Bad Tenant, New Beginnings

I feel like it is becoming a cliche with me starting my posts with "A lot has happened this month," but seriously, A LOT has happened this month. February is Black History Month, Valentine's Day, and I removed a tenant due to a delinquent rent payment and filled the unit with a great, new tenant! I read and heard about a lot of horror stories around inherited tenants trying to take advantage of their landlord, including the problems that follow. I did not think that I would have to deal with this situation as quickly as I did in my real estate career. That being said, I was able to fix the problem before the issue got out-of-hand, and I came out of the situation with a better and more qualified tenant.

The former tenant, who for the purpose of anonymity will be named "Jane Doe." Jane was an inherited tenant with my purchase of the building. I did not have the best first impression of her tenancy. Jane refused to be setup on automatic rent payments, and she had a problem paying the rent on time for two back-to-back months. Jane was also consistently hard to reach when I tried to contact her.

In one of our first discrepancies, Jane was five days late with the rent payment. I made several attempts to reach her, including calls, emails, texts and stops at the property. Jane continued to ignore my calls, texts, and she refused to offer an explanation as to the late rent payment. On day five of the late payment, I issued a notice for Jane to vacate the property. She finally offered up her commentary about the rent payment situation, which included an explanation about how she couldn't pay the rent for that month. Instead, she offered to pay me the rent, the 20% late fee and the next month's rent at the beginning of the following month. As much as I would love to believe that was true, I'm running a business. I also cannot believe someone who made no attempts to disclose this information to me until I threatened to terminate her lease. That by itself was enough of a red flag that she's the type of tenant that's going to have problems paying the rent every single month. I want to be a compassionate human being and give everyone the benefit of the doubt, so I offered to work with her if she could provide me proof of income or some type of verification that she could actually afford pay the rent. When I called her place of employment, her manager informed me that Jane walked off her job a month prior with no explanation. After learning this information, I informed Jane I will not be renewing her lease at the end of the month. By not paying her rent for the month of February, she effectively forfeited her security deposit. While the situation is not ideal, and I definitely would never wish this on anybody, I feel good about the way I handled the situation. I made a point to attempt to work with the person, and I gave her multiple opportunities to rectify the situation. I finally had to draw the line and say, "Look, this isn't working for me anymore," and agree to go separate ways. I completed my first termination of lease due to failure to pay rent on a month-to-month basis.

This is the first time as a landlord where I've had to separate myself from the tenant mindset, as I have always been a renter. It is difficult to separate emotions from business, but ultimately, I need to always protect and focus on Ransone Real Estate.