Working Together To Lower The Cost Of Electricity
I reported back to Grace that I thought I had found the problem but didn’t tell her what it was. Remember, she and Kingsley were good friends!
#4 Real Estate Man
Want to add a bit of odd additional interest to your life? Try running a rooming house.
Please, allow Real Estate Man to tell you a small slice of his experience with that brand of additional interest. It all started with Real Estate Man acquiring a medium size building in what was then a seedy section of Center City Philadelphia.
He went through the necessary machinations to get the property zoned as 6 rooming units. There was some space left over on the first floor so the person Real Estate Man retained ,who called himself an architect, designed an apartment. So the building was became legal to house 6 rooming units and 1 studio apartment.
The difference between a rooming unit and a studio apartment is: rooming units don’t have kitchens or bathrooms. Rooming units share a bath. There must be 1 bath for every 6 rooming units per property. No rooming unit has a kitchen.
A studio apartment has its own bathroom and kitchen no matter how humble.
Real Estate Man’s rooming house attracted either young people of both sexes just starting out their lives — or middle-age men in the process of winding down theirs.
This story contains individuals in both categories.
Real Estate Man’s story:
Among some of the more interesting tenants that ever graced the threshold of 111 South Camac was a 20 something girl from rural Pennsylvania named Grace and a middle-aged Nigerian man named Kingsley.
Grace rented the modest but considerably more prestigious than a room studio apartment on the first floor ($950 per month).
Kingsley, the room adjacent ($300 per month). Moving in the building at around the same time they appeared to forge an interesting but unlikely friendship.
Everyone who rented in that place had a story, I suppose.
Midway into the first year of their separate tenancies, Grace complained of an unusually high electric bill. She sent me a copy of her recent bills. they were much higher then her bills a few months prior.
After listening to all of Grace’s answers to my quires, I made an appointment with her to visit her apartment to check things myself.
The day of the appointment arrived and was I greeted enthusiastically by a glowing Grace. Glow that was brought on by a possible solution for the billing problem not extra electric current running through her body.
What I discovered in her bathroom wall, where her 2nd outlet should be, was a LUMP. It looked like a wad of toilet paper covered over by the majority of a giant tube of toothpaste. Instead of joint compound the material you’d normally use for such a task. Hasty wall covering. More importantly the electric outlet was no longer there. How could Grace not have NOTICED. WTF?
I excused myself and went next door to Kingsley’s room. I knocked and received no answer. I used my master key to gain access. Sleuthed a bit and discovered, as sure as there’s poop in a goose, Grace’s electric outlet was still hooked up to the wires leading to her meter but on the other side of the wall.
The side that faces into Kingsley’s room. No crude attempt to toothpaste and toilet paper wall cover in Kingsley’s room. No, his contribution to the enterprise was a six plug power surge now serving Kingsley’s general electric needs; specifically his computer, toaster oven, assorted lamps and shiny new microwave. Surprised he didn’t blow the circuits.
God must have been favoring all of us.
I reported back to Grace that I thought I had found the problem but didn’t tell her what it was. Remember, she and Kingsley were good friends!
I made an appointment for Kingsley to come to my office the next afternoon. My home ground, not his.
At the appointed time Kingsley walked my office.
I could live a thousand years and I’ve never forget how the conversation went.
Me: “Why did you put a hole in the wall between Grace and you, take her outlet, move it to your side and use her electricity?
Kingsley: “Sometime you have to trick the ladies.’
Me: “But she’s your friend.”
Kingsley: “That’s why she owes me her electric.”
I contracted with an electrician the next day to straighten things out.
Regrettably,Grace moved out at the end of the month.
Equally regrettably, Kingsley stayed
I refunded the difference in Grace’s electric bills with her deposit and raised Kingsley’s rent accordingly. He paid it back to me over 5 months.
As far as I know Grace and Kingsley are no longer friends.
The city bought the rooming house and surrounding area the next year using its powers of eminent domain to build its beautiful Convention Center.
Real Estate Tip
Toothpaste is an uncommon but practiced widely method of tenants patching holes in drywall: You Fix it Yourself.com