Problem Tenant!

[Jason H.]

Last September/October, I signed into a 2 year lease agreement with a family to rent my SFR in the Charlotte area. School had already started and there weren't many rental prospects, so foolishly I was happy to move forward with anyone. I ended up signing the lease with the wife, who was also the sole worker in the family. HUGE mistake. The family was moving from Florida for new employment, and just about every month since they moved in, rent has been late. I have sent several eviction warning notices, and then the tenant ends up paying.

Last month, when emailing the wife about the late rent, I included the husband in the email & the wife informed me that the husband no longer lived at the home & had moved back to Florida. August 10th, 2016 (less than a year into the 2 year lease) I get an email from the wife saying that she is being transferred back to Florida in 30 days. I responded reminding her that she is only partially through a 2 year lease and that I'd be willing to work with her to break the lease IF she paid August rent (which was late again) and allowed me to schedule viewings for new prospective tenants while she still lived there. She didn't respond to my reply and I've been trying to communicate with her via email, calls, texts with very little success since. 

I live in CA and manage the property long distance along with 4 other SFR's in the same area. She is my lone problem tenant.

My goal is to get August rent, get her out of the home ASAP with little to no vacancy time, ensure that she doesn't wreck the home, all while not breaking the bank. 

How can I go about getting my August rent? What are some options I have in attaining my above goals? 

If she doesn't pay rent, I am looking into suing her for breaking the lease early. 

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. 

Sincerely,

Jason Hamelberg

[Ralph R.]

Jason Hamelberg I'm not sure how you are going to collect money from a tenant in Florida based on a lawsuit filed in another state. As other posters said you can only collect based on the vacant months. Forget the law suit. Your first loss is your best loss. This gal has already cost you more than a good PM would. Now you are going to fumble around and try to find another tenant. I own several out of state rentals and I promise you a good PM is the best money you will spend on any given property. You are making it way too hard on yourself and costing yourself a lot of money. You are pretty new at this from your post. If nothing else you can learn property management from using a good pm. This gal should have been out of there the first time she was late and a good PM would have known that would not have accepted rent or partial rent and had her gone long before now. Would have saved yourself some money and heartache. Best you can do now is cut your losses and move forward. Management is not a team sport you get the results you manage for. RR