Anybody Ever Rent From This Lady?

[pieces of eight]

Lots of complaints about Serina Hearn. The comments are gold.

http://www.kansan.com/news/2010/oct/...ence-landlady/

[Hawker007]

Re: Anybody Ever Rent From This Lady?

That's the gal that we rented the house from for a weekend for our 10 year college reunion, that is actually the house we rented (1736 Louisiana). I thought she was pretty nice, but she would get really on your nerves after awhile. She went out of her way to make this place nice for us, and it couldn't have been a better place for this occasion.

[RandytheHelpfulPineapple]

Re: Anybody Ever Rent From This Lady?

That's a bad piece of journalism, but it brings up some practices that are all too common in Lawrence. The non-refundable deposit trick is the oldest one in the book amongst slum lords. They know that most won't pursue legal recourse, so it's money in their pockets.

That said, I've rented a house that was zoned for a single family home and we had five people living there. I knew it was illegal, but we were well behaved and it didn't seem to hurt anyone. I can understand why the law is in place, because most college students create noise or don't maintain the property.

[pieces of eight]

Re: Anybody Ever Rent From This Lady?

It seems easy to blame the students, when so many of them are actually tidy and spend money to clean up the place before they move out.

[RandytheHelpfulPineapple]

Re: Anybody Ever Rent From This Lady?

What it comes down to is this: document, document, document.

Take pictures when you move in and be extremely descriptive when you fill out the move-in property conditions.

Keep carbon copies or electronic copies of your rental payments.

Use email (if possible) when you file complaints or maintenance requests. If it was by phone, write down the time and date you called in a log or diary, along with what you talked about.

Before you move out, request to walk through the property with a member of the staff. If there are issues, try to fix them before moving out. Make sure to get any maintenance requests in that are still lingering.

When you do move out, request a walk through with a property rep and request a receipt of the issues. Take pictures of the move out conditions.

If you do have deposit damages, request an itemized invoice.

Always remember-- in a court of law it isn't what you know, it is what you can prove. Most undergrads don't have enough experience to realize how important it is to protect yourself against slum lords.

[Joe Norris]

Re: Anybody Ever Rent From This Lady?

Dad, is that you?

But in all honesty, that's all great advice....My dad was my landlord in college so I had it pretty good...when I got to Tulsa they didn't try to pull any tricks as I was a "working professional" and not some lazy college kid

It seems like most kids have to go through the experience of losing that "free money" (the deposit) before they realize that they have to implement all the above strategies

[blackPHOGmoan]

Re: Anybody Ever Rent From This Lady?

I rented from her. Our house was shitty and we treated as such. We got half our deposit back, which all of us thought was more than fair. There were major issues with our house such as a basement water pump being replaced and never plugged in, leading to repeated floods. Of the 4 bathrooms, often we were left with 2 working. We didn't have hot water for close to 2 weeks. The workers they used to fix things were dumb and slow, Killer combo!

I hated that bitch and her british boy toy, Tony. Fuck that dude and his blaring radio the entire time he's trying to tile a bathroom. Hey dude, I could retile that 11 sq ft in about 2 days tops, but you keep taking a month.