Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Haunted Houses and Horror Stories
7 Plays3 days ago
🎧 Welcome to Thoughts For Rent — the podcast where real estate gets real (and local)!
Hosted by Jenni McKenna, a Las Vegas born and raised seasoned broker, and Owner of McKenna Property Management, this show is your inside look at what’s really happening in the Vegas property management and real estate world. With over 20 years of experience herself - Jenni brings not just knowledge, but heart to the conversation.
Whether we’re talking market trends, property tips, community happenings, or just the everyday quirks of Vegas living, this podcast is all about keeping you in the know.
💬 Real talk. Local stories. Professional insight – provided from a company who has their boots on the ground and hearts in the community.
In this episode, Jenni and Irelynn are sharing some of their scary rental stories. They talk about a few of our haunted houses and also share a few stories that still give us the heebie jeebies.
McKenna Property Management, proudly managing Las Vegas homes since 2005 (and loving every minute of it).
Hit subscribe and comment down below to join the conversation! 💛
✨ Stay connected with us!
Instagram: @mckennapropertymanagement
Facebook: McKenna Property Management
TikTok: @TheMcKennaTeam
Website: McKennaPropertyManagement.com
Phone: 702-434-HOME (4663)
Owner/Broker: Jenni McKenna B.29819
#ThoughtsForRent #McKennaTeam #LasVegasRealEstate #JenniMcKenna #PropertyManagement #MarketTrends #PropertyTips #Community
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to 'Thoughts for Rent'
00:00:28
Irelynn Zurflueh
Hi everybody. Welcome back to Thoughts for Rent, Realtors Keeping It Real. As always, I am Ireland and with me is... Jenny McKenna, owner-broker McKenna Property Management in Ireland.
Haunted Property Experiences
00:00:41
Irelynn Zurflueh
I want to talk about some scary stuff in McKenna Property Management. Are you up for that? It's not Halloween yet, but I'll do some scary stories if you want me to. Well, I know a lot of people always say...
00:00:52
Irelynn Zurflueh
you know, what are some of the funny or weird kind of scary stories that, you know, we've accumulated over the 20 plus years that we've been in business. So I thought that our episode today would be talking about some of those things that we've had to experience while being property managers for our rentals. Okay. So the first one I want to talk about is our haunted house. Okay.
00:01:17
Irelynn Zurflueh
We really do have a haunted house. So some of you guys out there listening, maybe you don't believe in spirits, but let me tell you this story and then you get to make your own decision.
00:01:28
Irelynn Zurflueh
So we bring in a property. This is new to our portfolio and we rent it out. And the individual moves out. He lived there for a couple of years, i' two or three years, quite a while ago. So it's either two or three years. Brings in their keys. They were amazing, paid their rent on time. And they happened to say, as they brought in their keys, hey, by the way, the house is haunted.
00:01:52
Irelynn Zurflueh
Now all of us are kind of like, ha ha ha ha. This guy said the house is haunted. My upfront director first impressions, she said, well, why would you say that it's haunted?
00:02:04
Irelynn Zurflueh
And he gave specific things like their baby that were in their crib. It would be no blanket, blanket at the bottom of the crib because they felt like it was hot that night. And the next thing you know, in the morning, blanket was on a book, like around the baby. The other thing was,
00:02:22
Irelynn Zurflueh
cabinets, drawers and cabinets in the kitchen, yeah drawers would be open and cabinets would be open. So, and they know, they know numerous times they closed all of them before they went to bed. So those are the things that they said to us and a couple other things ah to our director of first impressions. And we all just kind of was like, oh, all right. That sounds fun. Great story.
00:02:46
Irelynn Zurflueh
We rent out that property again to somebody that has absolutely no idea who the first resident was. And about two months in, they call us and they say, this house is haunted. We can't live here.
00:03:00
Irelynn Zurflueh
And I asked them what they were seeing. And it's the same thing in the kitchen with the drawers and the cabinets. We did let them out of their lease because I felt like, why should somebody not feel comfortable living in a rental? And we have since rented that property with nobody else saying anything to us. But those are two separate people saying the exact same thing that was in that property.
00:03:28
Irelynn Zurflueh
So what do you think? You think it's really haunted, Ireland, or what? I definitely think that it's... I think that there's something there to it. We just had someone recently report that their house was haunted and they actually broke their lease early because they didn't want to be there anymore. And we have rented out since then. And I'm waiting for the call for someone to say the same things like they did in this house. But so far they haven't repeated the same stories from the first person. But this person who was claiming that the second house was haunted, And you know what's weird is that the the second house that Ireland's talking about, it's a brand new home. that's a It's a brand new home. So it's weird that that would be the vibe. So what what were the things she was saying? She was saying that like picture frames would fall off the walls and would like break in the frame. And then she was saying that.
00:04:22
Irelynn Zurflueh
at night she would just hear noises constantly all the time, which for that one, I feel like I chalked that up to it being a new build. Like they were still doing construction a couple streets over, but who knows? And then her third one, which I think was the most spooky was that she was saying that any new food that she would buy, like fresh produce or fresh, um, like bread or just anything that had an expiration date would go sour in like,
00:04:50
Irelynn Zurflueh
48 hours or go back really fast. so Interesting. We'll have to see. We did re-rent that property and maybe there is something going on or maybe whoever... The spirit was in that property, didn't like the first resident and likes the second resident. So I don't know. i don't know. All right. So what's another one that's kind of a a fun story in property management?
Extreme Tenant Cases
00:05:12
Irelynn Zurflueh
Well, we've talked about, i think you and Kai actually talked about this one long, a long time ago when you guys had your episode, but I always remember the cat.
00:05:21
Irelynn Zurflueh
Oh, we did. That's actually why we started site evaluations. yeah This whole thing with this house that Ireland's about to talk to you about is the reason it was like a a big eye opener that I was, I said, Oh, I got to get eyes on the properties minimum formally once a year. She was a resident who,
00:05:43
Irelynn Zurflueh
Never reported a repair, always paid on time, never really kicked up a fuss. She had been there for multiple years. So you would think, oh, she's perfect. Like, you know, news is good news. Yeah, like that kind of situation. Well, I think it was the city that notified you. The neighbor actually notified us and said that they keep seeing cats entering the window, one of the windows. So I went ahead and I sent one of our team members out to just, I mean, neighbors do have a tendency to dish a lot of tea that might be a little over-exaggerated. So I'm thinking, let's go take a look at it. Well, the team member that went took a look at it. walked into our office door and was just like, oh my gosh, I saw at least 20 cats going in and out of the window. So then we posted a 24. We went over there. Ireland, tell them how many cats there were. There was over a hundred. There was 109. Final count. 109 cats the house. in this like two, three bedroom or bedroom? It was a three bedroom. So was three bedroom, two bath. It was about 1500 square feet, cute single story. It's just the, and in all fairness, this can happen to any of us. The resident, when she first rented from us, seemed to be okay. But somewhere in that couple year transition or during that timeframe, she ended up getting some kind of a mental,
00:07:20
Irelynn Zurflueh
trauma or mental situation where she felt like it was her destiny to save every cat that she ever met that she ever met or and this is what really makes me mad there was a couple vets that when they would get a terminal eel cat they would call her and I guess she gave them some story that she was going to take care of the cat in their later days. And she would go and just collect those cats and bring them over to the house. So a lot of the cats were terminally ill, not getting proper vet. Yeah. Cause the owners just gave up on them and sad story from there. And she just got it in her head that she was going to be the cat's Savior. And it ended up being in our rental. And let me just tell you, it was rough. Like the smell awful. There was a news segment that was done on it. And that, like, that was crazy. It did make it to Nevada.
00:08:22
Irelynn Zurflueh
It did local news. i was like, Oh, some nation station nationwide is going to pick this up because it was yeah scary and it was weird. And there was a lot of pictures they were able to provide. And thank goodness, somebody was looking out for me and the company, because the next thing, you know, within a couple of days, there was a local house. that had over our number and it was dogs and cats. So it was like more of an interesting story. And so at that point, my story went on the back burner and then that 150 dog and cat story ended up being like national news and local news.
00:09:01
Irelynn Zurflueh
I mean, at that point, we, the good news is we know what we're doing. We went in, we cut the baseboards up about two feet, stucco baseboards, drywall, We were able to go in, clean it all up. did take a couple months. And then that property has since been re-rented.
00:09:19
Irelynn Zurflueh
And nobody would even know the wiser that there was an issue like that. Absolutely. This is a really sad, so it's a short one. It's sad though, but it reminded me because of the cats. We have found remnants of ah of the dead animals in houses before. yeah And it's usually unfortunately...
00:09:39
Irelynn Zurflueh
always cats. Yeah. So we've done walkthroughs before where someone has just either the cat died and then they left it there or they were intentionally killed and it was left there. And that's always scary and very frustrating. It does seem to be, it seems to always be cats though, huh? Yeah. Because one of our field agents, oh, she's such a pet lover. She did a walkthrough on an eviction.
00:10:05
Irelynn Zurflueh
And so we know that there was something going on that wasn't good because they got evicted. she went into the property and there was a dog that was locked in one of the back rooms, no food, no water. She, she just adopted the dog.
00:10:19
Irelynn Zurflueh
She took the dog back to her house and she called me and she said, I hope you don't mind. I said, I don't mind at all. It was going to go to the shelter. It was going to go to your house. You're going to make for a great, you know, house. so yeah, go for it if you can do it. But that one was, that one was kind of a sad one. One of our other friends who is also in the industry, she was doing a closeout in one of her properties.
00:10:39
Irelynn Zurflueh
And there was a litter of cats. And I think no mom, just the babies. And there was three babies, I think, or four babies. And she took one.
00:10:52
Irelynn Zurflueh
A friend of a friend took two who has like rescued cats before. And then they had also left unworkable cars in the property, like any like the cars that wouldn't start. So the tow truck driver that was there to remove the cars that day. adopt And he took one. took There you go. So at least like those sometimes have good stories, but those are always very, they're very frustrating and scary. If you are listening to Thoughts for Rent right now, I'm telling you, if you leave a property, do not leave your pet behind. oh yeah Be a responsible pet owner and rehome it or
00:11:30
Irelynn Zurflueh
Take it to the shelter, do something, do not leave it in the house. That's just in my mind, the lowest of a low person. You know what i mean? So the other one I want to talk about is our property that was on the outskirts of Mountain's Edge. So those of you that live in Southern Nevada, you know, Mountain's Edge is a gorgeous master plan community. You know, it's got a lot of very strict HOA properties. So you don't really get away with much. If you leave your trash cans out for too long, you're going to get cited. So we had this property and then all of a sudden we get a call from Metro Police that this particular property is a grow house.
00:12:08
Irelynn Zurflueh
And when I say grow house, I don't even think the guy ever lived in the house. was just his grow house. was all, everything was just these big planter boxes with these artificial lights, with the sprinkler system set up. They had it all there because it had a really big great room. He had it all set up there. He had a little bit up there in one of the the ah other bedrooms. So I went over there because I had to verify that, yes, it was our property and we're managing it. This is who is the the least. They had arrested him. So he was in jail. So we confirmed all that.
00:12:48
Irelynn Zurflueh
I'm looking around and I'm like, wow. I mean, Everything but all of these, plants the house looked perfect. Once you can get rid of all the marijuana, growth the growth of it, it was perfect. So this is something interesting.
00:13:04
Irelynn Zurflueh
Didn't know this until it happened. The police department actually removes all of it and then you get a bill. They bill you. They billed us and the bill was almost $1,000 for that. So I'm sitting there thinking, oh, well, that that sucks. The owner's going to get stuck with this. It's going to be part of the move out because it's going to be attached to the security deposit. But there were other things we had to do, plus lost rent to get occupancy, blah, blah, blah.
00:13:33
Irelynn Zurflueh
But you know what? He was a good criminal. As soon as he got out of jail, I kid you not, he came to our office with a cashier's check for the amount of money that he owed at the move out.
00:13:45
Irelynn Zurflueh
i believe it. That's crazy. I couldn't believe it. My jaw was when they brought me that cashier's check, I was like, hold on. This is for the the growth house. That's how what we called it, the growth house. And they're like, yeah, he's zero. He doesn't owe us anything.
00:14:00
Irelynn Zurflueh
So that was that was nice to be able to send that on to the owner and say, this a bit of a surprise that I didn't expect. I think that was a surprise of a resident actually following through on what they were supposed to do. We had, right when I got hired, like a really nasty
Revenge and Vandalism in Rentals
00:14:17
Irelynn Zurflueh
eviction. it went on for probably four or five months. There were multiple appeals. There were multiple moments where the constable arrived, but then removed themselves from the property because they felt like it just wasn't safe to complete the lockout. Like so many things happened. Yeah. I think it wouldn't be safe since he was, the resident was thrown around a gun. The constable's like, I'm out of here. thank you very much. And this resident had a monkey as well, which was,
00:14:45
Irelynn Zurflueh
Again, the constable was like, i don't know what I'm going to with this monkey, so I'm just going to We did finally get them out of the house and did a full rehab on the unit and put it up for sale. It wasn't going to be re-rented again.
00:14:59
Irelynn Zurflueh
and the realtor for the owner kept saying, there's this weird smell, there's this weird smell. And we're like, we did new carpet, cane, and we did a full rehab. They finally had found out that as a tool of revenge, he put raw chicken in the air ducts. Yep. He just had, you know, those bags of chicken thighs and breasts or whatever in and it was actually, i think it was frozen when he put it in the air duct. So that's why it didn't smell initially, but then over the course of time that just sat in the air duct. And so finally,
00:15:37
Irelynn Zurflueh
They figured it out. They had a vent cleaner come out. The vent cleaner showed it to them months later. And that's what the smell was. So that was really rotten. Very rotten. Very rotten in both sense of the words. Yeah. So that that one was a crappy one. Wasn't there also someone long, long time ago that like put broken glass in a dishwasher something? Like ran a dishwasher with broken glass? We, well, we had one that that's true. And that, that does mess up that appliance. But one that I remember we, the resident moved out, not happy. it was a divorce situation. She wanted to stay in, but she couldn't afford it. She was really angry with her ex-husband because he wouldn't pay what was, what she thought he should be paying for her housing. We do the proper move out. We secure the property.
00:16:27
Irelynn Zurflueh
And within 24 hours, the neighbor calls me and says, water is gushing out of the ah garage. And so I thought maybe it was the water heater that it just kind of blew up bad timing. And because that's kind of what happens when your water heater blows up.
00:16:43
Irelynn Zurflueh
Unfortunately, we went into the property. There was no evidence of of forced entry, right? So someone knew how to get in and they decided to take ah baseball bats to the porcelain toilets.
00:16:57
Irelynn Zurflueh
and And it was an upstairs, downstairs. So all the toilets were just busted. They even left the bat. And so water was just gushing out of this house. That was definitely an insurance claim. That definitely was bad news. But yeah, under insurance, it was vandalism because that's exactly what, you know, occurred. But I, my suspicion is that what, my suspicion is it was the ex-husband. Because I think she ended up getting really mad that she was moving out of that house and maybe caused his life to be somewhat miserable. So he decided to go in, not realizing maybe that she was completely out or just wanted to take some revenge on it. So that was a bad call to have in the middle of the night.
00:17:45
Irelynn Zurflueh
I've got one.
Law and Order: Rental Edition
00:17:46
Irelynn Zurflueh
So my husband, Max, who is also on the podcast when we do Thoughts for Rent, he sold a property, an investment property to a really great investor. We have like 13 of his properties.
00:18:00
Irelynn Zurflueh
And it's a cute two bedroom in Silverado Ranch. So those of you that know Southern Nevada, know Silverado Ranch, great little area, good schools, retail, the whole shebang. And my friend from out of town is in town. So we're doing the Vegas thing. We went down to the strip, checked everything out. We were going to stop by our house, grab a bite to eat. Then we were going to go out for the nighttime part of the strip.
00:18:25
Irelynn Zurflueh
And I get a phone call and it's the police. And they said, are you the owner broker of McKenna Property Management? I said, yes, I am He goes, do you manage such and such property? I go, yes, I do. He goes, i need you now.
00:18:38
Irelynn Zurflueh
I go, what's happening? He said, we have a potential murder-suicide. We know that they are growing, that the residents are growing marijuana in the property and we have staked them out. We are about to go in, but we need to know the layout of the house so that we're not putting anyone, you know, in harm's way. So I get in the car, i zip out there. I'm thinking,
00:19:04
Irelynn Zurflueh
it's going to be one or two cops, right? I mean, I know it's a bad situation, but in my mind, I'm like, stakeout. It's like one cop stake in the property, whatever. No, we're talking the RV that has the whole SWAT center with the big satellite dish on top. That's what I walked into. And then when I walked into it, they had cameras all over filming the house from neighbors. They were in neighbors' houses on the two stories filming it.
00:19:35
Irelynn Zurflueh
And then um they had undercover cops in different areas throughout the neighborhood. I'm not joking. This had to be like 20 cop cars, 20 sets of two people, 40 people just doing this one property. I drew my diagram. I am not a good drawer, so I'm sure that diagram is like laughable, but I drew the diagram. I think it was pretty helpful because they needed to go and do the blast so that they could throw the person off guard so they knew what window to break to do the blast. And everybody turned out okay. So they sent both of them to the hospital for, you know, medical clearance and mental health. And the dog did have to, cause they had a big dog to protect, I think their pot growing. The dog had to get um tranquilized, but the dog was obviously okay. And then we did have to fix the window, pay for the pot to be removed. And then we re-rented that within about 60 days and knock on wood, we don't have to, we haven't had problems with that. But the investor called up my husband, Max, and said, what kind of property did you sell me? Are you going to sell me like a prostitution house later on? And I always thought that was kind of funny because he took it really well. But yeah, that was an interesting night. I was there. i probably arrived at ah the RV SWAT a tent or whatever you want to call it at around four o'clock in the afternoon. And I wasn't arriving home till 11 at PM.
00:21:12
Irelynn Zurflueh
don't believe it. It's serious stuff. That one was a little scary. That was a bit scary. Yeah. Well, and I think the very interesting part of that, of all these stories too, is that like at the end of the day, they just got figured out.
00:21:25
Irelynn Zurflueh
Yeah. They got resolved. They got, addressed. And I think that's always, I always hate talking about things when it's happening because you're in the thick of it. But then afterwards you kind of look back and you're like, yeah, no, that was a crazy story.
Disclosure Laws in Property Management
00:21:38
Irelynn Zurflueh
And that was so insane, but everything got resolved, resolved. That person got removed or that person corrected the issue or whatever the case needed to be. And and in that case, a lot of reruns still happen. Like a lot people still said, yeah, let's just get it rent ready again and find a new resident.
00:21:55
Irelynn Zurflueh
Well, and something interesting that maybe our listeners don't realize in Nevada, if there is any kind of. death, murder, anything that happens within the house, by law, you do not disclose that.
00:22:09
Irelynn Zurflueh
You do not have to disclose that. So that is something where if you ask a real estate agent, do you know if anything has happened in this property, ah you know a tragedy, anything, they do not have to disclose it. And quite honestly, they probably shouldn't even go down that road. If you want to check the newspaper or TV footage, that's probably due diligence on you. But in Nevada, you do not have to disclose that. I think in California you do. So a lot of California people come over thinking that if they haven't heard anything from the licensed real estate agent, then nothing has happened. That's not the case.
00:22:44
Irelynn Zurflueh
but yeah You could be walking into a property where there had been something that was brutal and nobody needs to tell you about it, not by the law. Yeah. So there's something before we end, because we're at 22 minutes. um We're in the middle of something right now that's kind of unique. You want to tell them what we found out last week?
00:23:04
Irelynn Zurflueh
Which one? On the one where the individual didn't show up to work and the manager called us. yeah. um Yeah, we, well, first off, the resident submitted a mailed request for their AC not working.
00:23:18
Irelynn Zurflueh
And we called out a vendor for it. And then That morning we received a notification from the vendor saying, hey, we've been trying to make contact, but no reply yet. So we'll keep reaching out to the resident. And then maybe about a couple hours later, our front desk for us to impressions came in my office and said, hey, this unit's manager is on the phone. He hasn't been to work in a couple of days and he's just getting nervous. And obviously I remembered the address from just hearing that this vendor wasn't able to get ahold of him either. So I tried calling him on his cell and it immediately went to voicemail. And I said, yeah, no, I i guess no one's been able to get hold of him. So we told the manager to request a wellness check from the police department, which the manager did. the They tried to perform a wellness check at the unit and nobody answered the door.
00:24:13
Irelynn Zurflueh
And we gave the police department his emergency contact information that he had provided on his application. and then we also posted a 24-hour notice to actually access the inside of the unit to see if he was in the unit. And there was about there was about six days of where no one knew where he was. no one had communication with him. We were trying to get a hold of him. And the day of our or the day before but our walkthrough was set to happen, we got a call from Clark County and they had realized that he had passed away in a car accident. yeah And so they had finally made the connection between our reports and then this car accident. And we ended up having to, where now he was on the lease by himself. He was living by himself. So now it's a matter of,
00:25:05
Irelynn Zurflueh
re-renting the unit and trying to give his belongings back to his next of kin, but his next of kin is out of state. So it's a question of, you know, if they're going to fly in to grab his belongings or, and who's going to, whether it's going to be his next of kin or, someone that they are authorized. Yeah. Someone that they authorized. But the thing that was interesting about that one is there must've been something that happened with the car accident because they didn't allow us possession of the property for what, three days, three or four days. Yeah. We went to go put a lockbox on the unit and have a field agent go and document photos of what the unit looked like. And there was a sticker that said, This is like ah area of active investigation. Entering this is against the law. So we didn't. And then we called the number on the sticker and they said, yeah, we're having to document certain things. And we can't have anybody in there without supervision or until we've cleared the space. And that conversation was on Friday of last week. ye And then they didn't give us back the space until –
00:26:09
Irelynn Zurflueh
Wednesday. And what they actually did is they gave all the keys to the HOA clubhouse. And then the HOA said, well, we can only release it to the people that we have on file. which is the owner, the resident who has passed, right and then one person from our office. So then that one person had to be the one to go pick up the keys yes rather than just anyone from our office because in Clark County gave the keys to the HOA instead of us, which whatever. But we literally had a conversation the day before to bring the keys to our office and then they did And we definitely know that the resident wasn't going to go be picking up the keys yeah and the owner is out of state. So the owner is not going to be going in and picking up the keys.
00:26:46
Irelynn Zurflueh
The thing is, is something must have happened in that car accident, though, that the police wanted to do more investigation on how this individual lived or what was going on. We can't seem... Some of our team members really like to dive into this and figure out if they could, you know... Part of being in real estate, let's be honest, part of the love that I have in real estate is that you are so connected to people's lives. You get to go into people's homes, right? When I was selling real estate or, and you know, have a listing, I'm in their home, right? So it's it's a cool part of it. So when something like this goes on, you kind of try and be Sherlock Holmes and see what was it that they're trying to figure out from him. But we now have possession of the property. We're going to do the cleanup. And then again, just like Ireland said, resolved and we'll be re-rending that unit.
00:27:37
Irelynn Zurflueh
Absolutely. So that's kind of the fun, weird stories that we've accumulated over the last 20 years.
Conclusion: Encouragement for Investors
00:27:46
Irelynn Zurflueh
Hopefully nobody goes, oh, I don't want to be an investor because that kind of stuff can happen. Well, bear in mind, this is over 20 years.
00:27:54
Irelynn Zurflueh
It's only a handful and we're managing over 1300 properties. So if you take the odds, it's like 0.001% that something weird like that could actually happen to your investment property. but rest is shared with proper professionals.
00:28:11
Irelynn Zurflueh
We can get it resolved and we can get it re-rented for you. Absolutely. Well, that's our show, Thoughts for Rent, hosted by Ireland and Jenny. We are realtors keeping it real, and we sure did today. So if you like what you heard or you thought it was interesting, you want to hear more about it, subscribe or share this episode with somebody. It'd be some some good topics of conversation. And if you ever want to have something that we want to talk about or you've got questions, reach out to us. We're always happy to help. Absolutely. All right. See you guys next time.
00:28:43
Irelynn Zurflueh
Bye.