Tenant Problems in BC

[Cameron Robinson]

Evening BP!

I was hoping someone on here who invests in BC, Canada has some experience in dealing with tenants not wanting to sign the Mutual End of Tenancy form even when they said they wanted to move out.

My tenants signed a fixed 1-year lease agreement ending Dec 31 2022 and are now wanting to move out which I am happy for them to leave. The issue I am having is they refuse to sign the Mutual End of Tenancy form and refuse to put something in writing to say they are refusing to sign it. They say they are moving out on May 15 ( this was emailed to me and verbally said to me).

After speaking with Landlord BC about the situation they said that because the tenants have not provided 5 key parts of info (down below) I am unable to rent the unit out once they leave/abandon the unit because of the fixed term agreement.

•Tenants name • Address they are vacating from • Signature • Date the letter was written • Day they are vacating

I know that I will lose a month's rent here. I just want possession of the unit as soon as they leave while trying to mitigate potential damage to the property on their way out.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? What did you do to solve it?

Thanks

Cam

[Theresa Harris]

Quote from @Cameron Robinson:

Quote from @Theresa Harris:

Quote from @Cameron Robinson:

Quote from @Vaibhav Khullar:

This is a good question! Even though I do not have much info on this, I would like to hear from the experts on BP (Canada).

@Cameron Robinson, I see it's been about a month since you posted this. How things have been going now?

 The tenants left and mailed the keys back to me from out of province I believe. So all's well that ends well.

 I'm glad it worked out.  If they had moved out and given you the keys, I would have just rented it out.  I've had tenants in BC move out before their lease was up due to a family illness and I had it in writing via email and that was good enough for both of us.  BC tenancy board has all sorts of forms which can be good, but with most of my tenants other than the lease itself (which we use that form), we do most things via email (rent increases, if there is a problem) and it works well for us. We still follow the rules.  When I've had problems (ie had to evict someone), we use the forms.

 Thanks @Theresa Harris. They left the property without warning and then a week later the keys turned up in the post. Followed by them cancelling their BC Hydro account with the house. 

That's good to know that you having it in writing and that was sufficient for both parties. I used all the forms that were prevelant to the sitution just to make in case there was a problem.

 It really depends on the tenant.  With some you need to have everything done just right.  The fact that they took the hydro out of their name shows that they are done.