First house, tenant and eviction - months!

[Mitch Brunette]

Man, if I don’t quit after this then I am destined for upside! Bought my first rental which is one side of a twin home, hired a PM and set myself up for about $350/mo after all expenses including capex, vacancy, repairs, management and piti. Success! Property manager finds me a single woman with a trust, audits trust and its sound financially, she just wants a nice 4br house to store some things, have some space and live in peace. Few bumps here or there with rent slightly late, but she has a trust and it always gets paid. I mean come on, she has a trust... Until now. Rent doesn’t get paid, get a story about a trust issue, its paperwork mixup etc. Property Manager sends pre-eviction letter and before you know it the church is involved, find out theres another home that is still owned with boxes packed floor to ceiling with stuff and the tenant is a “clean horder”. Re-evaluate the trust and the attorney didn’t tell us initially it can only be used for utilities, cars, health care and other random things but NOT rent. I never thought I’d feel bad for the tenant that didn’t pay me rent, but this one I do because her trust attorney allowed it to happen. Plus, I’m a nice guy and grew up in crappy rentals, felt good to provide a nice one to someone or many someones over the years. First rental, first tenant, first eviction, all in 8 months time. I won’t quit. I’ll learn. Evaluate better, question everything that I legally can, and exercise lease eviction options as soon as necessary. Property Manager has done an excellent job in the middle of it all, but maybe could have been better during placement. Not sure how we could have saw it coming? Maybe you, the BP community could or would have seen it coming? Anyone experience anything similar? Glad to have this community to lean on and look up to. Want to get this wrapped up, new tenant placed and look for the next buy.