Help wanted - Tenant potential seeking legal action

[Matthew Carducci]

Good morning,

Up front:  Current tenant may potential be seeking legal action on grounds that I am not making reasonable efforts to rent the property.  

Details:

House is located in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina (SC).  Current tenant is paying $2500 and is under lease agreement through end of June 2017.  (I currently live in Texas).  

Back in later summer of 2016, I voluntarily informed tenant (not required by SC law) that come lease termination, I would be raising rent to market values, probably somewhere in the $3000-$3200 range.  (no previous rental increase in past 3 years)

This ultimately led to us agreeing to list the house for rent in order to allow them to purchase a home and move out early IF and WHEN the house was re-leased and with no change in the current lease agreement.  

I immediately sought the services of a previous property manager to list the home (I have used him in the past) which he did but it was painfully, terribly frustrating communication with him and it was slow to get things started.  However, it was listed and after a few weeks at a rental price of $3000 I lowered it to $2800 and have received a several inquires of the past few months.  The original property manager removed the listing while I was handling the first lease application which feel through when the out of state potential tenants decided to back out.  At this point, I fired the current property manager, and hired a new property manager who since late October has been actively seeking a tenant.  They have been a wonderful job, another tenant application fell through when they realized they were under legal contract still on their current rental agreement.  

The house has showing setup for 6 Dec.  

I get the below email early this morning from my tenant:

I just feel like the tenant is feeling the pressure of having to pay a new mortgage and fulfill the obligations of his rental agreement while I continue to seek a new tenant.  

So, yeah, I would really like some feedback on this.  Guidance as well.  Is the tenant standing on firm legal ground here?  He keeps referring to his Financial Loss as if I am somehow responsible for that?!?  What if I had said nothing in the first place (maybe I should have)?  

I'm also looking for real estate legal advice in the Charleston, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina area if anyone can recommend a firm.  Thanks!

Matt

[Samantha Klein]

@Matthew Carducci I believe for future reference that you should not tell your tenants that you are raising the rent when their lease is up until maybe 30-60 days out from the end of their lease as it seems that has scared them off, and as their email stated, they may have stayed a few more years and as it seems they were good tenants (Maybe they wanted out regardless). They are paying 2500 now and you are down to 2800, only a $300 increase, I would have just waited and agreed to possibly $2,700 for another year and kept them, would have saved vacancy costs and frustration with this whole thing, also, this time of year is a bad idea to mention those kind of things to tenants as you don't want units vacant.