Evicting / Cash For Keys-ing Four Tenants At Once

Evicting / Cash For Keys-ing Four Tenants At Once

New to Real Estate · United States · Member since 2017 · 27 posts · 21 votes

Hello, I'm in the market to buy my first real estate investment property. I've been looking at this one for a while. It's a quadruplex.

The price is amazing for the area (Philadelphia). But the issue is that I'll be inheriting tenants and I'm doing an FHA loan (most likely an FHA203k). Three out of the four tenants are non-paying and from what the listing agent told me, it may be hard to get into the units for an appraisal.

Basically, the tenants have power over the landlord/owner as opposed to the other way around. Owner doesn't want to deal with them either - doesn't want to make repairs and wants to tack the responsibility of evicting/removing the tenants on the buyer.

I've been reading some old BiggerPockets posts and it seems that Cash4Keys before closing doesn't seem viable. I run the risk of losing a lot of money if the deal falls through. 

But I also can't close with the tenants in the units (because FHA requires owner occupancy). So my issue is that I need to C4K all four tenants at once to make repairs after closing, but I need to do it in a way that guarantees all four tenants will be gone at the time of closing. 

I would love to hear thoughts from all of those experienced real estate investors (and even the unexperienced ones!). Would you take this deal? And if so, what would you do to make it work? Does this seem like a deal with too many red flags where only a 75% price concession would make it worth it?

Thank you all!

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  • Rental Property Investor · Northern Virginia · Member since 2019 · 793 posts · 620 votes
    5y

    @Ryan D. it sounds like this property has been sitting for a while and it may continue to sit due to the fact that the tenants are not paying. This could be a potentially great opportunity if you are willing to solve the issue at hand. I think cash for keys is a great way to try to motivate the tenants to leave. It is the cost of doing business in this current market. There are no guarantees, but you can try to increase the success rate by taking certain steps.  

    If the seller doesn't want to deal with it, then you may be able to negotiate concessions or even a reduced offer price for the work it will take to remove the tenants.

    This sounds like a difficult situation, but if you can solve it then it could turn into an excellent investment.

    Best of luck!

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