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So, You Want to be a Landlord, eh?: A Memoir

by Kevin Clarke

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A landlord’s memoir of extra income, escalating upkeep, and tenant-management misadventures

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Paperback New English

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AlbakiReads Editorial

A landlord’s memoir of extra income, escalating upkeep, and tenant-management misadventures

Kevin Clarke frames this memoir around a practical ambition—earning supplemental income through rental properties—and the increasingly unruly realities that follow. Beginning with a triplex, then a duplex, and eventually another triplex, the account traces how calculations about expenses, taxes, and mortgage payments give way to lessons in property maintenance and the complications of dealing with people. A gasoline-bucket incident signals the book’s comic perspective on situations that were far less amusing while they were happening. The focus stays on the gap between the financial promise of becoming a landlord and the unpredictable work involved in keeping buildings and tenancies under control.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Readers interested in firsthand accounts of owning rental property
  • Fans of memoirs built from everyday mishaps and frustrating situations
  • Those curious about the practical complications behind landlord life

Themes

Rental-property ownershipSupplemental incomeBuilding maintenanceTenant managementHumor in hindsight

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Famous last words: "He seemed like a nice guy at the time."

 

After I emphatically, and with no small amount of animation, told "Quasimodo" to get the 10-gallon open bucket of gasoline off the side deck of the apartment building, I could see the gears slowly start to turn in his head, searching for a way to save his precious fuel. When his moment of eureka finally arrived, he grabbed the bucket, struggled to take it down the stairs and over to his broken-down car ... and proceeded to put it on the back seat.

 

Success, in this case, was supposed to come in the form of money; that is to say: extra income. Money that could be used for spending or savings, or maybe help pay down the mortgage on my own home. It started out okay with the first triplex building, even after the expenses and taxes. Not a lot extra, but it helped. The subsequent purchase, a duplex, was fairly good too, but then it descended into madness when I took on another triplex property.

 

I certainly learned a great deal about building maintenance, but very little about people management! Looking back on it now it all seems rather funny, but as you will see in the book, it would not have been the least bit funny to me at the time.

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