neighbor rights in response to next door tenants causing issues

[James Bergstrom]

I am curious whether BiggerPockets has any forum concerning neighborhood rights in respect to absentee landlords. 

I have been a landlord several times in my younger days and now live in a small town neighborhood that has taken a blow from the 2005 real estate bubble trouble and the 2007-2008 subprime mortgage debacle. Many homes went under in this ex-mining town and have been gobbled up by investors from other Arizona cities. My current neighbors were not vetted properly by the landlord (he never met them and didn't run proper background checks) and have systematically begun destroying his property over the short time frame of 4 months. They have no respect for their neighbors (barking dogs at midnight for 2 hours, cars left running for 20-30 minutes even in warm weather so that our carport fills with gas fumes, 6 vehicles on property of which only one is owned by the lessee) and were recently evicted from another house a mere 2 blocks away.

I contacted the landlord, who lives 100 miles away, sent him photos, and he responded, thankfully, and is ready to evict in the near future if the lease is not upheld. Knowing his renters from their long history of infractions, I'm not sure that he knows "how" to evict properly.

BiggerPockets focuses primarily on the positive aspects of real estate investment and may not even touch this subject, however I think it would be a valuable topic since I'm sure any long-term investor has probably had to deal with renters who had to be evicted. My focus is what rights neighbors have when a landlord rents to tenants that turn sour, real sour. Legal aspects, suits, all possible methods for rectifying the situation would be welcome.

If BiggerPockets members do respond to my inquiry, I would ask them to refrain from the standard response, that it's the county's job. Calling the Sheriff, working with the county code compliance officers, these methods do get some results. They do not work to address the attitude of tenants that have no self-respect and thus no respect for their neighbors if the absentee landlord does nothing to remedy the situation. Is a lawsuit the only answer?

[Ned J.]

Your only avenue is going to be through the Sherriff and County code etc etc. etc....

Even if your goal is to force the landlord to take care of these people, you will have to prove all the issues in court and the fact that he/she is not dealing with the situation and it is affecting your rights as a neighborhood tenant. You won't be able to prove anything without those entities being involved in citation and notices of the violations. Until those agencies are formally involved, you will have not have enough evidence in court to make the court force the landlord to do anything. Your testimony and pictures wont cut it. One of the first questions the judge will ask is if you called these agencies and were any formal complaints filed, what came of those investigations, did the landlord comply after them or just ignore them?

"Oh you never filed any complaints or call the authorities? You just jumped to file a lawsuit against the landlord?.....come back when you've followed the proper channels......case dismissed.....next".....

In other words you will never win a "nuisance suit" until you prove the nuisance and the failure of the landlord to remedy the situation...not gonna happen without formal complaints on record with the agencies that handle those complaints.

Your best bet is to repeatedly file complaints, call the cops, code inspectors etc etc..... make it far worse for the landlord to deal with those complaints than it is to deal with ****** tenants....

Your only other option is to appeal to the landlord that his properties are being destroyed..... its bad business....hes losing $$...... and hope you have a landlord that has a clue....doesn't seem promising so far