Immigrant Stories

I feel led to share this story because I know someone will benefit from it. As displaced persons finding their way in a new country, immigrants are usually in precarious positions. This is especially worse for vulnerable young women who are alone without people with good motives to guide them when making decisions.

I recall that I was at a church attending a testimony service a while ago during the height of the technology boom when many immigrants had a lot of money to spend. Many were living lavishly, having big budget parties, buying houses and establishing companies, especially mortgage and real estate companies. A lady at the church shared a testimony about how she had been coerced into buying three properties she didn't know how to manage and how she was finally at peace after losing all of them.

As is often the case in immigrant communities, it's the blind leading the blind, with people often only endinig up being used, abused, hurt and frustrated. This lady in particular shared about how she had a good job and good credit, and was told a legitimate and easy way to make money is buying properties and renting them out. They made it seem so simple to her.

She said she was attracted to the thought of becoming a landlady and was lured by their explanations of the easy money she would receive as rent because she assumed they were being honest with her. 

What she didn't factor in into the discussion was who the people giving her the advice were. They were none other than mortgage company owners, realtors and other people who would financially benefit directly from her purchase of the homes. Long story short, she took their advice and bought the three properties through the "advisors" real estate and mortgage companies thinking everything would be perfect.

She was soon in a financial mess as the landlord tenant situation was not what she had envisaged. First she thought getting tenants to move into the buildings would be so easy.

The reality turned out to be that she had a hard time finding good tenants with good credit scores and stable employment. When she did find them, soon, some of them stopped paying rent. For many months she had to use her own money to offset the mortgage payment balance.

When the situation became unbearable for her, she sought help from the "advisors" who advised her to buy the properties and had made money off the sales, that's when they suddenly became scarce and stopped picking up her calls, as she had changed from a potential customer to a nuisance. She was left to her own devices on resolving the situation she had buried herself in. Before long she had lost all three properties as she couldn't continue paying the mortgage by herself, thanks to the flaky and irresponsible tenants she had. 

As she gave the testimony, she said she was so happy that she lost the properties because she didn't have peace of mind since she bought them and all the advisors who said they'd help her with any problems, ignored her calls and distanced themselves from her when she needed their help the most, even though she bought the properties based on their advice with the assurance that they would help her.

Not long after that, I was at an event where a guy that is well known in the Nigerian community for having many properties was discussing how people naively think being a landlord is easy, like you just buy a house, rent it out and become a landlord.

He shared about the fact that most people don't know that he is not just a landlord, he's a handy man who can do many house repairs himself and also a well know fixture at PG County Court House because he's often there filing paperwork because of his tenants to get judgments, to evict some and to process other paperwork. He said he's also always being called to fix issues which if he had to pay contractors to do would cost him a bundle and he has to inspect his properties, and renovate or supervise renovations himself to save money. He said he also monitors his tenants’ well-being and employment status to ensure they can pay rent and sometimes he even personally assists them in finding jobs or he gives some of them odd jobs to do, which he pays them for, so they can have money.

He says being a landlord is a lot of work that people who will benefit from the sales of properties will never share with prospective buyers because their motive is just to make their commission during the sale and disappear, but naive people fall into the trap often and before they know it, things a naive landlord/lady doesn't take into consideration occur, such as the tenants acting up, destroying the property or stop paying rent.

Sometimes, when tenants stop paying rent, the owner who initially tries to use his/her funds to keep paying the mortgage after a while, can't keep up the mortgage, loses the house in a short sale or foreclosure and ends up in debt with a bad credit score and that's exactly what happened to the lady sharing her testimony.

When trying to go into a new career field or business venture, they say it's wise to seek out mentors who are doing what you desire to do and shadow them to be exposed to the industry, the work involved and their daily struggles in the field to see if it is something one can do or not. Had the lady done this, she would have saved herself a lot of stress, time, money and her credit rating.

The moral of the story is not to receive advice from people who have something to gain by doing what they tell you to do, because most people are out for their own success at other people's expense. 

A word is enough for the wise...