Listing broken into-now claiming to be tenants

[Craig Tomlinson]

Hello all,

My name is Craig Tomlinson. I am 27 years old, a registered nurse, and fairly new to real estate investing. I am fairly new to BiggerPockets, hanging around the forums and soaking up all the knowledge I can. I am currently fixing and flipping but my end goal is buy and holds. I have been a partner with a mentor I was lucky enough to work with on 2 fix and flip projects thus far that were a great learning experience. We are focusing primarily in antelope valley/palmdale area. Our most recent flip was listed on the market just about a week ago in Lancaster. We got a call from our agent who states that his lock box appeared to have been broken into and the keys were gone. He went to get his spare keys at the house and when attempting to enter the home, all the locks had been changed and someone had moved into the home, furnished it, and turned on utilities in their name. They reported that they had seen the home listed on craigslist and walked the property the day before with the supposed "property manager", with whom they signed a lease agreement that they have thus far been unable to supply to us. Sheriff's were called out and essentially, we were told that we would need to go through the eviction process, even though they essentially broke into the home, furnished it, turned on utilities, and established themselves as tenants by trespassing. Anyone else ever dealt with an issue like this? It is so frustrating to see people take advantage of the system and live off of others hard work and hard earned money. Just one of the risks of investing in real estate I suppose but hey, if their was no risk involved then everyone would be doing it and the reward would be much less. 

[Jeff G.]

That is correct: you do need to go through the eviction process.

Two things are possible here:

1. This poor bastard was shown the house by a scammer posing as a property manager. This is entirely possible, such scams do happen.

2. This evil bastard has a faulty moral compass and has decided to steal from the "rich" (you) and give to the "poor" (himself) by squatting on the premises under the guise of a non-existent or forged lease.

Where I in your position, I'd find a FLAT RATE eviction attorney that has experience with these kinds of cases as soon as humanly possible. Don't try to handle this yourself, there is every possibility this person has done this before and knows "the system" better than you do.

It occurs to me you might hire a PI to figure out who this guy is and what his background is as well. If he has a history of doing this sort of thing, he's a scammer (and you'll have good evidence to back this up). If, however, this person turns out to have little more than speeding tickets in his past, it's probable he got ripped off too. This really sucks.

Sadly, this is going to cost money to fix. Track your expenses in case you end up suing him for damages, you'll probably be able to recover it with time.

Let me know if you have any other questions.