After 3 months away from home sailing across the Pacific Ocean on the Point Nemo, I came back to find class 1 “minimal” hurricane Beryl had done more damage to my property than all the other storms (Alicia, Harvey, etc) combined for the last 30 years.

Onboard the ship, I could only see news reports of Houston/Galveston and Surfside Beach. The photos and videos looked bad. Big trees downed and flooding all around Houston. Lots of flooding at Surfside and a few houses looked totally demolished. Surfside is only about 10 miles from Freeport where all of my rental properties are located. I used to live there and a lot of my friends still do.

I didn’t worry about it too much since I’d never been flooded before and I didn’t have many trees around my rental properties (though I did at my own house- which had trees fall through the roof twice since I’ve lived there).

I was more worried about the power being out again. Last time we had a storm knock the power out, mine was out for weeks. I came home to a horrible stink, tried my best to clear out the freezer without puking, threw out a couple thousand dollars worth of meat- but still couldn’t salvage the thing and had to buy a new one.

I lucked out this time. My own house made it through with minimal damage. Siding and gutters blown off and a few big limbs down in the yard (but thankfully not on my roof). I felt grateful. I walked around the block every day and it looked like at least a category 4 came through. There were trees down everywhere- BIG trees! People had stacked up huge piles of soaked sheetrock, carpet and ruined furniture along the side of the road. Only 2 houses down from me, a huge tree fell over from a neighbors yard onto their house. It must’ve been about 5 ft in diameter. One big old oak tree. I thought it was only sitting on the back part of the house, but a few days later there was a demolition crew there tearing down the entire house. Even the foundation is gone. All that’s left is their backyard shed. I hope their insurance paid.

My town, Lake Jackson, TX is a “tree city USA” and very proud of their beautiful trees. Beryl took out a lot of them. A friend of had one demolish their garage- took out a couple of their cool old cars. All over town the maintenance crews were out with backhoes and chainsaws for weeks. It was still going on when I left for work 6 weeks later.

I spent my entire time at home trying to deal with the damages to my rental properties. I felt so demoralized. Almost every single unit was damaged. I’ve spent so much time and money over the last few years working to get them in good shape to rent out. This was supposed to be my retirement. I finally had everything almost finished. Just one apartment needed a little bit more work- 2-3 days worth- and it would be ready to rent. Then we were going to paint a couple to make them look like new on the outside, I already had the paint and everything was ready to go.

Then came Beryl.

My manager didn’t want me freaking out while I was at work on the ship (and couldn’t do anything but worry) so she didn’t tell me everything about all the damage that had been done. When I got home, a lot of the major stuff had already been dealt with: 6 roof leaks, 27 blown out windows, 2 doors blown out, soffit and fascia blown off 1 building which caused the ceilings to collapse in the upstairs and downstairs apartments and also flooded the downstairs apartment. They told me the water was just pouring in, had a few inches of water on the floor!

My maintenance man had already fixed the roof, door and windows in one house and repaired the drywall and carpets that were ruined. He’d also fixed the roof leaks and drywall in another apartment, fixed most of the other blown out windows and doors, everything was fixed in the downstairs apartment.

When I got home, I think I pissed off my manager a bit since I insisted on getting the soffit/fascia repaired before anything else. We had more rain coming and without repairs, the rain would ruin all the work we just did in the downstairs apartment.

The woman who was “renting” that apartment (who had stopped paying rent before the storm came) was threatening my maintenance man every day to the point he didn’t want to work on that building anymore. She was also calling the city to complain about how I was such a “slumlord” every day. I had her apartment fixed only1-2 days after the storm, we had to prioritize. Lucky for her I wasn’t waiting on insurance like most people had to. Her actions slowed down our work quite a bit- for her and everyone else in that building.

Oh yeah, she also cut her ceiling back down after we fixed it so she could splice into the electric we were using to repair the upstairs apartment since she had stopped paying her electric bills and got cut off by the electric company. So she was blasting her AC 24/7 and threatening the maintenance man “don’t touch my electric” every time he tried to work on something in the maintenance room (she had cameras watching).

I also had another tenant who had a tree fall on her roof. I was told there was just minor damage, broke a window and some water got in that was causing mold to grow. She hadn’t been paying rent either, but my maintenance man had gone and fixed what he could for her a couple of times. She was moving out so when we went to take a look, we found the tree had done a lot more damage. Basically the entire back part of the house needs to be fixed and a window leak caused major damage in another room.

Another place I didn’t know was damaged except for a window and door turned out to have the entire ceiling come down in the kitchen and water damage practically everywhere.

SO. I’m back on the boat, waiting to hear back from the insurance agencies and my manager to hear what progress (if any) has been made. I knew rental property could be a hassle, but I really didn’t expect it to be this bad. I keep seeing stuff online about how landlords are just “evil”, out to just screw over the renters. Really? I don’t see it that way at all. I was a renter for decades and now I own rental property. I never felt that my landlords were screwing me, but I never rented a super top of the line place either. Maybe that would be different? My rents barely cover my expenses and so many tenants just screw me over- don’t pay rent, tear things up, etc. You really wouldn’t believe the conditions they leave. I wonder how in the hell anyone can live like that.

It’s pretty gross. I can tell you later. I have to get some sleep now…