Walking away from your Debt

[Canine]

Matt71 - Please be careful renting to your friends.  Make sure you get a signed lease.  We were in that same position and our "friends" bailed on us and moved out in the middle of the night, after trashing the place.  Just my 2 cents.

I agree. Friends and family are the worst. Everyone means well, but it far too often ends with relationships being irrevocably destroyed.

 

[offroad]

Third time mention. Friends do not seem to stick to the agreements for rent. They will turn on you. Can you evict them? Will you? Should you?

 

[HarmonicaBruce]

We do have close friends who may rent the house from us, but we have to work out the rent because they can't afford what we'd need to charge. We are going to try to work something out so we can cut the rent in exchange for letting us store a bunch of stuff that we're not ready to get rid of. That way we don't have to pay for storage and we'll know our stuff is safe.

A good rule is to never rent to someone unless you'll enjoy throwing them out.

People are strange.  They prioritize their needs.  If they'll get thrown out for not paying rent, they'll make paying rent a priority.  If the only thing that will happen is they'll annoy a friend, they won't make paying rent as high a priority.  You'd be amazed at how many high priority expenses some people have, especially people who are down due to no fault of their own.  Do you accept that once moved in, they may never pay rent again?  Then they'll bad-mouth you to your mutual friends.  

People are strange. 

 

[Matt71]

I've always been a believer that you should only loan money to people if you can afford to never get it back, so I know exactly what everyone is saying.
This may sound cliche, but the friends we'd be renting to are very trustworthy and have been the best of friends for a long time. They also care about us very deeply and we them. They'd feel just as bad not paying as we'd feel kicking them out, so I don't see either happening.

One issue is that we plan to hold on to a lot of things we're not quite ready to purge, and we'll need a place to store it. We may also be leaving behind a cat or 2. Renting to our friends means we can leave that stuff tucked away at the house, and be confident that it is safe. We'll also be confident that the house is taken care of... likely better than we took care of it ourselves.

To be honest, we're not comfortable with strangers living in our house. We'd rather give it to the bank than have to think about what strangers are doing in the house we've lived in for 8 years. If we bought the house with the intention of renting it, it would be different. To a degree we'd rather let close friends live here for free than rent it to strangers who'd pay.

The thought of having to kick ANYONE out of the house is something we don't want to even consider. It would be a big pain in the butt doing such a thing from the road. Our friends are far less likely to screw us over than strangers, and far more likely to work something out without involving the courts if a problem did come up.

I feel bad that you all have such crappy friends.

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

I feel bad that you all have such crappy friends.

Frankly, most people totally misuse the word "friend".  The proper descriptive word for most people you know is "acquaintance".

Once you understand that someone is an acquaintance, not a friend, you stop having unreasonable expectations about the relationship.

"Friends will help you move.  True friends will help you move bodies."

Regards
John

 

[Canine]

I feel bad that you all have such crappy friends.

There are true friends and family and fair-weather friends and family. I can count on two fingers how many true friends I have. I can count on zero fingers how many true family members I have. I used to think I had true friends until times got hard. I lost scores of "friends". People fold like lawn chairs.

I went into a small business venture with a close friend who I had know for years when we were about 23. He was very religious, a leader in his church, well known and well respected. The business fell through, which happens. We had cosigned on a $3000 loan. I kept making my half of the payments, but the bank contacted me and said that they weren't receiving full payments. My well-respected friend said because he had a family and a child that I should pay for the whole thing and that was the fair thing to do. I tried to sue him, but he kept moving and all that did was cost me money, so I paid it. No matter how respectable or how many years people know each other, this is the way most people are. Instead of a business loan, if I had rented to him, the same thing would have happened. He didn't maliciously screw me over. He somehow rationalized what he was doing was the right thing. In his mind he was the good guy and I was the bad guy trying to take money from him and his family.

Many of us think we are true friends, but when times get tough, how many of us have flaked out? It's hard to be a true friend and you can only successfully be a true friend to someone who is also true to you; you need that reciprocity. Anyone else will leech from you if you let them.

Having a true friend sucks. I don't like them. They are jerkleburgers. They tell you what you don't want to hear. They hold you accountable. But they are true and that is why I value them over anyone else. This is why I love them. When I want someone to tell me what I want to hear, I can find someone to do that easily. When I need someone, truly need someone, I'm on my own or can ask one of my two true friends.

Matt, if your situation is as you say it is, be thankful. You are blessed. I used to think my friends were closer than they were, and I bet most of us did as well until we got our teeth kicked down our throats a few times. I'm not mad about that stuff anymore. There are different levels of relationships; most aren't close or intimate and that is normal. It's not a bad thing- it is what it is. It only becomes bad if we trick ourselves into entrusting our friends with more than we should.

This is such an important subject that I don't want our more naive readers getting the wrong idea and learning the hard way. Having friends like you described isn't impossible, but it is exceptionally rare.