Tenants say the funniest things

We own residential rentals that we self manage. All in all I absolutely love managing them ourselves because you absolutely can not buy the entertainment that comes along with it.

A couple months ago I get a call from one of my best tenants saying the garage door broke. The story I got was that she pushed the button once and it made a funny noise so she pushed it a second time and it just "broke".

After surveying the damage it is obvious that somehow a car drove through it. There were no cars at the house and she denied that anything other than her original story happened. As I was standing there scratching my head and wondering if I was talking to my 5 year old nephew I had a decision to make on how to handle it. Go nuts or suck it up.

I guess the moral is I could have made a huge stink, threatened her with eviction and all that stuff. However the flip side to that is that she pays her rent 5 days early like clock work, always has. This incident is the only time I have ever heard from her other then the rent envelope in the mail so I sucked it up. A replacement garage door is only $450 installed and she acknowledged that her deposit is officially mine. Since then she referred a friend of her to me as a rental and I filled a vacancy the day after the last tenant moved which is going to save me big time on vacancy costs.

I love managing and if anyone ever has questions or scenarios about it email me.