Mayhem in Melbourne

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Bruno! He won’t stay buried in my mind.

It looks as if I will have to collect his applications myself. I am starting to worry he will call again before I have got onto them.

I ring Lisa. ‘If Bruno calls, can you take a message? I’m not available.’

‘Don’t be unavailable too long. He won’t give up.’

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘I have to check his applications before I talk to him again.’

‘Well, hurry up and do it. I don’t want him having a go at me,’ she says and she’s gone.

I head off to get the applications. I want to buzz Lauren and ask if they are still on her desk. But I don't. I tell myself it is good to get up and walk – it is healthy. I am always reading that.

I collect them and the running sheet from the edge of her desk and she has the grace to say, ‘Sorry. I’ve been flat out.’

‘It was good for me to have the walk,’ I say. ‘We all need to move around more.’

She picks up the phone and begins to dial without a comment.

I glance at Bruno’s applications. One couple has put themselves down as having two dogs. They’re not going to be suitable. Bruno will not have a dog near the place. His no-dog policy is set in concrete.

I ring them and tell them, so they can move on to another property.

Checking Bruno’s applications finds me caught up in a strange, rather surreal game that I have played before. Seeing this situation as a game helps me to cope with it, and in a bizarre way, to enjoy it. It must be something about chasing a ball and a desire to win; perhaps just the desire to win.

I regularly check applications for this two-bedroom villa unit in a beachside suburb. It’s usual for one or two applications for the property to be waiting for me on Monday. I ring the references and confirmed the information the tenant has given us is correct. The next move is to take the applications to Lauren the property manager. Then we really begin the game. Kick off goes like this:

‘This application on Princess Street checks out. The other one’s no good – two dogs,’ I say.

I wave the good application. ‘This guy sounds fine. All you have to do is put it to Bruno.’

Property managers are the contact for landlords, regardless of what goes on behind the scenes.

‘Oh god! Bruno!!’ A large sigh. ‘I don’t want to ring him.’

There is a pause. I wait.

‘Could you ring? I’m so busy this morning, just look at my desk.’ Her desk certainly looks like it is shrivelling under stacks of paper, but then her desk always looks like this. Invoices disappear for weeks in there. It’s as if they have been eaten.

‘I’m sure he would rather talk to you,’ I try. ‘You’re his property manager and he wanted to talk to you this morning.’

No one wants to talk to Bruno. We are into our fourth month of having this property vacant. There have been a number of applications for it. Some have checked out very well and some tenants have seemed keen. There is a catch to closing the deal.

‘No, you ring.’ Says Lauren, ‘Give him some excuse; say I’m out at an appointment. Anything! Say I’ve drowned myself. He’s already rung twice and Lisa said I wasn’t available. I’m still not available.’

I wait.

‘And really, I think I am sick, I’m not up to it today.’ She stops again and I wait.

‘Just the thought of ringing him makes by stomach churn, and I want to throw up. I can’t do it!’

‘Okay! Okay, I’ll ring him.’ I pick up the application and walk back to my desk.

This is part of the game plan. In the end I do this for almost every application. I am not keen to ring Bruno either, but then I don’t deal with him on a regular basis. What is hard for us and upsets Lauren is that we really want to let his property. That is our job and we have worked hard at it. To have it empty for so long gives us all a feeling of failure.

I have tried to tell Lauren about seeing it as a game and a challenge, but she doesn't get it. She is too emotional about it.

After we have been through this, I dial his number. I am playing the game, and remembering that it is a tough one. I play often but I have never got the ball into the goal. For three months we have been lining up our shots. Each time the goalkeeper is too good. In my mind Bruno is the goalkeeper. This is the wrong way around because Bruno should be on the same team as us. It does not make sense. Sometime I find myself getting really angry, but the game scenario lets me detach from the emotion.

Bruno of course picks up on the second ring. I bet he would pick up even if he was underwater discovering a lost treasure.

‘Well, at last someone’s returning my call. I’ve been waiting all morning,’ he says, as soon as I say who I am. He doesn’t have my direct line in his phone or he would have answered with those exact words. He likes to get to the point.

He is off again before I can tell him that Lauren has drowned herself. ‘How did the applications go? You said there were two. I want to know the details.’ I open my mouth to start but he hasn’t finished. ‘You know I’d be interested in these people, but I have to wait and wait to hear anything.’

‘One’s no good. Two dogs.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me that earlier? Wouldn’t you think I’d be interested to know that? I’ve been thinking about two applications!’

I don’t remind him that I didn’t know when we spoke earlier, although Lauren would have known if she had glanced at the applications.

We move into the next stage of the game. In the office, we wonder if he is using the property for some sort of classy tax dodge. Every tenant we think is suitable has to be checked by him.

Definitely no pets of any sort. I believe he once turned down a bird. There is a reasonable sized outdoor area leading off the lounge and the place is not pristine. You could call it lived in and you could think it was ideal for a pet but you would be wrong. The subject is best avoided. If there is a badly behaved dog or cat or bird or even fish out there they have crossed Bruno’s path at some time, and the experience has not been a happy one for him. We have yet to find out how the animal viewed the encounter.

Once, earlier on, I mentioned an applicant who had a dog with references for good behaviour and he asked me to find out what sort of dog it was. It was a kelpie.

‘Fancy anyone living in the city with that type of dog, and why would they think I would want it in my property?’ I wanted to ask him if he had seen the Australian film Red Dog, where the main character was a kelpie-cross. I’m glad I didn’t, because when I thought about it, I saw it proved his point. Red, the dog, did not live in the city. He lived in the Outback. We have ‘no pets’ in the advertising, but people try anyway, especially those who can’t read an ad properly or have a reference for their dog or cat.

Bruno also needs to meet his prospective tenants face-to-face.

In his words, ‘I need to know what sort of person I am going to deal with. Will we get on? This person may grate on me. You know you can never tell exactly what a person’s like on paper. I need the meeting to get the feel of them.’ The excuse for this is because Bruno does his own maintenance.

Today’s prospective tenant is a single older man. Unfortunately, the Privacy Act does not allow us to ask him whether he has been married or has a girlfriend or if he has any children who are not going to live in the property but will visit. This disappoints Bruno, and I imagine he will ask when he meets him. Bruno is not worried about the Privacy Act.

I fax the application through to him and arrange a meeting with the guy and Bruno at the property for the end of the day. Some people do not want to meet the owner and be shown around the property again by him and be asked personal questions. They pull out at this stage.

Kylie once said, ‘For god’s sake, he’s looking for a tenant not a best friend.’ I wonder if that is a good thing. He is very attached to his properties and if he has personal difficulties with the tenants we could all suffer.

I am surprised he has not taken this property away from us. Many owners would have done that long before we reached the four-month-vacant mark.

While I have been doing this I have had several phone calls. I don’t mind the interruptions but phone calls like this one on Monday annoy me.

‘I put in an application for 3 Railway Avenue on Saturday. When am I going to hear something back?’

‘Did you give it to the property manager at the property?’

‘No, I came into the office and dropped it off, so I know you got it.’

‘Right. What’s your name and I’ll let the property manager know you called. I have to tell you, you won’t hear back until we have contacted your references, and that could be later today or tomorrow.’

He knows we got their applications, so why call so early?

Vince manages that property. I email him to check that the application has reached his desk.

Another interruption is from one of Kylie’s tenants.

He starts with, ‘At last someone’s taking my call. I’ve been put through to a voicemail three times.’

‘Right,’ I say, ‘talk to me.’

‘We’ve got a dripping tap we want fixed.’

‘Right,’ I say again. ‘Have you emailed your request to Kylie?’

‘No! I’m talking to you now.’

‘We need all our maintenance in writing. Then we have a record of it.’

‘You mean that if my hot water bursts and the power goes off, I’d have to send you an email before you’d take any action?’

‘No, that’s an emergency, so you should contact us immediately.’

‘Well, what about my tap?’

‘It’s not an emergency, so you have to send your request in writing. That way we can keep track of it.’

‘What do you mean track of it?’

‘A paper trail. A record. How long has the tap been dripping?’

‘On and off for a few months. So we want it fixed.’

‘Right.’ I am getting good with ‘right’. ‘Email it through to Kylie and she’ll get onto it. I’ll let her know you’re doing that.’

‘Well, I suppose I’ll have to do that.’

‘Yes. The sooner you do it, the sooner it’ll get fixed.’ I can hear him draw breath, so before he says anything else I say, ‘Thank you for calling. Have a nice day,’ and disengage.

It’s frustrating to have to waste time on things like this. Kylie should have trained her tenants better. If the maintenance is not an emergency, we require it in writing. We put that in the documents we give a new tenant. But then who reads those? Not this tenant or he would know that a tap that has been ‘dripping on and off for a few months’ is not an emergency.