All Forum Posts by: Gunnar F.

@Russell Brazil many thanks for your thoughtful response. I am now undertaking a proactive inspection process using a highly reputable company with no remediation ties. I realize now that I am dealing with an eggshell plaintiff as a tenant. She is plagued with numerous health issues, sadly. 

Basically, this mold inspection dance amounts to an exercise in procuring litigation insurance. And I am not missing a step. I am being extremely proactive and shelling out funds necessary to comply with best-practice procedures in the face of a tenant concern in this area. 

Thanks, Robert. The tenant denies the dog barks except on rare occasions, never at night or early morning, and asserts the neighbor is persecuting her. Also, she describes herself as a quiet person and describes the loud party allegations as preposterous. 

@Steven Anderson the form is ambiguous and refers to "keeping" a pet on the property, whatever that means.

This fuzziness may aim at preventing landlords from claiming a material breach based on an unregistered companion animal temporarily occupying the property for a reasonable period. Interesting that the form uses a defined term "Pet" apparently to reference registered animals. But then it universally fails to use the capitalized defined term "Pet" in setting forth the rules. 

The reliance on the undefined term "pet" arguably operates to expand liability to the tenant for any animal brought on the property by or with the permission of the tenant for any period of time. This would tend to track invitee law in most jurisdictions, I am guessing.

Yes I am, @Steven Anderson. Not sure if that means I could claim that no unregistered animal is allowed on the property for any length of time. I will check the language as an academic matter. In reality, I do not wish to evict her given that is fraught with peril. I want her to remain a tenant without creating an arguable nuisance.

Thanks, @Account Closed. 

The nuisance allegation is a question of fact. I live abroad. I cannot purport to gauge the decibel level of frequency of the alleged barking/partying. I am somewhat inclined to believe the neighbor but the tenant flatly denies any issue and suggests that the neighbor is unreasonable and exaggerates the issue. (The neighbor and the tenant are both hostile to me as well as to each other.) I am not a judge, a police officer, or a dog-catcher. If I act like any of those based on the facts in this chain I risk incurring liability well beyond the substantial lost rent at jeopardy. Incidentally, I doubt many landlords would remain in the business were they burdened by the level of responsibility for tenant behavior you suggest to be appropriate. Usually this is self-regulating: we screen tenants to identify financially responsible persons and this group of people tend to behave otherwise responsibly. 

This is an interesting case tactically...

The house is scheduled to be sold in six months and demolished thereafter on an uncertain time frame, perhaps almost immediately or maybe six months later (during which I have the right to benefit from any ongoing rental proceeds). So by the time I get the tenant out there would be four months left in the lease term. Plus I would need a month to conduct make-ready activities. Then I have to find someone willing to rent for two months who would be willing to vacate on short notice upon receiving notice that the house is to be demolished. 

I would certainly like to earn a star in heaven by marching in and evicting my tenant at a manageable cost. But I am pretty sure she would sue me. 

Thanks much, @Jim C.. I hear you. The reality is I live over 9,000 miles away.

Appreciate that, @Dustin Bowen. It is a terrible situation for the neighbor if you take him at his word. 

Thanks, @Dustin Bowen. Yes, I also sympathize, and as you can see from my penultimate contribution in this thread I am not well-situated to fix this.

Thanks, Gail. The Whippet is quiet as a church mouse in this rare case. 

I appreciate all of the various opinions. 

@Robert Nason intuits that "It doesn't seem to bother you at all that your tenant has loud parties and a constantly barking dog." I did not include the complete history of the matter but as I explain in the chain above I have reached out to the tenant to seek her cooperation in communicating with the neighbor about his allegations. The issue I am exploring is not my feelings about alleged bad behavior but my legitimate responsibility. As @John D. notes, there are competing rights at hand. 

Another wrinkle is that I reside faaaar abroad so I am not in a position to be an onsite arbiter of this matter even if certain members of the forum would conclude that I am responsible to solve the problems between my tenant and her neighbors despite the existence of specific City authorities who handle these problems professionally, safely and impartially, for a living.

@Christina Yoon the neighbor raised the matter to my attention a couple of months back. I communicated urgently to my tenant and she promised to handle the issue personally. My neighbor then went quiet for two months then out of nowhere has now threatened to sue me (probably a toothless threat but I do take it and the underlying issue seriously). So the neighbor had provided insufficient notice of the ongoing nature of the issue to me -- plus has failed to take reasonable self-help measures. My neighbor has specifically mentioned that he does not want to call the Police in regard to the parties because he doesn't want to be "uncool." Um... okay.

As to the lease... the tenant listed an essentially barkless Whippet on the lease and paid a deposit. The barking dog, she asserts, is a visiting animal belonging to her boyfriend. Her position is that it does not bark much and thus cannot be said to represent a nuisance. So she disputes that this animal needs to be registered on the lease any more than a person who visits for a short stint. My neighbor obviously disagrees and disputes all of those facts. 

If I seek to evict my tenant she would resist. If I could actually manage to evict her the my reward
-- apart from putting a big smile on my neighbor's face -- would be losing at least 40K in rent (which I could not replace as the house will likely be sold at or near the end of the lease term). The tenant might also entertain legal action of her own for moving expenses and other costs if I push her in a direction not to her liking. She is wealthy and has a lawyer write letters to me whenever she wants something rectified.

As to the questions about how my neighbor knows about the lease terms... We were once friendly. So I disclosed to him that she had a Whippet registered when this first came up. He deduced that the other dog was not supposed to reside there. But this is surpassingly irrelevant as I have no duty to anyone but myself to enforce the terms of my lease and I am free to amend those terms to make them more permissive at any moment.

Under these facts I don't think the case is susceptible of a neat solution.