We had a lovely time with Travis and Brighton at Alexander the Great Greek Restaurant. The only thing that marred it was the traffic. I'd forgotten it was All-Star weekend and Houston was priveledged to host the event and suck worthless celebrity ass all weekend. Poor Brighton and Travis, is all I can say.

I had the most obnoxious Friday. It was so bad that when I tried to blog about it, all that would come out was deep, profound, exorcist-style profanity. But a pleasant weekend puts enough distance for me to see the twisted humor in the situation.

One of our listings is a little lease property. The owner (Californian) is not the easiest client in the world, but she is still a nice lady and has never been rude. However, she likes to do things her own way without taking anyone's advice. She is also indecisive. This translates into feeding her ideas while at the same time making her think she is the one who had them. For instance, and this will be important later, she set the security deposit for $700.00. Usually the security deposit is equal to one month's rent, which, in this case was $875.00. Her reasoning was that the lower price would attract more rentors to the property. If I had been the one going over the lease, I would have said to just keep it at $875.00. But for some reason, stepfather didn't push the issue.

Anyway, it's a cute house, we haven't had it on the market too long, and we expected it to rent out fairly quickly, so it was no surprise when a young man called me about it.

He was pleasant enough on the phone and seemed to really like the home. He asked me to send him a rental application, which I did along with the required Information About Brokerage Services, which basically explains what the real estate agents' roles are in the transaction.

This gave him some consternation as he thought he was going to have to pay our fee. I explained to him that we were the Owner's agent and she would be paying our fee which was the equivalent of the security deposit. In retrospect, I should have told him that the fee was the equivalent of one month's rent, but I wasn't aware at the time that the security deposit was lower. It didn't matter though, because he wasn't the one responsible for paying it regardless. He asked if he needed his own agent, and I said that would be fine, but the terms of the lease were pretty straightforward. (I had no interest in bringing another realtor into the transaction after I had done all the work, but if he wanted one, there is nothing I could or would do to stop him). I asked if he had any more questions about the fees, and he said no. Not five minutes later, I got a call from his father asking me to explain about the fees again.

This should have been a bright red flag with a singing asshole on it. Any man, 18+ who need their daddy to call and figure things out for them is a wuss and is not to be trusted. In my opinion.

He didn't fax in the offer, but did continue to pester me throughout the day to explain things to him. The next day, we received another offer. His came in a short time later. He had decided to use his own agent. Both offers listed the security deposit as $700.00 and that is when I became aware that they security deposits was not the same amount as one month's rent. No matter.

The first offer to come in was from three young men. Stereotypically, they're not the best tenants in the world, but they all seemed to have stable jobs and they wanted to move in on the first of March. Daddy's Boy was a better bet since he was older, had been employed longer, and had kids. The only problem was that he wanted to move on the first of April.

After discussing it many times with the indecisive CA woman, and subtly pointing out that her thought that an older father of two was probably more stable than three young bachelors, she said that she would lease to him on the first of April, even though she would lose a whole month's rent, if he paid $875.00 for the security deposit instead of $700.00, a difference of $175.00.

I called Daddy's Boy's realtor and told her we had in another offer and these were the terms under which her client could lease the property. She said she would talk to her client, and not five minutes later, I got a call from him damning me up and down for trying to get him to pay the realtors' fees. *Sigh* I hung up the phone on him just as he was gearing up for a good rant. I don't get paid to listen to a Daddy's Boy bust a nut-let.

So if you have managed to read this far, let me ask you. Is it just me or are men becoming more feminized? And if so, is this really a good thing?

Granted I can be a little tomboyish, but I should not be more manly than men. Really.