Inherited tenant that needs to go

[Andrew Bjorklund]

My wife and I are buying our first multi-family home and expect to close soon (yay!). We will be house-hacking a tri-plex. One unit is empty that we will live in and the other two units have long time tenants. Both tenants are month to month leases. One of the tenants has been there for 12 years, but has not been taking care of his unit and has trash everywhere inside and outside. The unit also has deferred maintenance that needs doing ASAP. We would like to get rid of this tenant as soon as we can. What is the best way to remove this tenant? Cash for keys? He has a lot of stuff and I'm not very optimistic about him moving quickly... Any advice is appreciated! :)

[Thomas S.]

There is absolutely no reason to throw your money away using cash for keys. If he is on M2M just terminate the lease and but his butt on the curb. Why throw away money when you don't need to. This is the major advantage of not using term leases and having all tenants on M2M.