kept tenant – A Maine couple bought a historic home nearly a decade ago with a rental apartment in the carriage house. They set the initial lease at the same rate as the prior year, never increased the tenant’s rent, and renewed through multiple three-year terms—now on a th
When a couple and their wife and set out to buy their first house nearly a decade ago. they weren’t hunting for prestige—they were looking for a fixer-upper with “good bones.” The decision shaped not just their own home. but the apartment above a detached carriage house that would later sit under their roofline as an income source they never fully treated like a number.
The property they found checked a long list of boxes: it was historic. in what they described as a perfect location. with a fairly large yard and plenty of cosmetic work. plus what they saw as a clear path to rising value.. It also came with a “glittering bonus”: an income-generating apartment over the detached carriage house.. Though they said they didn’t know how to be landlords. they bought the house from established residential real-estate investors and trusted that the existing tenants would fit what they felt the deal needed.
Instead of resetting the rent immediately. they offered the mother-daughter tenants a new lease at the same rate the tenants paid the year before.. Their plan was simple: reassess once the yearlong lease ended.. Their first year. they say. went better than they could have dreamed—so well that their thinking about “maximizing” the apartment income began to change.
The couple later described their own life as part of why they didn’t feel pressure to push rent upward.. After getting appointed to city commissions and running for City Council, they said their tenants cheered them on.. They also pointed to their own financial position as a reason they didn’t need to squeeze extra dollars from the lease.. As a white-collar couple living in Maine in 2017. they said they could afford a home without help from their parents—something they call not possible for every homeowner.. In their view, that meant they weren’t trying to “maximize every potential income stream.”
They acknowledged that the tenants’ rent was technically below market value from the start. but said the payment already covered more than half their monthly mortgage and helped them build equity.. Because the house sat next door. they got to know the tenants through everyday moments—chatting during chance meetings in the driveway and when rolling the recycling bins out together.
In that early stretch. the rental income also translated into visible improvements around the property: they described projects such as painting. landscaping. and doors that kept out the snow.. Their tenants. in return. were described as taking part in snow removal and helping weed the gardens. along with what the couple called “deep emotional investment” in their neighborhood.. The relationship, they said, made community feel less like a backdrop and more like a shared project.
When the tenants’ first lease expired, they said the mother and daughter worried the couple would want to move in a relative. To reassure them and underline what they viewed as the tenants’ contribution to their “little compound,” the couple signed a new three-year lease with no rent increase.
As they learned more about their neighbors, the couple said the bond went beyond ordinary landlord-tenant life.. They described helping search for a lost cat after the wife found it. with the tenants helping canvass the neighborhood to find its owner.. When the wife got cancer, the tenants brought food.. During the COVID-19 pandemic. when the husband said he was alone in the house while his wife underwent treatment. the tenants checked in “from across the driveway” by text—waving out the window and offering comfort from six feet away in the garden.
By the time their three-year lease was up, the couple said the tenants had become fixtures in their lives.. With their wife now healthy and expecting a baby. they said they couldn’t imagine the upheaval of finding new tenants.. They also said they never asked whether the tenants could afford a rent increase.. Instead. without changing the rent. they extended the lease for another three years and said they plan to keep the rent as-is for as long as they can.
When that term came due in 2024—around the time they were about to have their second child—they described the tenants as “deeply beloved” by their first. The couple said they are now on their third three-year lease with the same rent.
They said they fully intended to make money on the apartment and that, in some sense, they have.. After nine years. though. their central point is that the rent remains the same: “Nine years on. though. our tenants’ rent is the same. and we hope they’ll never leave.” What they framed as the real payoff is what they built together—“returns” they describe as tied to each other’s lives and. by extension. in their community—rather than the additional money they could have earned as market-rate landlords.
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