Difficulty with current tenant

[Kirby Jackson]

I met with a seller for the first time yesterday and have some questions and concerns about this scenario. The owner is wanting to sell her house and be done with it, as she is wanting to move out of state. The house is a duplex and she is renting it out to a tenant on a month to month lease currently. It’s kind of a strange situation, but the tenant rents the whole house for $500 a month and the tenant is allowed to rent the other side out and keep the rent money. The tenant is a long term tenant for about 10 years. She puts her own money into some repairs, but not all of them as the owner recently put in a new furnace, water heater, and plumbing. I know the tenant is replacing the floor currently in the other side of the duplex, and I believe she said she is putting in new cabinets in the kitchen herself. Currently the other side is vacant, but the tenant is making repairs to the other side before she puts it back up for rent. Before the owner received my yellow letter, she was planning on selling her house on contract to the current tenant on a 5 year no interest lease plan, but she would rather just be done with the property before she moves away. I don’t believe she has expressed this to the tenant yet though. This is not the best area of the city, and the house is in not the greatest shape on the outside. We met the owner at the property last night and things were a little strange. She said she told the tenant we were coming by for an inspection for insurance purposes because she didn’t want her to know she is thinking of selling it to someone else. The tenant answered the door and said just a second and she would let us in but she had to put her large dog up, but for the next 15 minutes, she did not respond to the owners repeated demand to let her in and never came back. As we were about to give up and leave, the tenant texted the owner and said we couldn’t come in because the house was a mess and she did not want us to see it. She also refused to let us see the other side of the duplex because the water was not running and the floor was being done. We could not see in the windows. We started walking away and the tenant changed her mind and agreed to let us in but only to see a couple of the rooms on the side she is living in and also the partial basement area which is accessible from the outside so that we could see the furnace and water heater. So we only saw the living room, the kitchen and the partial basement area and got some pictures. The parts we saw were in fair shape. The owner is supposed to have lunch with the tenant sometime this week and she said she will try to get us more pictures. The tenant was not hostile, and her boyfriend was very friendly when they allowed us in. They were just really weird about letting us in. The owner and tenant seem to get along with each other fine from what the owner was telling us. She said she always pays on time or maybe 10 days at the most late. Has anyone had any experience with this type of scenario? My question is how should we proceed with this? It doesn’t seem easy to see the inside of the house since the tenant is so uncooperative. I don’t think the current owner would be able to make her leave for showings and it was so hard to get to see just a few rooms. Would a buyer buy the house sight unseen?

[Mindy Jensen]

What concerns me most is that the landlord was originally planning on selling to the tenant. If she has anything in writing, that will throw a huge monkey wrench into everything.

This could be a great property, this could be a massive disaster. Start by asking the owner for all documents related to the current tenant and see what you get.