I was speaking with a property owner on Friday discussing the management of their property which had just been tenanted. We were discussing that the oven door on the under 6 month old, barely (if ever) used oven was not closing properly. The owner’s had contacted an appliance repair man who said they should write it off and simply get a new stove. We were all horrified at this but it triggered the owner to give this funny account of exactly what was going on at the house while it was occupied by the previous tenant (the property was not formally managed by us – FYI).

She said: We would receive requests for maintenance and when we arrived to do the work he would meet us at the door and tell us, ‘It’s ok, I’ve already fixed it’ or ‘Awww, I don’t know what the agent is worried about, it seemed fine to me’. So we’d head back to our car with our tool belts and head home. This went on for a while. We would receive a call out, we would go and the tenant would turn us away saying it had been handled.

Than we heard from the police via community housing that the property had been used as a drug lab. He hadn’t wanted us to go in because we would have seen his set up. And here we were the whole time thinking how lucky we were to have him doing repairs on the house, rent paid on time. When really, the home was perfect for him, it was located opposite an industry factory, had no rear neighbours as it backed onto farming land and had dark tinted windows. And as for not paying rent, well that would have bought them to the attention of the authorities.

She grinned and said: And silly us, we’re his perfect, naive, blissfully unaware owners. Can you image what he said to his people when he went back into the house. They must have laughed their backsides off at us skipping back to our car and driving away totally unaware.

Yes, I said. I imagine they did. And we all laughed the way you can only after it’s firmly in the past. Like laughter, in hindsight.