Renewing the lease

Daejeong, le 6 mars 2021

My daughter Jessica got a notice for her lease renewal yesterday. She panicked. The notice mentioned a rent increase of 550.$. Her rent would go from 1,200.$ to 1,750.$, a 46% increase. Jessica has a new landlord since less than one month. Her old landlords were … her parents.

So, as mentioned in previous posts, Stephanie and I moved to South Korea in the summer of 2019. After one year here, it became obvious that we would not be returning to Canada for some time. We decided to sell the houses. We owned two triplex’ side by side bought in 1992 and 2010. We raised our family of five daughters there. All of them eventually occupied, at some point, one of the other five dwellings. Three of them were still there when we recently sold.

Selling the house was also selling the family home. A difficult decision for us to make but with even more emotional consequences for our daughters. So much happened in that house. Our youngest, Simone, was born in the house. She was still in the same bedroom 24 years later. She and our second youngest, Alexandra were the strongest hit. They had to move out because the two new owners were moving into the two bottom flats. There were a lot of tears.

Back to Jessica’s rent increase. She lives with Félix, our 7 year old grandson. The proposed new rent is not within her budget. Her first reaction was to call us. She was our “tenant” since 2015. Anything to do with the apartment, she would come to us. “Honey, as much as we sympathize with you, we are not your landlords anymore”. I went through all the arguments she may use in her defense of this outrageous increase with her and had her realize that the relationship with her new landlord was now strictly a business one.

In the twenty-one years Stephanie and I had tenants, money was never our first thought whenever something popped up. A good neighborly relationship was more our priority. However, I guess it’s going to be a new reality for the only one of our girls still in one of our old dwellings.