Pacific Heights

In class today we watch a clip from a movie called Pacific Heights. In the part of the film we watched, we witnessed a pair of new homeowners trying to rent a portion of their house in order to make the rent. They rent one of the rooms to an elderly Japanese couple, but the other gets rented to what quickly starts shaping up to be a nightmare. There were some red flags they should have noticed. One of the things that jumped out at me as we watched was when asked to fill out information about is credit and the like, he at first tries to distract the landlord with the amount of cash he has on him, stating he was willing to pay 6 months up front because he travels a lot. When the issue of the rental application is pressed, he begins talking about how he doesn’t have the usual credit history because he does work for a private firm. He pretty much starts saying that what he does is a secret and that there is no way that it could be verified under normal circumstances. He gives a name to a lawyer that supposedly would be able to verify his claim, but says that if he talked to anyone one else they wouldn’t be able to tell them anything. So, right there should have been a huge warning. Even if he was telling the truth, they should have gone with the safe route of just not leasing to him. Also, if he did decide to lease to the guy, he probably should have at least asked for the deposit and first month’s rent right then, seeing as how the guy said he had so much money on him right then. I believe the landlord did tell him he could not move in until he had paid, but the guy snuck on in anyway, so requiring a lease agreement before hand probably wouldn’t have helped.