Just a little happy note today. Yesterday we had a planned visit from our landlord to look the house over and talk about next year's lease/rent. We have stayed in each house one year since moving to San Miguel. The first house we decided to move from as it really didn't have yard space for the dogs. The second house was being put on the market and we didn't want to deal with realtors and lookey-loos traipsing through the house on short notice. So we were a little apprehensive about the visit - what if she didn't like something?
Margarita picked that day to be late, so Michael and I were dividing up the cleaning chores to whip the ground floor into shape in case Margarita didn't show at all. And then she walked through the door. Relief!
We had been told that the landlord (landlady, actually) was an older person and she had not granted our request for a long-term lease originally because she wanted to see how we kept the house. The last tenant had been 'adventuresome' with paint, we understand.
Imagine my surprise when the landlady and her husband walked through the front gate and they were the folks who had been coming by to pick up the rental checks in recent months, saving us a walk into Centro to deliver the check to the notary's office. I thought they were just saving us the trip to the office.
So it was a friendly visit. Hug-hug;. kissy-kissy greetings. We told them of our desire to replace the kitchen counters (tiles are chipped and bits missing along some edges), add some trees to the back yard, and our hopes for either a new tub in the master bath or conversion to a shower. Although she is not prepared to invest any additional money in the house, she wasn't adverse to our proposed installations.
And then the best news: a two-year lease with no increase in the rent! (I have a feeling that means the rent is likely to increase at the end of this new lease.) Our realtor friend said he was expecting the rent to increase for this next year, so he was surprised, too.
Whew! Perhaps it helped that we had folks here working on refinishing the front door to the house. Or that we always have the rent check ready for them? And the white walls are still white? Whatever the reason, it was good news. This moving each year is not what it's cracked up to be!
