Landlording again

So one of my tenants gave notice the other day. I am thrilled. He does not "play well with others" and has been a decent tenant in some ways but a pain in the arse in others. He was supposed to give 60 days notice to end his tenancy and didn't but I'm glad to be rid of him and
it's a Christmas gift to us and the upstairs tenant, who he has driven nuts, that he will be gone
by mid Dec. I've gotten a ton of action on the place from a Craigslist ad but so many people have
pets and I'm not going there. We showed the place to a couple last night. They loved it and said
they definitely wanted it. Funny how now that it comes down to listing references and checking their credit, all
the sudden they changed their minds. I've seen this happen a few times now. Sometimes I tell
people on the phone before I even show the place so I'm not wasting my time. I actually had one doofus a few years ago, call about an apt. and ask right out, "do you check references and credit?". Like I was gonna say NO to that. So I said, "yes." And he said, "OK thanks" and hung up the phone. Not too obvious, right? This couple seemed real nice last night
and both have jobs(he even works at the hospital where Tim is treated), but one never knows how people
manage their money, or don't, and I'd much rather have a vacant apartment instead of tenants that don't pay rent and have to go through the whole eviction process in court. Would
you believe that in NJ, if you evict someone, you have to go to one court to evict them and then go
to court AGAIN to get a judgement for any money they owe you. Maybe it's like that all over, I dunno. Luckily, this has never happened to us but with this longstanding bad economic downturn(which I feel is the depression of our generation, THANK YOU GREEDY banking companies) we have to be careful
as there are a whole lot of desperate tenants going from place to place around here. The timing on buying this 2-family could not have been worse. We closed on it 10 days before Tim was rushed to the emergency room and then dx'ed with cancer. It's a good investment and we've done some great renovations on it but the stress and extra responsibility is not fun sometimes and there are times I wish we could just sell it. I don't want to do that in the current real estate market. I just hope that we do not have anymore tenant issues like we did in '08 and that someday, we will be glad that we bought this place.

Puppy issues: so our little stinkpot got on her tippy toes yesterday and stole part of my lunch off the kitchen table while I was in the other room checking my e-mail. This little girl is giving me a
run for my money. Tim's mother called from VT last night saying they are taking care of an injured, stray dog. They are trying to find the owner. When Tim picked up the phone, she said,
"do you guys want another dog?!" and Tim said, "HELL NO, I don't even want the one we've got." Yeah right, Mr. Toughguy. As soon as I figure out how to get this new comp. to read my
cameras, I'll have to post pix of Tim snoozing with the little brat. (and I mean the dog, not me.)