A lot of people assume that when a landlord decides who to rent an apartment to, he picks the applicant who makes the most money, but experienced landlords don’t do that. Naturally, a landlord does want to be sure that an applicant can afford to pay the rent, but the #1 thing a competent landlord is looking for in an applicant is someone who likes the place and wants to live there. I’ve been a landlord for a long time. I know that if I rent an apartment to someone who has a lot of money but who hates the place, that person will be miserable living there, and he will make my life miserable too.That is why I didn’t offer an apartment to the woman I called the Kitchen Crier.

The Kitchen Crier. I once rented a 1-bedroom apartment on McAuley Street in Rockridge during a particularly hot rental market. Several dozen people came to my one and only showing, and 10 of them turned in applications.  At the end of the showing, I sat down on the living room couch to review the applications I received. I thought I was alone until I heard the sound of someone crying. I got up to investigate. To my surprise, I found a woman sitting at the kitchen table, stooped over, crying, and holding a handkerchief over her eyes. There was a partially filled out rental application form on the table in front of her. I said: “Are you OK?” She nodded her head and said: “Yes,” so I went back to the living room, wondering what was going on but not knowing what to say. After a while, she came out of the kitchen holding the rental application form. She looked around the living room, paused, and then burst into tears again. I said: “Is there anything I can do?” She shook her head, looked down into the fireplace and said: “No. It’s just that my mother warned me that I’d wind up in a place like this, but I didn’t believe her.” Then she handed me her application form, walked out, and drove away – still crying. It seemed to me that this woman was not going to be happy living in this apartment, so I decided to rent the place to somebody else.