11.07.14 - Terrible Tenant Saga Finally Ends

Wow, I wanted to celebrate this week… we got our exasperating tenant out!

How it played out:

• Received $100 more from tenant. Only $5 went toward unpaid rent; $75 was applied to rent fee, $20 to screening fee for roommate application. Informed her we needed $1200 by November 1st for her to be able to stay. She admitted that she couldn’t get it, but made no commitment to move out.
• Tenant turned in application to move in a roommate. He had declared a few misdemeanors, but when we ran his credit he has 6 counts of activity, including 2 outstanding warrants. We declined him.
• Boyfriend came back, they asked if there was anything they could do to stay, we said not at this point and gave them the move out letter outlining cleaning expectations.

• Rental agreement expired on Halloween, a Friday. We told them we’d evict Monday morning if they weren’t gone by then. Packing continued, but no indications what their next move would be.
• Bruce offered a cash for keys deal - $200 cash if they were moved out by Sunday night and the place was relatively clean. Gave permission to store items in the outside storage unit after move out.
• Boyfriend disappeared again, tenant informed us that she suspect she is living in the attic space. We had some entertaining discussions on how to deal with that scenario, just more stress.
• Tenant asked for one day extension on cash for keys due to grandmother’s funeral. Granted.
• Tenant packed and repacked storage shed. Ended up giving us keys 12 hours after extended cash for keys agreement expired, with boyfriends belongings packed but still in the unit. Bruce gave her $50 in appreciation for cleaning. She was pissed to not get the entire $200.  Obvious that tenant is marijuana user.
• Boyfriend reappeared, got belongings. Says he gave the tenant $600 to pay rent, that she is withholding visitation to their child, that he wants us to provide info for his custody battle, and told us he was taking her items out of the storage shed. He was a co-tenant with a legal key to the storage unit, we didn’t get involved.
• We listed on Craigslist, got six applications, and offered it to a new family today.

And so the waiting finally ended! We got through another move out. In my mind this is our worst tenant yet, because she never delivered on a single statement, but we’ve only lost $160.00 plus the November vacancy, at least.