I just got cuddled up on the sofa for my Friday night with Netflix when a call came in on the emergency line. It’s the neighbor of a house with a new tenant we just moved in a few days ago. She’s getting sick from some kind of chemical smell.   Those are two words you never want to hear. Chemical smell. Did we just rent this house to a drug dealer?

My stomach is turning. I’m replaying the whole showing appointment and screening process we went through with him. He checked out perfectly. Has a great job, good credit, and excellent references. But could there be a meth lab in the house? I asked the neighbor if it smelled like some sort of pest control. Tenants will sometimes fumigate a house before they move in whether it needs it or not.  No, she says. It smells like the chemicals they use in a nursing home. It’s an “old people” smell.  I didn’t know they used chemicals in nursing homes. I’m confused and nervous. The neighbor says the smell is so bad that she has shut all the windows to her house.

I sent several text messages to the tenant with no response. Not a good sign. He’s such a nice guy.  But aren’t they all?  Did I get fooled?  I pride myself on being a good judge of character. Did I miss something? Starting to feel nauseous now. I decide it’s time to get dressed and drive to the property to have a smell for myself.

As soon as I stepped out of my car, the smell was overwhelming. Within a minute, I got a pounding headache. But yet the smell is vaguely familiar. The house is completely dark but there is a car in the driveway. I can see well enough to tell that there are no window coverings and no furniture in the first bedroom. Well, of course, there isn’t any furniture in the bedrooms. Drug dealers don’t need bedroom furniture in a meth lab, right? I decide to take a peek through the window.

“Hey!” the tenant yells loudly, frightening the bejesus out of me. Once he recognizes me and we both calm down, I ask him why he didn’t respond to my text messages.  He explained that he just got home and was about to call me. I ask him about the smell.

The tenant tells me he has a real aversion to lizards. Of course, Hawai’i has geckos everywhere and they are beneficial to our environment because they eat bugs.  Despite my assurances that geckos are our friends, this tenant is not having it. He hates them and wants them gone. Much to my surprise, he tells me lizards are repelled by mothballs. I had no idea. The chemical smell was a massive amount of mothballs that the tenant has put everywhere around the house. They are lined up all along every window sill. He agreed to remove most of them as soon as possible.

When I called the neighbor to give her the all clear, we shared a good laugh. She was grateful that the “old person smell” was already starting to fade.

🔑 People do strange things.  It’s always nice to have a Property Manager available 24/7 to check your unit when something smells funny.