Posts tagged nyc

So, my landlord lives here half the year, and across the country the other half. When he is here, we slide our rent checks under his office door; when he is away, we have to mail our checks to him. Now, he has a rule that the rent check must ARRIVE by the 5th, or he’ll charge a late fee (no matter if you’ve mailed it in plenty of time and the post office screwed up). This seems unfair to me since we don’t have any control over the post office, but whatever (full disclosure: the one time my check was “late”—due to the July Fourth 4-day weekend—he didn’t charge me; just called to ask where it was). The only way we know whether to mail the check or push it under his door is by the signs the manager puts up in the hallways.

Which is all an introduction to say that I mailed my rent check early (Monday) to be sure it wouldn’t be “late” and then today my landlord texted me to ask if I could slide the check under his door this weekend because he’s in town for a few days (EVEN THOUGH the signs in the hallway still say to mail it to him). I texted back that I’d already mailed it and offered to stop payment on that check and give him a new one (FULLY EXPECTING him to say no—I mean, c’mon, I paid on time! And had no warning he was going to be here!). He replied that no, he’ll use that check for next month and I should write him another! Errr, I don’t like this plan. 1) It screws up my accounting; and 2) this means that he has live checks for 2 months’ rent—my rent is over half my income, so I don’t HAVE 2 months’ rent hanging out in my checking account. Yes, he says he’ll save the first check and won’t cash it until the end of October, but it still makes me nervous. What if he loses it? What if he forgets and tries to cash it anyway, causing me to bounce a check? UGH.