“Mommas don’t let your babies grow up to be clueless.” Oh, that is so true. I recently had an event happen with our real estate company that made me speechless. In our real estate brokerage, we do sales, but we also do property management. In the 30 years of managing other people’s property, I feel like I’ve seen it all. Oh, I am so wrong on that.
Late in January I received a call from a frantic student-tenant saying that the
ceiling in her kitchen collapsed and water was pouring into the kitchen. What? What could have happened to cause that? I took off to see what was going on and she was right. What happened? The students took off for Christmas break around 12/23. They set the furnace back to 60 degrees and left town. That wasn’t the problem.
When I started quizzing the students, they told me they put 275 gallons of heating oil in the tank the week they left for Christmas break. They were required by their lease to call our office to inform us if they are going to be gone for more than 14 days. They didn’t. During their break, we had the coldest period for 2024 and for the beginning of 2025. They were gone for 35 days.
We did a calculation of oil use based on temperature and discovered that they had 22 days of heating oil. They were gone 35 days; 13 days longer than their oil would have lasted. In the process of doing a little investigating, I discovered they put oil in the tank in early October and it was 200 gallons rather than 275. It didn’t matter. Either one would haven given the same outcome. They swore they didn’t use the heat until they set it before leaving on 12/23. That may be true, but the weather had been the coldest in years during the period prior to their departure. During their absence the pipes froze breaking the water lines and radiator lines, destroying the radiators and soaking the house from top to bottom.
While we were in the process of assessing the damage, they started calling, coming by our office, and having their parents call and come by as well spewing profanities to my staff. They wanted us to provide them with housing. They just did $100,000 damage to my client’s property and they had the audacity to demand that we provide them with housing because their rental was no longer habitable. Mommas don’t let your babies grow up to be clueless. Not only did the students take no responsibility for their actions, but their parents were equally clueless about their accountability.
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