Nobody Reads the Lease

You have inherited a duplex and a vague sense of dread. Nobody Reads the Lease is a comedic landlord sim. Walk your neighbourhood, buy buildings you probably cannot afford, and find out who is actually living in them. SCREEN YOUR TENANTS Applicants stand in your vacant unit and turn to look at you. Every one of them is hiding exactly one thing, and exactly one screening step will find it. A credit check exposes the Professional Tenant who can never be evicted. A home visit reveals that "one (1) cat" was always going to be eleven cats. Screening costs money AND days, so you are always deciding how much you want to know before somebody else takes the unit. THINGS BREAK. THEN THEY GET WORSE. Ignore a leaky faucet and it becomes a ceiling stain. Ignore that and it becomes mold. Pick your contractor: Cheap Dave botches a third of his jobs, MegaFix costs nearly double and almost never fails, and your nephew watched a video once. CHAOS YOU WALK INTO Skipping a month is not a guarantee. There is a party in 2B on a Tuesday with forty people and a smoke machine. Water is coming through a ceiling. Something heavy is moving above 1A and a neighbour has started calling it Gerald. Go and stand in it, then choose - there is never a free option. BUILD SOMETHING ANYWAY Set your asking rent and watch the queue thin or flood. Renovate, then upgrade so the unit can ask more forever. Hire a handyman from a rolled pool of candidates and live with whichever one you could afford. Pay down the mortgage, or buy the next building instead. Four streets, each with its own rents, wear and look, from the cheap and crumbling Fenwick Row to Oakridge Heights, where everyone has a lawyer. Noise travels between units. Reputation follows you. The market moves under you whether or not you were watching.