Convincing a tenant to leave before the lease is up

[Sylvia B.]

Most of our tenants are fantastic, but we have one that is, well, needy. Older couple that loves the house and says they want to live there until they die. Always pay early, so no issues there, but they drive us nuts with requests to do stuff to the house. Their lease is up in February, and we have been seriously considering not renewing.

So we got a call from our RE agent a couple of months ago wondering if we would consider selling that property and for how much. She said someone wanted to buy the 6 or 8 houses on that part of the block and do something (I forget what) with the property. We gave her a number and never heard anything more, so figured it fell through.

She called back today to get a firm number and said the people have their finances all set and are ready to make it happen. They aren't going to want to wait until February to do whatever it is they want to do with the land, so we need to come up with a plan to get the tenants to move out in 60-90 days. I'm thinking maybe we can buy them out of the lease, but not sure how much it would take. They pay $500/month rent. The biggest issues are that they will probably have a very hard time finding another rental house and they have a LOT of stuff to move, including garden plants.

So how would you approach this? Would you offer them a set amount, say, $1500, or ask them what it would take to get them to move early?

[Thomas S.]

If the buyer has not asked for vacant occupancy yet you do not have to do anything. You are getting ahead of yourself  and the tenants may end up being the sellers problem not yours.