All Forum Posts by: Celena Lathrop

If she's threatening to withhold rent and "make this worse", I can guarantee that even if you mediate this issue and come to a resolution, this will not be the last issue you hear from her. Since she is on a month-to-month lease, you are at an advantage. Inform her that if she doesn't pay, she needs to leave. First try to convince her to leave voluntarily. If that doesn't work, offer her cash for keys or work out a compromise to get her to vacate such as helping her find a new rental or paying for her personal property to be stored during her moving process. If she is still not satisfied, yes, you will have to evict. Serve her with a notice to pay rent or vacate so you have documentation of her noncompliance, and go from there. Personally, I would skip the process of trying to resolve this particular conflict because I don't believe it will fix the tenant problem overall.

Also, you can inform her that you will not perform any further maintenance requests until all late payment fees have been submitted. That might motivate her to comply.

Depending on the law in your area, if "Mary" is on a month-to-month lease, you can first simply tell her to vacate voluntarily. If she refuses, then I recommend offering cash for keys. As far as the stove, you had no written agreement from what I can tell, so if she's refusing to compromise with you on that front, you have a new $700 stove. However, if the lease agreement specifies the terms of late payments, you are entitled to claim those fees. For that circumstance, you can serve her with a notice to comply or vacate, which means she is legally responsible to comply within x amount of days before you can either offer her cash for keys or file eviction if necessary. I highly suggest serving her with this because it puts her failure to comply in writing for the court, and if you're lucky, it might scare her into paying before you even need to take it to an eviction.

My fiance and I are starting the process of establishing a partnership in Real Estate. He already owns two rental properties, which I co-manage with him. Within a couple of months, we intend to purchase our first investment property as partners. That said, we are in need of an experienced Real Estate Attorney to draw up a contract that will protect our assets and provide us with exit strategies in the event that our partnership terminates or we disagree on when to sell, etc. We would appreciate if anyone could provide any contacts for RE attorneys in Austin, TX. Any advice, feedback, etc. would also be appreciated!