Removing tenant on MTM after acquiring rental property

[Francis Doherty]

Firstly I’m new to this so any advice or help would be amazing! I recently acquired my first a rental property two weeks ago with tenants who were  on a month to month lease. I physically delivered a 30 notice to end the lease for two tenants because their apartments need a complete renovation. The tenants who I want to leave are extremely messy leave things in the front area of the property and the rear and their units are just a disaster.

The tenants said they won’t accept the notice and would call their lawyers and report us to the city since there are so many things that aren’t to code including an illegal basement that we inherited and we didn’t exactly want to kick out the tenant down there.

since they wouldn’t accept the notice I made a recording showing the notice the property and folded the notice and put it in their door so that I could prove it was delivered. 

I’m pretty sure they will wreck the place even more after leaving. But concerned with what will happen if t he city is called etc. Also I haven’t given these tenants a lease or any contracts but i assume I inherit the month to month lease? in Chicago I’ve read that with a month to month all you need is 30 day notice. I gave this notice in the middle of their month to month lease. 

I guess I’m what the worst case scenario could be. I think if he reports me to the city I have more of an argument to kick the guy out but I really don’t want something long and drawn out and don’t want the city coming to cite me with violations. 

[John Warren]

@Francis Doherty you are getting a lot of advice, but you mentioned an important thing here... you are in the city of Chicago. You need to speak with a real estate attorney who is local and who knows the code. A 30 day notice for instance, may not work depending on how long the tenants have lived there under a new change to the ordinance. The other thing to remember is that terminating a tenant's MTM lease right now may not work since we still can't evict here... 

Honestly, you need to get in touch with people who know the area yesterday. Under normal circumstances, Chicago is tenant friendly, but in the pandemic you are walking on egg shells.