Americans demand to have their
food made-to-order. We no longer live in
a culture where you eat what’s put in front of you; rather if you don’t like an
ingredient and would prefer to have other ingredients instead, it is deemed
socially acceptable to make the food preparer bend to your individual
whims. Burger King based a multi-million
dollar advertising campaign on (and trademarked the phrase) “Have It Your Way,”
and now every restaurant does the same.
I feel for the workers in the restaurant industry who have to put up
with all of us creating our own menus.
I read an article about how the
French chefs despise American tourists even more now. We walk into their 5-star restaurants, look
at the menus (which we expect to be written in English), and have conversations
like this:
American Tourist: How’s the
escargot?
French Waiter: Magnifique!
Tourist: What are the snails
cooked in?
Waiter: Excusez-moi?
Tourist: I mean, I’m trying to
cut down on butter, so I’d prefer the chef uses low-fat margarine… butter is
bad for the heart, you know. And garlic
gives me gas, so let’s cut that out too if it’s in there… Try to keep the salt to a minimum. And were these snails bred and treated
humanely before bring cooked?
Waiter: Sacre bleu!
This thinking has permeated into real
estate as well. At BDF Realty, we were
selling a house for one of our Charlotte property
management clients. An investor came
on to the scene who loved the house and wrote a contract to buy it. It was a great offer and we wound up
accepting it with minimal negotiation. However,
the investor did have one demand that caught me off guard and was not negotiable-
the washer & dryer needed to be out before closing.
Now, if the washer & dryer
were on their last legs, I’d understand.
But our client had bought these about a year ago; it was a nice set that
worked perfectly. But the investor was
adamant that they needed to go. So, it
made me ponder: why wouldn’t the investor want these as an asset for his future
tenants?
I thought about the prospective Charlotte tenants who
contact us to rent our houses. Not many
of them ask about a washer & dryer.
I don’t think we’ve ever had a deal fall through because a house didn’t
have them. We’ve had conversations with
prospective tenants about the issue of moving the washer & dryer that was already
in the house so they could use their own that they were bringing (that’s a
pain!). And having a washer & dryer
in the house didn’t allow us to charge more rent.
Furthermore, I recall the repair
requests we get from tenants who have washer & dryers our owners
provide. We send out appliance repair
people that, at times, have cost our owners hundreds of dollars. Sometimes the washer & dryers are not
repairable and have to be replaced which costs our owners even more money and
drains their ROI.
So, if tenants don’t act like
they want washers & dryers and it costs our owners money to have and
maintain them, maybe this investor was on to something? He makes a compelling case to get washer
& dryers out of rental homes and let the tenants fend for themselves.
Maybe it is smart to “have it
your way” when you’re buying. Experts do
say that too much butter is bad for the heart!
Happy Landlording!
Brett Furniss is the head property manager of BDF Realty
(Charlotte
Residential Property Management), the trusted real estate advisor for Charlotte
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