The House That Munt Built

Living in this house has proved an experience. The last time that I lived in a place like this I was a student over 20 years ago. I live in a rented room for a year in 2006/7 but it was a well managed building and whilst the clothes drying facilities left a little to be desired and I could meet all sorts of people walking from my room to the toilet/shower (in various states of attire) the rest of it was perfectly acceptable. But this house has had all sorts of surprises.

But having been here for six months now we have finally got to the bottom of most of the problems. It seems that the owner wasn’t really very interested in letting the building but a couple of guys were very keen to rent it from him and then rent the individual rooms out to us. We shall call these middle men, for want of a better phase, Dumb and Dumber. Now Dumb thought that he could spend a little money making a few minor improvements to the place and Dumber would do all the leg work collecting the rents. Obviously they would have to lay out a little cash in the first place but they were bound to rake it in again once they had tenants. They would charge each tenant a commission of 1 month, a 1 month deposit and then a monthly rent. The commission they would keep since they had no deal with the owner regarding that and the monthly rent they would split with the own on a percentage basis. Excellent plan.

So they put in a basic kitchen, 5 basic showers and laminate on all the floors. They also put in a partition wall in one of the larger rooms. Must have cost them ten thousand Euros or so I guess. They quickly filled all the rooms, probably making four thousand Euros back with the commission straight away, leaving only six thousand to recoup from the monthly rentals.

But you see, it appears that they weren’t too smart with their negotiations on the monthly rents. The deal that they negotiated with the owner was, you’ll like this, one hundred per cent to the owner and the rest for themselves. And this is why our requests for a doorbell, a security light and for them to fix the dryer went unheeded.

But since we complained to the owner so much he has kicked out Dumb and Dumber and has promised to do all our requests himself. Since he is getting about five thousand Euros a month in income from one building, he has obviously decided that this is worthy of a little more of his attention. We are getting new contracts and workmen have already been round to make estimates for the work. We have a doorbell and a security light. I’m going to get soundproofing between me and the next room (which, luckily is currently vacant) and there will be new showers installed and a new kitchen.

So even though the washing machine broke recently things are, on average, on the up. We have a new tenant downstairs that I met today and workmen have started appearing and doing things. The central heating is still very suspect and we await a new washing machine, but in general the rest is ok.

Fingers crossed.

All I have to do now is ask the council to work normal hours and not the current 6:30am to half past midnight. I’m a little less worried about having to stay an extra three months now.