Problems selling a tenant occupied property

[Ryan Ahlgrim]

I’d like to get some input from other investors on a current situation I’m in trying to sell a tenant occupied property.

I recently moved for work to Tulsa from Oklahoma City and have been trying to sell my last primary residence so I can qualify for a new home. The home has been on the market for 4 months and I’m not sure if it will sell anytime soon so I might put renters in it. I own another property that is currently tenant occupied.

To help clean up my debt-to-income ratio I decided to put my rental property up for sale as well. The new tenants just signed a 12 month lease in July. I spoke with them one time about 3 weeks ago and they seemed open and willing to work with me on selling the home. I even offered to reimburse them some moving costs as well as a relocation fee of $1,000 after the property sells.

Since then I have called 5 different times and left messages without them responding. Even the property manager and realtor have had trouble getting in regular contact with them. I went ahead and listed the property last week without hearing back from the tenants. The first day it was on the market we got a lot of calls to see the home. My realtor was able to get ahold of the tenants and gave them 48 hours notice before the showings.

Turns out these tenants live dirty lives. They aren’t necessarily destroying my property but they aren’t cleaning the floors, kitchen, or bathrooms. They haven’t mowed the backyard in a couple of weeks and have left beer bottles and other trash out on the back patio. Needless to say, the home didn’t show well this weekend and it upset a few of the potential buyers and their realtors. Obviously it upsets me as well. My realtor was able to get ahold of them again to let them know the place was dirty but they acted confused and a little put out. I tried calling again today but could only leave a message asking them to get in touch with me.

What would you do in this situation? I don’t want to bully and push the tenants out since we have a 12 month lease but I feel I need to sell this property. Since we talked about it once before I don’t feel like I’m surprising them with any of this. I was honestly trying to work with them to make this a smooth transition. My thought now is to stop by in person one day this week before we have another showing and hopefully make this whole thing right.

Thanks.