Young Tenants breaking up

[Daniel Rehner]

Hi all, 

I am a first time real estate investor and bought a duplex back in Feb and was able to turn ithe around before the 2nd mortgage paymen, which I was pretty happy about. And if you would have asked me how things are going with the rental 2 days ago I would have said...pretty good, both tenants have paid on time for the he last 4 months. And that is still the case so far but a pair of my tenants are breaking up, and although I don't have all the details yet (I will be finding that out today), what is going to be the best form of action to take? Both tenants are on the lease so they both are responsible for paying rent. Any advice will be appreciated as I have a couple weeks or less to figure this out before the next payment is due.

[Ceril S.]

We have had this a couple times now.  

1) We don't let just one tenant off the lease, especially if they needed both incomes in order to qualify. (You did do background checks and income verification, right?)

2) We tell them that they are 100% responsible for the rent for the full duration of their lease whether they live there or not.

3) We offer to list the apartment for rent and if it is rented prior to the end of their lease, then we will release them, however, they are responsible for the rent up until that point and they are required to cooperate with showings, etc.

4) Their security deposit is dealt with normally, any repairs that we need to make (including getting rid of their trash left in a hasty departure) all gets billed to the security deposit.

5) If they don't let us list the apartment and can't pay the rent, they will be evicted and that will show up on both of their permanent records for a long time (usually this is motivating for them not to do this)

Luckily, the times we've had to do this, we've ended up with better tenants on the re-rent and have had ZERO downtime for the turnover, so it actually cost us aggravation and time on our part, but did not lead to an actual vacancy.