All Forum Posts by: Caroline C.

I would not introduce the idea of breaking the lease. First of all, it is a gift, or concession to the tenant, which he does not deserve. If he thinks he has the upper hand he will become vicious. Instead, I would make sure the property is 100% compliant with code so there is nothing he can successfully report you for. Have the manager accompany a photographer of your choosing, preferably an investor/landlord who knows what matters and whom you'll owe a beer. Can't have too much documentation. 

Second, as you mentioned, he can and will use your offer to let him split as proof that you "just want to get rid of him." If it goes to court, he'll write that on the court documents, and embellish it with your presumed motivation--something egregious. His story will be memorialized in the public record. Your public record. 

It's better to wait for him to ask to be released from the lease. If he really does want to move, he'll have no trouble concocting a justification for voiding the lease. If he does not want to move, he would reject your offer to break the lease and as a bonus, see your offer as a sign of weakness. You'd have put your interests at risk and encouraged him to think his boot is on your neck for no reason.

I would make a written effort to manage his expectations. Put in writing the definitions, with examples, of repair, maintenance, and improvement. Let him know what a landlord is responsible for and what a tenant is responsible for. This link goes to the maintenance standards for Ontario's residential tenancy act of 2006. 

https://www.ontario.ca/laws/regulation/060517

It might be all you need, as is, or you might want to put it in your own words. Your manager should send your masterpiece to the tenant, with a brief cover letter, by registered mail. 

Meanwhile, you should carefully study this chilling document, "Offences Under the Residential Tenancies Act, 2006" and make sure you don't commit any. 

http://www.mah.gov.on.ca/Page1175.aspx

PS It's not in Culver City and neither am I, at this point.

I have two adjacent SFR rental properties with lots that combine to 40,000 sf. I'll sell it sometime in the next five to ten years because I will need the money to buy my siblings out of our parents' home when the time comes. Meanwhile, I'm trying to scare up some cash without giving up income property or borrowing.

My new neighbor is a very successful spec home builder who typically acquires little old lady houses on huge lots in good areas, razes the land and then builds a PUD with 4 to 6 houses or one very large, expensive house. He cleans up, time again because he is the builder as well as the investor, with a reliable crew, all kinds of contacts and relationships with the city, and experience from when he wore short pants onwards. (His father got him started, in other words, and his recently deceased father is a local legend.) He swiftly razed his new 40,000 acquisition and erected a massive house, installed a giant pool, and threw in a commodious guesthouse that is, for real, bigger than the houses on either side of him. Then, to my surprise, he and his family moved in.

I think I can leverage the desire he much have to pick up my lots if they ever become available. I don't want to sell him an option to buy because I don't want to be obligated to sell, in case my situation changes, much less to sell in the future for a price that is determined in the present.

I would like to offer him a Right of First Refusal such that, if/when I decide to sell, I'd inform him ahead of all others. If he wanted to, he could write up an offer and we could negotiate until we either made a deal or decided that we couldn't. He gets a crack at it before anyone else, I'd retain the seller's right to accept or reject his offer(s), and I would not be obligated to sell at any particular time. I assume he could deal with my estate if I were to die without having sold it to him.

Is that something that is routinely done? If it isn't, does it seem do-able? 

How would I go about putting a value on such an agreement? A lot would depend on the strength of his desire to build up an 80,000 sf compound, obviously, and I could always ask him to make an offer instead of making him an offer first. But even so, I'd  want to know that I had squeezed every available dollar out of the deal .

Would the price be grounded in an estimate of what my properties are worth, or an estimate of what he'd make building a spec house? Might I learn find out what experienced ROFR-sellers do in a time-honored, yet recently updated, book called something like "Selling ROFRs on Real Estate Because You're Broke and You Can't Borrow Because of that Pesky Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, not to Mention Your Pathetic, Lazy-A%% Income"?

More crisply, what is a ROFR is worth to a nextdoor neighbor who'd love to have control of what's next to his fancy spread and who could build a $3,000,000+ house on the land, very efficiently,  with his eyes closed (and not have to drive to the job site)?

Ah--one last thing. In our city, there are not many lots of even 20,000 sf, much less 40,000. And my lots were once a single property, so can be re-joined as if they had never been separated, as long as the same party owns both of them.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

Thanks for some very good suggestions, especially about legal help. So far, I did report it to the police. Some dude who makes $247,000 a year brushed me off because I reported it a year after it happened. I then went to the County of Los Angeles Department of Business and Consumer Repairs. I talked to one of their employees about what had happened, and he decided to pass it along to the DA. I got a call from someone at the DA's office, call him back, and didn't hear back. So, it's my turn to call. If nothing else, it would be helpful in a civil suit if the defendant had been arrested for falsifying the document.

I should clarify about the forgery. It's unmistakeable, but I had it I verified by a qualified document examiner anyway. It was a cut/paste/photocopy job. Someone, either the real estate agent or perhaps the escrow officer, cut my signature out of a copy of a set of amended escrow instructions that I actually did sign, and taped or glued it onto another amended escrow instructions that I absolutely did not sign. They made three mistakes.

The first was that the document they took my signature from was somewhat enlarged relative to the one they stuck it to. The word "sellers" above the line I signed my name on was bigger than it was supposed to be, which was obvious when compared to the word "buyers" on the other side of the page. Second, they didn't place the cut-out signature correctly. The word "seller" and the line I wrote my signature on are not horizontal. And, of course, the signature on the original document and the signature they taped to a blank form are exactly the same.

Hi all, I have to raise enough money to fund a lawsuit. The lawsuit isn't a slam dunk, but if it works out, it would reverse a big loss caused by a forgery done by a real estate agent (who is no longer in real estate, thank goodness). Because it isn't a slam dunk, it's not the kind of thing a litigation lender would want to invest in, so I'm assuming I'm on my own. 

There are two properties I can consider parting with, and they're very different. I think they'd take about the same length of time to sell, so that's not a factor. 

One is a paid-for mobile home, nicely upgraded and maintained, on a big lot in a semi-rural area. My tenant pays the insurance and property tax and all the maintenance, so it's headache-free, but not very lucrative. My proceeds would be enough to meet my current needs. 

The other is a co-owned duplex in a slowly up-and-coming part of Los Angeles, the rare duplex mainly single-family dwellings. This one is also headache-free, because my co-owner handles all the expenses. I'd be giving up $240 more in steady monthly income, but I'd net about $40K more than I would with the mobile home. I might not need it for the lawsuit, but I could pay off a tiny loan on another property with it and eliminate a $400/month loan payment 6 years early. (Or, I might need it for the lawsuit.) 

The $40,000 difference in proceeds is working pretty hard for me in L.A., given that the property sends me $249 more per month than the semi-rural mobile home does. I'm inclined to sell the mobile home because of that. 

On the touchy-feely level, I like the duplex and the neighborhood, whereas I wouldn't be sorry if I never saw the mobile and the town it's in again. If I had to move into one of them, I'd choose the duplex in a heartbeat. (Almost anyone would.)

Is there anything else to consider?