All Forum Posts by: Jhansi B.

We own an agricultural property with a home for number of years, used as a vacation home. Last year one of our neighbors approached us saying his friends are looking for a place to stay and they can look after the property and pay $600 rent. We were going to move a trailer to the property that is where they would stay. Well for time being we decided they can move into the house and fast forward to 10 months, moving the trailer there never happened and they lived in the house for the same amount of rent.

They have not paid any rent until April after moving in end of november last year. It is all my bad property management and giving them chances over and over. Now we gave them three day notice to pay or quit. 

Here is the bad part, tenant let a friend of his move a trailer and set it up on our property with the excuse that his friend is helping him while he is dealing with some medical issues. well, sheriff;s won't do anything unless it is a court order. Is there anything we can do to remove his friemd from the property. We will be filing unlawful detainer for the tenant but we want this friend of his to get out of our property.

Thanks for all your kelp in advance. 

I have been thinking about selling our condo which has no mortgage as seller financing. The HOA has rental restrictions. My question is in case if the buyers stop making payments what is my cost and is it worth the hassle? With prices gone up the roof finding deals is much harder these days. I am looking at innovative ways to increase my cash flow.

Thanks

We are presented with an opportunity to purchase investment property(ies) with 300K. We are doing refinance cash out and the bank would like to see where the money goes and the only way they approve is when they transfer the money to another escrow. I have been looking at the cities where we buy and the market has become so hot with very limited inventory.

With all your expertise, I thought this might be the best place to do get ideas and I will do my own due diligence with numbers. I do not like to invest in war zones, I like good neighborhoods with good income tenants.

Thanks

Just settled a could have been litigation and I thought this will be a good thread to start about the lessons learned as a landlord. The lessons I have learned from this are:

1. Never rent to a person who filed for bankruptcy, they are looking for way out.
2. Any water leak what so ever if there is sheet rock that got wet, either replace it or make sure there is no damage to it.
3. Never let tenants get away with late payments. If the tenant makes it a habit to pay late, it is wise to let the tenant go.
4. Have an attorney on your side like you have a personal doctor. but make sure the attorney has your best interest not his/her best interest and looking at the most billable hours.
5. Review the lease with an attorney and make sure you add clauses that benefit you (mostly attorney cost in case of litigation)

Any others lessons from your vast experiences with tenants.

Thanks

I disagree with you Justin Manley. I would rather not win after going through the whole litigation, paying our attorney thousands of dollars and months of jury trial and this is where it was heading. This is the best outome of worst situation. I have learnt my lesson not to rent to bankruptcy tenants. This is the business decision I made whether to lose more money and let the tenant stay till the end of the term and cut my losses and get the problem tenant out. Like I said these are the personal choices we make in business and this is nothing to do with standing up for myself. That is exactly what I did, stand up for myself instead of getting emotional on what is right or wrong, made a wise decision from my point of view. Also the reason for update is I always thought about how the threads die without knowing what outcome is.

Tenant's previous rental was ok, but she did file bankruptcy 4 years ago and that was my biggest mistake to lease it to her. Tenant is very smooth talker though. Tenant said I would not regret my decision renting the place to her, right!

I definitely need to rewrite the lease with the help of an attorney. I use standard CAR forms and looks like that is not the best way to go. I like month to month lease and change into long term lease idea.

From the beginning my goal was to get her out. The minute she complained and was using words mold, retaliation, tenants association she is a professional tenant. The goal was to get her out with minimum damage. When I go to court the chances of winning are 50% however strong I think my case is. The attorney's promise of fix and she will pay doesn't mean anything. I didn't want to deal with her for another 7 months. It is a business decision to get her out and bear the expenses. The cost for me to get this tenant out is 10K plus, it would be double easily if I had gone to court. Paying lawyer $300/hr for litigation to go to court, jury trial is not an option for me and on top of financial stress there is emotional stress and time.

Jim Q. I guess we live in a state that is very tenant friendly and just have to hope that we don't come across those professional tenants too often.

Thanks everyone for all your time and every case is different and we do make personal choices what we feel is best. If I had filed an eviction she would have filed response, and would have gone to court with all mold claims and that would have dragged for a while. Even though the claim is not concrete it's just the time and we never know for sure who prevails.

Wanted to post an update. The inspection report came back with no airborne mold but there is mold on the sheetrock in the garage and bedroom. I was ready to go through the remediation and the attorney wanted me to find alternate housing etc.. While the repairs are going on, when I was asking more questions like does she want to move temporarily or want to move out completely etc, she came right out and said the tenant wants to get compensated for moving out etc.. In the meantime I was looking for lawyers and with every interview I wasn't sure if they had best interest of the client. Finally I found an attorney is competent and with mold cases etc. She got to work right away to resolve and we both agreed that going to mediation court costs us lot more money and time than settling this case and getting the tenant out. We agreed to compensating the tenant for move out expenses and letting go 1.5 months rent. We are going to sign confidentiality release document and that will relieve the landlord from liability now I have an attorney who looks at the best interest of the client and I hope I never have to deal with this kind of tenant again. Tenant works in a job where she deals with mold and I think she has plan from day 1 after the leak to do this. My goal is fix the house after she moves out and rent it out.

Thank you Jim Q. This is exactly what I was trying to say. I didn't want to go to court without fixing the issues at hand that way judge will look at the effort I made to fix the problem. The tenant already used the retaliatory word when I asked her about extra pet. I am waiting for report to come back from licensed company and depending on what that says I will use same company for remediation. While doing the repair I will ask the tenant to vacate the property is she would like and once that is fixed I will ask her to pay the rent. I was actually thinking that I will have her sign a document that says she believes the work is done and the mold is remediated.basically for the document to say she is staying there at her own will and she can move out without breaking the lease.

The inspector didn't think there was mold in bedroom, might be in the garage. I am being over cautious too, I don't really mind losing couple of months rent if I have to but I really don't want to drag this into court.

Thank you so much for detailed reply. When everybody is saying I should take her to court and evict her, I know this will not be the simple case. She will use every trick in the book. When the judge asks I would lime to show the proof that the problem is fixed, if I don't right there I lose the case.

Roof leak and sheet rock happened after she moved in. We are in the process of fixing it, looking for a roofer to fix the leak, rainy season passed so was relaxed a bit. The house has been vacant for more than a year before we purchased it. We replaced everything pretty much, new floors, new appliances etc..

I don't see a good way to evict this tenant unless I want to drag myself to the mud.. I would like to evict her and get a new tenant and move on. Once I fix these issues let's see how she performs.. Like I said when her lease expires she is not staying there period. I want my house back..