Rick and Teresa Grenz own nine properties in the Vancouver area and have been working with tenants during times of economic uncertainty.
With unemployment rates higher than ever due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many Clark County residents are struggling to know when their next paycheck will come and how they will pay rent if it doesn’t.
In Clark County, Rick and Teresa Grenz are working with their tenants to ensure they remain at home and safe during these tough times.
As the state Employment Security Department processes more cases than ever before, money and benefits have sometimes been late for residents as it takes more time for the office to process requests, especially among efforts to halt rampant fraud.
Grenz said most of the tenants in their homes work in retail, the restaurant industry or construction. With all of those areas being impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, many of these tenants are working with Grenz.
Many of Grenz’s tenants have asked him to be lenient on rent payments during the crisis, and Grenz said he wants to help.
“Up until COVID, we always charged late fees,” Rick Grenz said. “Now, we’ve dropped all late fees and told our tenants that as long as they pay the rent, I don’t care about when the money comes in.”
Because of Gov. Jay Inslee’s moratorium on evictions across the state — a measure that has been extended through August — landlords such as Grenz can’t evict people due to lack of payment or other non-urgent circumstances.
However, according to Grenz, this hasn’t been a problem in his philosophy as he and his wife have never evicted a tenant since they joined the landlord business in 2005.
“It’s just the way we are,” he said. “We want to be fair to our tenants.”
Grenz doesn’t plan to evict anyone in the near future and said he is working with tenants and their schedules for payments.
Some are choosing to do installments, others are paying twice a month and some are sticking to the original plan.
“We just want to work with them the best we can,” Grenz said. “You can give us the terms and most likely, we’re going to be OK with rolling with it … We’ve been more than happy to accept that.”
Coming to a mutual understanding is core to the Grenz rental philosophy, both for his benefit and the tenants. The Grenz family owns 15 rental properties in total with nine in the Vancouver area.
Grenz said he and his wife try to keep their properties slightly below market value not only as an incentive and to help out, but because it's “good business practice” to keep the tenants for longer periods of time.
“It’s not just through the generosity of our hearts, although that is part of it,” he said, explaining how cleaning and preparing a property for new renters costs more than the small amount he loses on rent each month.
Along with keeping the tenants safe at home, Grenz said one of their family friends mailed 30 masks to the tenants at Grenz properties.
“It’s all about being a good person,” he said.
More information can be found at http://mamazshotproperties.com/.
