Real Estate the Ramsey Way - My Tenant Authorized Repairs at My House and Won’t Cover the Cost

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

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Dave Ramsey here and welcome to another episode of Real Estate, The Ramsey Way, where you'll learn how to make smart home decisions, avoid costly mistakes, and navigate home ownership with confidence. Sarah is in Georgia. Hi, Sarah. Welcome to the Ramsey show. Good afternoon. I'm a landlord and I've had a tenant for a couple of years with no real issues until now.

According to the lease, she's supposed to report any maintenance problems. to me so I can take care of them. But today, out of the blue, I got a call at work from a plumbing company saying they fixed a water issue at the rental back in January and that the $660 bill had never been paid. This was the first I had even heard there was a problem. So your tenant authorized a bill for you to pay without you agreeing to it. Yes. And it was actually a pretty simple fix that my husband could have taken care of and not costed either of us much money. Have you called the tenant? I have reached out to the tenant, and her response was she just didn't want to bother me,

and she just hadn't had the money to pay the bill yet, but it's within January. And is the bill the work under her name? No. It is. Oh, it's under her name, but it's on Sarah's house. Yeah. Plummer's not going to lean the tenant. The plumber's going to put a lien on Sarah's house, and it's January, six months overdue.

So this is a sweet person who's not very smart. Yes. How long has you been your tenant? A little over two years. Okay. And I mean, I've never had any issues with her. Yeah. How much is the rent? It's $12.50 a month.

And how much do you have a deposit? One month's rent. Okay. And how much is the bill? $6.50. Yeah. I'm going to pay it because you're going to have a problem if you don't. But I'm also going to have a sit-down with the bill. the tenant probably in person and really clearly explained because this lady's not bright and you're

going to be real clear you don't have to be mean but you need to be blunt okay like this is $650 that I would not have had to pay if you had picked up the phone and call me don't you ever do this again if you do you won't be living here that kind of clear oh that's exactly how your husband would handle it because that's how I trained him right well I know let me So, I mean, he's handling my rental property right now. So if there's somebody does something, because you need to be clear because this is a dumb but thing. You do. Who does this?

She may not know. I know. She's not bright. So you're going to have to tell her real clear because she's not going to get it otherwise. And, you know, Sarah, you're not going to, you're probably not going to be as nasty as I am. But I want you to be very clear. I'm not trying to be mean. Being clear is kind.

Right. I'm not trying to be mean. But I do want this. I want it to activate a little bit of emotion in the tenant so that they don't do it. again. And then you need to pay the bill to me because I'm going to go ahead and pay it. And if you don't, I'm considering an additional rent. And if you don't, we're going to have another problem. So you need to get me paid. Now, how can you get me paid back? You want to pay half of it a month until for the next two months on top of your rent? I'll work with you on that.

I'll try to help you. But listen, my husband usually does these repairs. And it wouldn't cost us $6.50 would cost me $14 in parts from Home Depot and my husband's sweat. And that's the way we do it, darling. And so next time you have a problem, you do, you're not bothering me. This bothers me. That won't bother me. So, you know, and just you can be, and I know you meant well, that's fine. That's all good.

But we need to draw a line and go, this doesn't happen again. Because I'm not worried about this bill. Because worst case, she never pays it. You take it out of her deposit when she leaves, right? Right. You're not going to be out of pocket. But I'm trying to keep it from having that again, because what's the next one? She has a septic tank.

replaced at $6,000? I mean, my God, what does it? Was this woman? This is like, you know, that people do stuff. So, yeah, this is welcome to landlording. Yeah, I would, but you want to be very, very clear. You're in Georgia. I'm in Tennessee. I learned with team members many years ago that I was trying to be nice, southern passive aggressive, sweet tea. and in the name of all of that, I wasn't being clear. And I was getting frustrated, and they didn't know because I was being so indirect and working around the edges. And now we have a saying around Ramsey when it comes to communicating internally, to be unclear is to be unkind. So you want to be kind to her by being very clear with her, because if this comes up again, it's going to be a real problem, isn't Sarah? Absolutely.

I mean, I'm very, I mean, it's very aggravating to get. Sarah's piss. She'll have some piss and vinegar in it. I can hear it from you, Sarah. Okay. I'm just giving you permission as a fellow landlord to be very clear. You don't have to be mean. It's not what I'm saying. But that's not what we're saying. But we are saying it's more mean for this lady to not get the message. She needs to get the mail. She needs to open the email, read it. It's only it's not an email. It's in person. And then I would follow it up with an email or a letter. writing, sure. You know, this has happened, and we understand this time, but this is not to happen again. All future repairs need to be cleared with us before they were done. And then if you wrote the email, the next paragraph, be like, or I'm kicking you out. I'm evicting you. That's what you said. Your first response. I'm just, I'm so, man, I got just, this is. I know. You don't have a lot of patience. No, it just, it doesn't. I hear you, though. I hear you. Yeah, you need to understand there's consequences. This is not how we're going to do this. Yeah, that's great.

And we're not going to operate this way. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to Real Estate the Ramsey Way. Now, if you're here, you're probably thinking about buying or selling a house. It's exciting and one of the biggest financial decisions you'll ever make. But you don't want to do it with an inexperienced agent who will rush you into costly mistakes, like the ones some of our callers find themselves in. You need a pro who knows what the flip they're doing and will keep you on track with your financial. goals. That's why we only recommend Ramsey trusted real estate agents. These are vetted,

hand-picked pros who actually listen to your needs, guide you through the process, and fight to get you the best deal. To find a Ramsey trusted agent near you, go to Ramsey Solutions.com slash trusted agent. That's ramsey solutions.com slash trusted agent. All right, let's see if we can take care of Chris in Boston real quick. Chris from Boston, Massachusetts. What's up? Hey guys, thank you for taking my call. You bet. So I guess the quick as it is, about a year ago, I got an inheritance about $350,000. And I'm not going to fall in love with it.

But I don't know if that's the best use for some of that money. I'm looking at the payments per month at about $3,000. And it's just a scary number to look at. And I'm not sure if that's the best place to put it right now, or if I should keep it invested. You broke up on us when you were telling us. What did you fall in love with? This condo I found just outside of Boston.

What's it cost? I don't know if I should $350,000. $350. So you would essentially use the whole inheritance to pay for it in cash? Well, that's the thing. I don't know if I should use the whole thing because it's all invested in mutual funds in ETFs right now. But I don't know if it's better to not have a mortgage payment

or if it's better to just put the 20% down and try to go just off of what I make. What's the rest of your financial snapshot? Do you have any debt? I've got 13,000 left on student loans and about 8,000 left on a car. And do you have three to six months of expenses? Yes. I right now have got about 35,000 saved up. Okay. So just walking through the baby steps with this would be you paying off the debt first, clearing that out, stacking up three to six months. And then with this condo, I mean, you're going to be, there's going to be some tax implications, I'm sure, on the growth.

And when you pull that out, and then let's see, there's probably going to be some fees. So you could get pretty darn close. What's your living situation now? So right, I moved back with my parents just to save some money. So I could stay here for, I mean, a couple more years, but it would be nice to kind of be out on my own again. Yeah. Who left the inheritance? It was my uncle.

He had passed away a few years. years ago and left to myself and my sister. Wow, quite the legacy. That's impressive. Yeah. Yeah, I'm with Jade on this. You take your 35 savings. Let's knock out the student loan and the car loan today that leaves you with 14 grand, sell off a big portion of this inheritance and be aware of the tax implications of that. I would check into that with the tax pro. And whatever you can throw at the condo, I would throw at it to get to as completely debt free as possible. Because then what's going to happen, Chris, you're going to have a mortgage payment freed up that you could then invest.

Love it. And so either way, you can crunch the numbers and do the math all day. I think the freedom and peace that will come with not having a mortgage payment at your age, dude, you're going to be so unbelievably wealthy if you just use your income to throw into investments then on and therefore. Two calls in a row where people are trying to buy their homes completely outright. I love that. To have no mortgage payment, come on, speak to that, George. The ultimate flex in today's world, I think, is having no mortgage payment and telling your friend,

oh, you got a 2% mortgage interest rate? How about 0% with no payment? That's what I'm signing up for. Mike drop. Listen, I'm getting there, George. Let's go, Jay. Let's go.