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Updated over 6 years ago,
Tenant changed locks on roommate . Any legal issues for owner?
Hello BP family, here's the situation:
I have a tenant renting a single family property and a roomate who is not on the lease. Subletting is allowed by the tenants lease, but tenant never went through property steps with landlord to bring in a roommate (application, approval, etc).
The tenant claimed he lost the keys to his the property, got a locksmith to change locks and provided owner with a set of keys. The issue? The true reason for the lock change was to lockout the roomate. Apparently the tenant recently had some issues with the roomate, including multiple month of non-payment of rent, so the tenant decided to "lockout" the roomate by putting the roomates items on the porch and not providing the roomate with a new set of keys.
My understanding is that the roomate never signed a sublet lease with the tenant or a normal lease with the owner. My question is - could this lockout cause issues for the owner in anyway?