signed the lease that you and your perfect roommate were supposed to sign. The lease that you were supposed to sign with two random roommates. The lease that you’re now left off of.
And did I mention that you live in that house currently? You’re gonna have to move on out of the house you live in. The room that you spent a year settling into, and the room that you expected to have for the next year. Now you have to find a new place to live because of poor communication.
What do you do when you go from the high of a new roommate to the low of being forced out of your own house?
That’s exactly what happened to Aidenn Vaillancourt, a sophomore at the University of Colorado. (Listen to Vaillancourt’s recap of the situation here.)
“A complete lack of communication,” Vaillancourt said. “He wasn’t clear with them about what I wanted, and then he wasn’t clear with me about their complete intentions, and it just was all very confusing because I don’t think he understood what was going on either.”
Benny Swan, a property manager for Four Star on the Hill Realty and Property Management, lists open communication as one of the most important things in the relationship between tenant and property manager.
“Open lines of communication are really important on our end as a manager, and on our residents end as well,” Swan said. “A lot of times, we’re unaware that a problem is unaddressed. They think that we’re aware and just ignoring it, but we don’t hear anything from the resident and then you get somebody that takes their frustration out on someone in the office.”
“I hear lots of horror stories from tenants about how their last landlord wouldn’t return their phone calls or fix anything. And it works the other way, too,” local landlord Kel Darnell added. “I often send a message to tenants that requires a response and get ignored. Good communication just makes everything go smoother.”
On top of communication with landlords, there’s communication with roommates.
“You’re going to live with people you think that you’re going to get along with and then you eventually decide ‘I don’t like this person for x, y and z reasons,’ and it creates conflict among the residents,” Swan said. “And there’s a stress factor with school, and grades, and working, and I think that just compounds itself.”
That stress only doubles during this time of the year, when most students have already signed leases for next year, or have a lease lined up. What do you do if you don’t have a place to live? You have to settle for a less ideal option. And, leases are being signed earlier and earlier every year. One student and her friends signed a lease in January. For next fall. Eight months before move in day.
“It’s always been a market where there’s a lot of pressure to sign leases quickly, just because it happens in a short period of time,” Swan said. “You’re signing a lease eight months or six months before you’re moving into the property, which is unusual when it comes to a residential market in most cases, so I think that creates some added pressure.”
Signing the lease comes with more pressure, stress and frustration.
“Leases are really frustrating. There’s so much detail and fine print that you don’t realize,” Vaillancourt said.
Vaillancourt went on to tell the story of her landlord coming over to fix a clogged drain at her apartment. Where does the money for repairs come from? When she looked over the lease, Vaillancourt saw a clause stating that repairs such as the clogged drain would come out of her security deposit.
“When I went into the lease today and read it, that’s something that he charges us for and takes out of our security deposit, but he’s not going to tell us that because he’s making money off of it,” Vaillancourt said.
Swan sees it differently. See a theme here?
“Security deposits are the biggest area of conflict for any management company, most likely,” Swan said. “In the end, we don’t make any money off of security deposits, we don’t own any of the maintenance companies. All of the charges are either a tenant responsibility or an owner responsibility.”
“I’d say that the biggest problem area with student tenants is that they don’t know much about taking care of property and they break things and then are surprised when I charge them to fix those things,” Darnell said. “So there’s a difference between ‘wear and tear’ and destructive behavior and a lot of students would like to think that everything is wear and tear.”
Other causes for lost security deposits can mainly be attributed to house damages. But students don’t always cause the damage they have to pay for when the lease ends. If the property manager goes through the house and sees damage that was not reported on move-in day, they have no choice but to assume it was caused during the lease. That’s why Swan thinks it is imperative to take a thorough look through the house and to document any damages so you as a tenant can’t be held responsible.
“I think that it tends to shift the lens that you’re looking at the move-in process through,” Swan said about the excitement of moving in. “It’s getting the house set up, and not as much on the document side of things which – in the end it’s a resident responsibility to do the majority of that documentation. We try and make it clear, but it can definitely be something that’s not always understood, the importance or the potential impact of it.”
Vaillancourt’s situation was resolved, but the cause still remains.
“I’m so thankful that they are girls that I’m going to get along with, because it could have gone the other way with [my landlord] just finding random roommates,” Vaillancourt said.
Just like any relationship, communication and respect are paramount.
“If you respect the landlord, he is much more likely to respect you,” Darnell said.
