Non-u.s. citizen tenant prone to damaging our home and unwilling to pay for damages , threatening to leave

[Greg Tudor]

My mother is currently renting out her house of the old and has moved into a separate house with a new mortgage. She cherishes the her house that she has lived in for the past 7 years now , however , the current tenants have caused more damage to the house in the past month then she has while living their in years combined.

The tenants are a Korean family , parents and son , who are getting adjusted to life here in the states , they seemed like the perfect tenants - the house is kept clean and organized and they seemed to be honest and good natured in general.

The problems started when they installed a direct tv system even after my mother had specifically told them not to do so. She didn't want any holes drilled through brick walls. This was her first time experience in the renting business and she overlooked the incident as she concluded from one of her earlier visits that direct t.v. seemed essential to their lifestyle .

However , in the past month , we had power issues that , according to the city , was caused by a damaged underground cable , this damaged the main power line and caused damage to numerous appliances - doorbell , transformer to the heater , burned lights , burned garage door modem , and more. Thousands of dollars in damages. The city has yet to conclude whether the cause was natural , in the case which they would be reimbursing us , or whether the tenant had done something to actually damage the underground cable.

Within weeks , they called my mother in to help out with problems with the garage door , we went over there and found that the garage door had actually been partially unhinged ; the roller on one side had been dislodged from the supporting metal beam , the metal beam itself was bent considerably due to the weight of the garage door being shifted to the right . My guess is that the garage door had gotten stuck while someone had tried to close it manually (the automatic garage route was not viable due to the garage modem being damaged in the previous power incident) and he had tried to hammer the roller down , however , without much respect as to the angle and had forced the metal beam apart from the roller in the process.

Now they refuse to pay for the damages for the garage door , and we'll soon find out whether they were responsible for the power issue in the near future. My mother had never experienced problems with the main power during the seven years that she had lived there. They seem , overall , to have tendencies of abusing the house , albeit unintentionally and expecting us to pay for the damages that they had caused. They are citing that we should be responsible for the poor condition of the garage since it had the tendency of getting stuck and that they had experienced repeated instances of stress and frustration in trying to open or close it , a statement which does not make sense , since they had inflicted the damage so that the garage door had become unhinged.

What measures can we take to make them pay for their damages - sheriff ? court ? any good dose of home town justice - they're completely disrespecting her and seem to think that they could just damage her precious home the house and force her to pay for the damages that they inflicted. They are threatening to leave , my fear is that they will cause more damages and simply leave , they aren't U.S. citizens and I sense that they can simply ditch on the U.S. law and run off to another state or even perhaps back to their home country and not be accountable for anything since none of us , including the law , will be able to track them.

How can we control this situation so that it doesn't get really messy?

[Jon Holdman]

First, you should drop all "Korean" references. Fair Housing laws forbid discrimination based on race or origin, and this laws are strictly enforced. All it would take would be to say "my Korean tenants..." to the wrong person and you could be in a world of grief. Forget about their immigration status or threatening to mess up their immigration process.

Absolutely forget about "any good dose of home town justice"! Follow your lease, follow the law.

If you want to avoid having tenants damage your property, the answer is very simple - don't rent it. If you rent a property, tenant damage is inevitable. You refer to this house as "her precious home". That statement alone tells me she has no business renting this place. Rental properties aren't "precious homes". They houses that get used and abused by tenants. Repair expenses are just part of the business. I'm not happy when my tenants make a mess, but I do fully expect it. I'm happy when they don't.

Your lease should cover who pays for damages. My lease says they do if its they caused the damage. My lease also says I get to apply money they give me to damages first, then rent. So, if they cause $200 in damages and refuse to pay, but then pay the $1000 rent, I put $200 to the damages and say "you still owe me $200 on the rent, its late tomorrow and theirs a late fee of $25. I need the rest of the rent tomorrow". If they refuse to pay, post a "pay or quit" and start the eviction process.

I only do month-to-month leases. If I don't like how they're keeping the place, I can terminate them with minimal fuss.

In many areas the owner cannot deny a tenant the ability to install a satellite TV system.

You say you don't really know what's going on with the wiring. Seems unlikely the tenants have damaged it, unless they've been digging and physically damaged it. I suppose they could be running a generator and feeding current back into these wires and overloaded them, but short of that its had to imagine what they would have done to damage them. These sort of things do fail. Just because your mom had no troubles doens't mean there wasn't a lurking problem. Even if the city says its not their problem doesn't mean its the tenants fault. Short of physical damage that can be pinned on the teanants, I'd assume this is a lurking problem that finally reared its ugly head.

If the garage door didn't work easily and smoothly then you should have had it fixed. If you know it worked smoothly when you handed the place over, and were never informed there was a problem, and its now broken, fix it, and charge them. If you knew it was a little troublesome and now its really broken, fix it and you pay.

If they just leave, they leave. Don't sweat it. It happens all the time. You just hope they don't do too much damage. If they do, you fix it and move on.

I would really recommend mom sell "her precious home". What you're describing is par for the course for rentals. Do you really want this stress?