All Forum Posts by: Amador Abreu

Dear Community

My current tenants have 1 year lease which expires now May 31st.
They were not paying so I have referred then to a King County rental assistance program, which they successfully qualified.
I was able to get the back due rent and 3 more months of rent at the end of January. This made them good for Feb, Mar and Apr 2022.
In order to participate in the program, I had to agree not to evict them for 6 months after funds were deposited in my account. This means that legally I cannot evict them until end of July 2022, if necessary.

They approached me asking for a month-to-month lease renewal, which I had declined, as I have intentions of helping a niece that is moving to my area and I will rent the house to her.
By knowing that, they decided to use the last month's, already paid rent, for May.
Mid May I asked for a moving schedule (most of my communication is via text message), but there were unresponsive.
In an attempt to minimize problems, I have offered them to extend the lease by 2 more months which would take me to the end of my mandatory eviction free period. The conditions were that they would pay May and June. The tenant told me that moving was expensive and he did not find anything, so they were not moving and took on my offer.

However, he is being unresponsive regarding signing the lease extension and about paying May's (already late) rent.

I would love to hear from you on some recommendations. I am thinking on offering (via email) that he uses the last month (already paid upfront) for May, but that he pays June and July.
I am extremely worried he will not pay and will just sit in my house.

I am also worried he is smoking inside, which I warned him about quite a few times not to do, and potentially destroying my property with careless occupancy. They house was in perfect conditions when I rented it out to him.

Do I need to do any kind of written warning or beef up my lease extension form? I am already including in the lease extension form that we will not be renewing the lease and that the house must be vacated by Jul 30th 11:59pm. Is this ok even if July ends on 31st?
He has been an absolute nightmare. Recently he asked for the lease again (I had already shared with him in the first day) , and I suspect he is working with someone on a loophole of some sort. I might be paranoid but he does not communicate, hasn't paid rent since end part of last year and gives me all signs of someone trying to take all the advantage he can get, so I need to protect myself.

Any words of direction will be appreciated.
Thank you!! You guys are my rock 

Dear beloved community 

I would like to reach out to see if any of you have gone through the same experience and I am looking for any kind of support on next steps.
I would love to see if any of you are in the Seattle area, which will be even more helpful.

I bought this property in a good location in an auction. The house had 2 additions. One extending the kitchen by 5 feet and another adding what we called a large shed 30" wide 12" deep attached to the daylight basement holding 2 bedrooms.

As the city says, when i bought the house i bought the issues with it.

While refinancing this year, I was rejected due to mismatch between the number of rooms in the city and in the actual house. 
Knowing to be a problem I would carry all around and I would not be able to sell in the future, I reached out to the city to normalize the situation. I was received with a lovely and gentle Code Violation and I am in a place now that I have never been before.

The process of making my house current requires drawings and qualified professionals to tell me what I need to do to bring the house to code. It is a stressful list of requirements that I feel I need a ton of help.

Here are few questions to you guys:

1) have you been in the place before? What did you do? How much was your cost?
2) I have been doing the drawings myself with Sketchup but I am not a structural engineer and I cannot say what is in code or not. Do you recommend I go to a bigger company that will have everything that is needed? or should I engage with a structural engineer than with the next professional required? I have found a big company in the seattle area and they are charging me $2500.00 just to tell me what I need to do. I have found a retired builder that would do the design project for $5,000. Then I will have to do the actual work. I am quite nervous  about the costs with this project so I m reaching out to people to see if they have been there and if they have something I could learn.

I appreciate all the support we give each other here and you guys are on my list for thanksgiving!! :-)

Thanks

Amador Abreu

You guys are really the best and thanks for reading my thread and guiding me through this. I am taking your advice very seriously and I would love to team up with someone with more experience. 
My property is in "king county" of Washington state and my lease was taken from a template from BP (for Washington state).

My previous tenants on this property were very nice and they put rent as top priority always. Clearly not the case for this new one. 

If I could be connected with some self managing landlord gurus here in WA it would be fantastic.

I am humbled by the support here. You guys are really a great community

Thanks

@Theresa Harris and All,
Just a quick update. He has communicated proposed a payment plan and failed to make the payment again.
I am planning on moving forward with the formal process. 
Do you have any template of a Quit Notice I could use?

Thanks @Michele Fischer.

Just a quick update, the tenant has read the letter and has reached out this afternoon, to my great relieve. He explained his phone broke.

We are working on a payment plan as he is currently waiting for disability benefit to kick in due to a work related injury.

I trust his honesty and "pray" he will come through the plan.
This has been a good lesson that I hope works out positively at the end.

Thanks a lot for this great support. You guys are the best.

Thanks a lot Scott! Yeah I knew this time would come and I would belong to the club :-). I've reached out to a friend who is a property manager and he gave us some hints. Even though we are approaching the situation with calm, I confess that I am worried the tenant will make some really hard damage to the property in retaliation of a possible eviction process.

What do you mean by filing the "Notice to Quit"? Do I file at the court or county? I was going to simply send him the letter. I am glad you have mentioned that.

Thanks a lot!

Dear community

After almost 6 years being a landlord I am facing for the first time a tenant that is not paying the rent and not responding to phone call, text message and even a letter placed at his door.

I have written a letter saying I understand hardship can happen and that there are currently government programs to help people in this situation, I have also provided links to the programs. Also I provided a form for a request for a payment plan.

I have given them until the end of day today to reply, but I am afraid this won't happen.

In face of not having any type of communication from the tenant's side, I am leaning on sending a Notice to Quit tomorrow and then wait for the end of September to arrive so I can move on with the eviction process.

I wonder if you could share a few thoughts if I am in the right path. Also, if you think I should hire a eviction company to help. I am very worried the tenant will purposely  destroy the property.

They are new tenants and 1 year lease started on beginning of June 2021.

He was great in credit score, landlord referrals, background check, ration to income, so I am very disappointed my screening process failed bad.

Thanks a lot!

Amador Abreu

Hi BP friends
(I am new to BP and this is my first post)

I ran a search on the "Security Deposit" and I saw a lot of great replies for several questions related to it.
But it was too much for me to comb through and find what I am looking for.

I have been renting houses for 5 years and I always struggle in understanding clearly what should be coming out of the security deposit. I have a tenant that has been in the house for 4 years and another for 5 years. Duding this time I have replaced toilets, major appliances and a few other small things. I have taking good pictures of the move in phase but I am sure the house will be very degraded compared to the initial state.

What do you guys use as standard deduction of the security deposit? Do you charge for carpet damages, paint damages, cleanliness? 

Thank you very much in advance

Amador Abreu