Selling my househack property, with a difficult bedroom tenant

[Kamran Rahman]

Hi all!

I have a 3 bedroom home that I househacked. Currently, only one room is rented out to a tenant. 

In early June, I decided I would sell the property. At that time, I gave a 90 day notice to terminate the lease with the tenant who is currently occupying one room. This notice requires them to move out by the end of September  

This tenant has been challenging to deal with, both before and after I made the decision to sell. Most recently, my sales agent scheduled an appointment to take photos of the property so that it can be listed. The tenant has been refusing access to her room to do a showing because she insists she doesn’t want to show her room since it is messy. As a result, I’m having to reuse a previous picture of the room that I took, before she occupied the room. 

The tenant is not delinquent, and generally has a good rent history. Most of my challenges with them relate to her multiple attempts to demand that I need to reduce rent. However, based on what she has told me, she isn’t able to find a new place that is as affordable as what I provided her, so she is still looking for a new place (note, it has been nearly 2 months since I gave her the 90 day notice). 

So at this point, I am going to use previous pictures of her room, for the listing. 

My concern is that I anticipate she will not make showings easy, so I am anticipating that she may not allow access to her room. As a result, my agent may only be able to show everything on the property, except for her room. 

My goal is to sell the place in the current hot market. The best case scenario is that she moves out before the deadline I gave her in the notice. The worse case scenario is that she still lives on the property after the deadline, and then I end up having to start the eviction process , which would cause obvious delays on selling the property. 

Anyone have feedback on my approach thus far? Any general guidance based on your own experiences ?