It's Never Over

So last night was pretty cool, although spending that long at work was quite honestly exhausting and I won't be doing it again soon!

But we had a bunch of people over and we had a great evening (I won't be going into details of this new club we've started, but let me give you a brief idea: The American TV Season is just getting started. A lot of people watch downloaded series. It really doesn't make sense for everyone to use lots of expensive South African bandwidth all downloading the same shows).

Either way it was our first meeting and everyone who didn't already know each other really seemed to get on and I look forward to next month :)

In other news, I am having a nightmare dealing with Bean. I am so completely fed up with things. I have been ignoring his emails since Monday but eventually yesterday I just couldn't anymore. Let me outline the story for those of you who may not have been reading since word go.

So way back when he & I were still dating, we bought a property (the unit above the one we lived in together) ... This was in March/May 2006 and a spur-of-the-moment decision, the house was on show, we went up to have a look round and later that afternoon we were signing an offer to purchase.

Eventually, I think in about August 2006, by the time we were already on the rocks, transfer came thru and we took ownership of the unit as well as it's long-term tenant. In the December, we broke up. In March / May (always get those M months confused!) 2007, he moved over to London and we decided it wasn't worth yet selling the property as we'd almost certainly make a loss. At that stage things with it were very easy, we had a tenant paying the bulk of the monthly bond repayment and they paid on time.

Everything changed in November 2007, the tenant stopped paying her rent in a timely fashion and since then it has been a downward spiral of what I have had to handle regarding this "investment" of ours. My fury comes at the fact that he hasn't done a thing to ease the process ... he's all the way in London, what could he possibly do? Now yes, party my mistake for agreeing to not sell before he left and saying I'd look after things for us. But, I think I've handled it all pretty well with only a few knocks to my personal sanity. But I am now completely fed up and it is all unfolding via email.

As I said I bit my tongue for the first few days of this week, not replying to his emails. I figured that sending business-related emails while furious was probably not in my best interest. So eventually yesterday I replied. Calmly and directly. Not wildly exaggerating, not saying I'd done everything, but rather listing all the things I'd done in an orderly fashion.

a) I had to deal with the late rental payments. (This has been well documented!) Yes, I occasionally (once or twice in 5 months I think) asked you to contact Dudu but all you really did was speak to her and get the same answer I did: "She'll pay tomorrow" or "she'll pay by the end of the week". But it didn't affect your bank balance at the end of the day, nor did you have to deal with the extremely infuriating man (her son / husband who knows?) who paid for her the one month and was shouting at me over the phone at least 3 times in one month.

b) I had to deal with lawyers regarding the possible eviction proceedings and personally take letters round to be signed etc. more than once

c) I had to organise to get the plumbers in to fix the leak in the kitchen ceiling.

d) I had to handle the entire process of selling the house (dealing with private property requests, annoying estate agents etc.)

e) I had to organise to deliver & collect keys when also getting the Electrical Certificate required for the sale.

f) Once sold, I had to deal constantly with the lawyer once you conveniently signed over your power of attorney.

g) Even now, once the sale has gone thru, I'm still the one who now has to go over, have a look at the damage to the ceiling and organise to either paint it myself or have it painted at our expense.

So, I am demanding R1000 as his half of my "Management Fee" for the last 16 - 18 months, I do not think this is unreasonable (this amount is based on an estimate of my personal time spent, phone calls to lawyers, estate agents, tenants, plumbers, electricians and the new owner and petrol driving backwards and forwards to the unit every time something needs doing). Keep in mind that I'm currently holding R12000 of his hostage until this final "painting the ceiling" issue has been resolved. There are more emails currently being exchanged (pah, he thinks he can make demands from all the way in the UK). But this is all weighing very heavily on my mind. By the time he went to the UK, we were not dating, we were not friends, we were only business partners. But I feel like he has completely taken advantage of our previous closeness in forcing me into a situation where I have had to be responsible for all of the house-related things ... but he still get's half the profit!

Sigh, I never thought I would so look forward to never speaking to someone again! But thanks to Daddio, Varen and JofH for listening to my vents and providing me with much needed support and cool-headedness when dealing with this frustrating situation.