Difficult Tenant

[Aaron Sims]

Hi -- Let me start with the back ground before I get to my question. I just recently purchased an investment property. Shortly after taking possession of the building, I increased the rents. I gave them the required 60 day notice because the increase was more than 10%, and we are currently 30 days into the 60 days.

One of the tenants has making waves since I took over the building. He has been complaining a lot, he constantly points out all the areas where the building hasn't been well maintained and he even went down to the city to see if everything was in order with the permits in regard to a roof I just had replaced. The rent increase only frustrated him more.

Over the past week, we had landscapers working on the yard -- we had all the sprinklers dug up and replaced, they leveled the lawn and then matched seeds to the current grass to help the lawn regenerate. As the final step, yesterday we had a layer of compost put down and then surrounded the areas of the yard affected with yellow caution tape to keep people from walking on it, until it gets established.

Now for the question -- Today, I went by the building to take care of a few things. The tenant in question sees me and we start talking. He says he is planning to move out in 30 days and that he considered this conversation his notice. Then he continued on to say that tomorrow he is planning to drive a truck onto the lawn in order to facilitate his move. I told him given the new sprinklers, and all the other work just completed on the yard, that I didn't want him to do that. He said, "tough, i'm going to do it anyway." The conversation continues, but we were making no head way and I said I would call the cops and he said he didn't care, he was going to drive the truck onto the yard. So I called the cops. The cops said there wasn't a whole lot they can do other than try to talk to him, which they graciously did. They came back and said he's being a bit of a jerk. The police said if he were to drive the truck onto the property, then you can sue him for any damages he does to the new landscaping.

My question is -- where do I go from here? I thought I would draft a letter documenting what happened today with the verbal 30 day notice, as well as our discussion and my directive to him not to drive a truck onto the property. Then continue to say that if he chooses to do so, that we will deduct any damages from his security deposit (which isn't very big) and if the costs exceed that, then we will consider further legal action (i.e. small claims count to recoup costs). I'm starting to get concerned that he might damage the inside of the unit as well.

Please let me know if have any other suggestions or ideas about how to best proceed. Should we be doing something different?