Rent Discount

The house we are renting is not the biggest house around, but it is just enough for the two of us. However, now that we are having two more arrive in 7 months, we need to make some space. So I called the owner and asked her if we could build a storage room in the back yard in order to rearrange the house. Worst-case scenario we have to pay for it ourselves, but I wasn't going to offer that.

Yesterday she came over to look at the spot I wanted to build it. I estimate it will cost us about 10,000 quetzales to build a 3.5 meter/3.5 meter concrete block room with a metal door and a metal roof. We are not paying very much rent, but I still asked her to drop the price by Q150/month. I explained to her that at that discount it would take me 5.5 more years to recoup the Q10,000. She accepted quickly, but then asked if I could pay her a year in advance. Right now we pay 3 months advance and have paid until the end of May. Her husband is in the States (illegally) and hasn't had a job lately. I think I can get the money together by the end of May and I like having the security that with two new babies we won't be asked to leave the house if her husband gets deported and comes home.

This morning she called me. She spoke with her husband and said that they would give the Q150 discount on the rent, however they needed to raise Q100 because they weren't charging enough to begin with. This would give a net discount of Q50/month. I told her that I wasn't planning on staying in the house 16 years in order to get the money back from the storage room. I also reminded her that we pay so little because when we got the house it had no doors on the rooms, no paint on the walls, no water tubes glued together, no water that made it to the sink, and very few outlets that had wires behind them. I also explained that I have a request with the electric company to boost our power so that we run a second air conditioner, but that I will have to re-wire much of the house and add another 50amp breaker (right now our whole house is on just one).

We discussed it a little more and I finally agreed to only a Q100 discount, but I told her I would only be able to pay her 6 months in advance instead of a year. This information changed everything for her and she agreed to go back to our previous agreement and get the year in advance. We'll see how long it takes for her to ask me for more rent money. She has never made it to three months before asking for the next installment. I'm betting on 6 months.