Landlord cash for keys gone bad.

[William Collins]

Here is a story of a real life issue I am currently working on. Not all landlord/investing things go right.

Setting: New Britain, Connecticut. A small city full of rentals mainly made for manufacturing plant workers housing. Most date from the 1900-1960 for construction.

In a triplex owned by my cousin and I we have a problem tenant on the third floor walk up. After December of 2018 things start going South. A mysterious relative has an issue, drawing the tenant out of state causing her not to pay on time. In Connecticut the law is that the rent is late on the 11th if due on the first. We serve her papers and she contacts us promising a catch up payment in the on the of February. We start down the process of eviction, and she registers a payment in our online Cozy portal, which bounces. She then promises to make a credit card payment which does occur and processes all the way through for just under $2000. In early March I get notice from Cozy that the charge has been disputed as fraud. Pursuing where the payment was made from and the credit card is not in the name of tenant on the lease. Cozy withdraws the money it deposited to my account and now we are sitting in the middle of March. Her electricity gets shut off and electric cords appear from the third floor going down to the basement to steal electricity from an owner outlet. We remove the cords and disable the plugs. The tenant swears it is a mix up, and go down the route of getting a lawyer enaged who recommends cash for keys. The apartment rents for $750, we offer $400 and it is taken. We meet the tenant on SUnday the 28th and we have her move out and then we change the locks.

As a horror story that one is pretty vanilla.... untilthe next day. That is when a couple with 3 children break into this 2 person apartment and claim they have been living their since November. They claim that tenant 1 sublet it to them and has robbed them off $60000. The law in CT prevents me from removing them with the cops and they become aggressive to my property manager. They also tell me that stage is now leaking from my sewer line every time they flush. They call the health department and claim that this has been happening a month. This get the city out there and they call the cops. Also a mysterious amount of trash appears (4 truckloads to be specific). So here I am sorting this out and the city calls saying they will condemn the place if not addressed by 10:00AM the next day. At this point I look like a slum Lord, not the business man I to be.

I rally the troops and I get out there clean all the crap, jet the sewer. I find out the sewer is backed up by a chunk of asphalt getting shoved inside it (wonder who did that). The city shows up with the fire marshall, health, and building department. They pictured going into world war three and in two minutes they realized the tenant number two (hereafter referred to as the squaters) are professional tenants who are trying to get a quick buck. Due to the city getting called the fire Marshall is required to make me bring the triplex to current fire code Thiswill cost me $4-5000. I now need to get the squaters out. That is $900 for an eviction, but the law says you can't evict someone who filled a health department complaint for 6 months. So let's see that will mean I am down 10x $750 in rent. 5,000 in fire upgrades and who knows what in damage at the end. Yeah that was a bad couple days.

Question for you- cash for keys the squaters or go long path on the eviction?

From a name search the squaters have been evicted 2x before. in the same town. On the note of screening. The original tenant met all of the checks,. good credit, 4x income, no evictions, no criminal record.

pay the squaters cash for keys to get moving on the repairs or evit