CONDOMINIMIZE

Whew! Since leaving LA August 13 for Muscat, one of the longest-standing matters of unfinished business has been finding tenants for my condo back in San Pedro. (A $1,953 mortgage payment I’ve been bearing myself for 6 months!) Now I can rest a bit easier …

In January, my local San Pedro “agent” and old Aramco friend Kim Ayers-Petker agreed that perhaps it would be wisest to hand the tenant search over to a professional, so I contact the same local realtor in San Pedro who had helped me find and buy the condo, Madeleine Drake.

First, before Madeleine listed the condo, came a nice Japanese couple working overseas in the US for their Japanese company. Things were hopeful. They had seen my (free) ad on Criagslist.com, and when Kim showed them the newly fixed-up condo in late January, they were instantly interested. But then they hemmed and hawed in the following days, and in Japanese culture if you don’t actually DO anything after saying “yes”, it means “thanks, but no thanks.” I told Kim that we should stop waiting and get on with it.

So, Madeleine finally listed the beginning of February. I’m not sure how many people she actually showed the place to – not many, it sounds like, but eventually in early March Pamela Fox, a 50-something woman on permanent work disability, and her college-aged son Brett saw it, liked it and asked for a lease.

Madeleine emailed (this was all carried out by email with the 12-hour time lag that living half-way around the world entails) that she had found “fabulous tenants”. Pamela had a great credit rating, good references from the present landlord, and wealthy parents who would be leaving her lots of money. (They’d act as co-signer tenants with Pamela, since she couldn’t work.)

They initially tried to get me down to $2000 from the $2200 per month asking price – at the same time asking me if I could move all my stuff out of *my* storage space and get my car out of *my* garage space – one of four. (They needed all four spaces??)

I pointed out that not only would this mean losing $200 monthly, but I’d end up actually paying close to that for storage I didn’t necessarily want - $400 out on my end. I wasn’t very interested. I emailed saying what they were asking should logically mean *raising* the monthly rent to $2350, $2200 plus my storage costs.

Apparently, they were “sold” on the condo, however, and relented on the storage – they’d share it with me, just putting some Christmas decorations down there – and the rent: they’d go up to my original $2200.

Finally, after draft lease after draft lease finalizing the small bits the beginning of this month, I signed the documents and sent them express mail (DHL) March 6.

Madeleine emailed a few days later to say they had arrived and the tenants would now sign. From my online bank statement, I see that Pamela paid the $3300 move-in fee as of March 11, so I have tenants!!!

This will mean that more of my salary here can go to other things - including expenses for my trans-Atlantic trip and 20-day tour of Sweden this summer.

COUNCIL

Just one last update: last Friday March 7, I became a member of the Church Council of the Protestant Church in Oman. There were just enough candidates to fill openings, so there was no need for an election. My name had been put forward both by Ed and Tamera Schreur, the American Reformed Church pastors here (husband and wife team), and by Mom’s old missionary doctor friends Don and Eloise Bosch. With that backing, how could I refuse? ;-) Our first meeting is next Monday night.