All Forum Posts by: Ben Elliott

Quick update on my situation - I sent a letter to the hubby in jail offering him the option sign the tenant-to-landlord early release as well as giving the 28 day notice landlord-to-tenant, and luckily he signed the early release.  So I have control of my apartment and am working on turning it over.

Downside is that the previous owner was not very good at keep up their property, and there's enough tenant damage that the security deposit is only going to cover about 1/3 of the repair costs.  BUT, I have the apartment back and am moving forward.

Thanks to everyone for the input!

@ everyone - thanks for the comments & advice.  I think with the lease and local laws I can find a easily justifiable way to pin this to both their backs, but I'll trade my right to leverage terms for a clean break and ability to move on.  I just want to protect my rights along the way while not opening up my own liability.

@Chinmay J., Feb rent was paid.  And I'm not sure if this guy has income, seems that the couple times I've been there it was midday and he was playing online computer games.  Would be nice to dispatch the guy and move on.

I think I'll head over to the local Bars Hotel and see if/how I can have a chat with the Mr., make him the offer of solving his lease obligation problem so he's not stuck with this liability when he turns in the jumpsuit.  If he doesn't want to sign early cancellation, I'll hand over my 30 day termination notice.

Otherwise I'll get in touch with his lawyer and do the same.

Bad timing thing is that I have a potential lead on someone else interested in a shorter term lease that might be perfect for that unit, which would at least keep the cash flowing on that address while I work on the rehab of the other unit in that house for my BRRRR strategy here.

However this plays out, as long as he doesn't manage to tie the thing up and get in the unit after he gets out only to destroy it, it's a great learning experience.  Vacancy won't sink me financially, so now's a good time to have the lesson.

Cross some fingers for me....

Hello everyone!  Looking for advice from someone with landlording experience in Wisconsin...

I FINALLY got my 1st 2 duplexes, each were 1/2 occupied with long term tenants.  As my luck would have it, a month after closing on one of them, the husband & wife had an "event" that landed the Mr. in jail.  She let me know, said she's moving out, and has no real idea what's going to happen to her husband.  At least I got a couple months rent out of it (she/they were even good about paying early).

They've kept up the place decently for a "C" property, and I don't want to be a stickler on lease terms and end up getting caught up in whatever they have going on.  She needs to get out and away, he's locked up.  She has moved most of everything out already, started canceling utilities and such.

My questions are - Can she break the lease on behalf of both of them?  Is he somehow protected from losing the place while he's in in jail?  Do I need both of them to say they want to terminate the lease?  Can I give them/him notice and take control of it again since it's empty and they won't be paying?  It's a month-to-month lease.

Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

There's a rope pushing exercise (from my experience anyway)...

I think what you really need to be mindful of is what is really behind the lack of support and how deep that runs.  I was married, and when we were young, well before having kids, being married, or even owning our own place, even my tabling of the idea was enough to throw her into fits.  I proceeded to marry her anyway, we bought our own house, had kids, the underlying divergence of ideas never went away.  Eventually her negativity ate away at the marriage, fear of money (and lack thereof) CONSTANTLY caused problems, and it became more and more clear that in her world there was no place for my big ideas.

Marriage is a partnership. A pretty serious one, one that you don't get to go home to get away from. Listen to a few of Brandon & Josh's podcasts, EVERY time they or their guests talk about partnerships their #1 caveat is to make damn sure you and your partner are on the same page wanting the same things and pulling in the same direction striving for the same goals. At least if a REI partnership goes sideways only one part of your life takes a hit.

You'll have to spend a lot of effort understanding what's really behind the lack of support.  Understand her mentality in broad terms to be able to tell if she's able to come around (objectivity is crucial here).  Then decide IF there's a way to talk through it, ration through it, tiptoe into it, whatever.  That's a big if.  You may have to settle for her accepting you doing what you want to do, even though she won't support it.  That may be as good as it gets.  But if that would also be your opportunity to get into or keep going on this.  If it's just not there, you probably already know it.  But if she's not actively preventing you from doing it, that's some support of you all the same.

You "just" have to have the ability to objectively assess what's really what then devise and implement a plan to achieve what you're after, if there is such a plan possible.  And if there's not....

Well, I'm not married anymore (if that wasn't apparent already).  And 3 years after crawling out of the ashes of my divorce, having given literally everything we had to her (including all cash savings) so I could walk out "whole" and not pay to her any more of my future $$ than I had to, here I am trying to get started.  My first convo's with her about this were in 2004.  All that lost time...

Good luck!