All Forum Posts by: Kieran Mazzola

Hi all.  Update time and I just wanted to post the latest on the situation.  It stinks.  When they wanted to terminate on the SCRA, we found out that the wife has no employment history and no verifiable income other than the child support.   We did not terminate the lease, and both remained on it.   

  Here's where it continues to go downhill faster.  He moved in early May on new orders that took him to Florida but she is still in the house with the kids and all their furniture, etc.  Two weeks ago she contacted us to tell a story about how she is stuck in the house and can't move because he used up their entire move entitlement and she can't afford a move.  She is working with the Navy to get move set up through a non-standard program.  She keeps insisting that she's just going to pay rent for July and would like to stay.  The lease ends 30 June.  

  We already have tenants set up for 1 Aug, and obviously need time to turn the place over.  They've been in for two years, and it needs some work.  Through all the communication with her and her Navy assigned advocate, we have no faith that she is going to move until the Navy sets up this special move and could care less  when that is.  

  She has a very entitled attitude about the whole thing, and I've got this sinking feeling that I'm going to have to tell the new tenants that there is a good chance the house won't be ready for them, and I'm probably going to have to evict her because there is no way the move is going to be set up in 2 weeks, and I highly doubt it will even be done in July.  

Thanks for listening, I figured that I would write this to continue to record the story through whatever conclusion it takes.  

Just wanted to update this discussion since it remains interesting.  Really nothing happened with the original request to remove him from the lease.  She didn't pursue the conversation further and today I got an update from the ex-husband. It sounds like the divorce is final now, and he's moving out of state.  He's military which adds an interesting twist because he has permanent change of station orders out of CA in May. 

  He wants me to modify the current lease to remove him from it as of May 1.  That's apparently his last day at his duty station here in CA.  The current lease is up 30 June anyway, and from the earlier conversation I was going to have her apply for the lease on her own. 

  Since he has PCS orders, he can break the lease under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act , though I'm pretty sure that it's still a 30 day timeline that's required.  Regardless, it lets them break the lease but it doesn't let them change the lease.  

  So I'm thinking that she needs to apply and be approved and sign a new lease prior to the date that he wants to terminate the current lease.    Assuming that she has the verifiable income then this is easy, if she doesn't, I'm pretty sure she's going to be really upset.  

  They didn't share any details on the divorce settlement and if there were any provisions pertaining to the lease, so I don't know if there are any details on that front that matter.  

  Thoughts and opinions are welcome, but I mostly wanted to get this out there to share the crazy confluence of special circumstances

 @Colleen Cimo:  I can't stress enough what Jay says here.  Get your own people to look at the property.  My situation is very similar to yours except I let myself get further into the sandwich.  I was told last Aug the rehab was done, I let many months elapse where I kept asking OP for pictures but never got any.  I finally hired someone in Feb to go in and take a HD video of the place and found that it was mostly rehabbed, with the notable exception of one unit not having electricity.  Rehab complete?  On the particular day in Feb there also happened to be a large pile of rehab trash on the front lawn, which might explain the series of violations from the city, one of which I got a summons for 3 weeks ago.  You have to get out in front of these companies and verify everything they tell you.  

@Tyler Jahnke.  Bad news first, assuming that we still get to hear the good...

Thanks @Todd Burton. Quick question, just to make sure. The document linked has the spelling Oceanpoint, without the "e" at the end. The Oceanpointe that I've been dealing with as a result of MI is spelled with the "e." Are we sure that they are the same? Or are they using two different LLCs spelled slightly differently for the same purpose?   I'm not an Oceanpoint(e) defender by any means, the one I've been dealing with has been terrible and I've been seriously thinking about switching PMs even before this.  Looks like the time to jump ship was about  month ago!!

Thanks everyone for your feedback.  After your advice and some other reading and consulting, i'm going to go the route of not changing the lease.  I'm sure that she'll be less than happy, but I think I'm best served at this point by sticking with the original contract.  I don't mean that to sound cold, but for me this needs to be a business decision, not a situation where I should expose myself to extra risk to be sympathetic.  

  Some other ideas that I read that reinforce your comments are, that they are GETTING a divorce, they don't HAVE a divorce, so right now their problem is not my problem.  When their divorce becomes final, then I'll flex to support whatever the court determines, if that requires me to remove him from the lease, etc.  

  In the meantime, with her potential issues making rent, it definitely seems best to keep him on the lease.  

Thanks again, and I'll update this as things progress.  

  Hi all.  I'm looking for thoughts and advice on a situation.  My tenants in California have filed for divorce.  The original plan that they asked for was to end their lease early, about 6 months.  He moved out to an apartment after she filed for the divorce and she wanted to find something with cheaper rent in the same town to keep the children in the same schools.  I had no real problem with her leaving early, especially if she though she would have a hard time making the rent.   The rental market in the area is good, and new tenants shouldn't have been hard to find.  

  Today we contacted her to start arranging good times for some prospective new tenants to see the house.  Her reply was that she met with her lawyer today and she wanted to keep the current lease and was going to stay in the house because moving the children mid-year was not a good idea.  

  So having her stay means that I don't have to turn over tenants until the original lease end - Great ...maybe.

Her original thought that she need a cheaper rental was, in my opinion, changed by meeting with her lawyer.  I figure that the lawyer is going to go after the husband to make sure that the wife and children can stay in the house.  There's probably not a ton of divorce lawyers in the forums, does this sound like something that might happen?

She wants to "change the lease" to remove his name from the lease.  Everything I've read about changing the terms of a lease has to do with raising the rent, or no longer allowing pets, etc. and hasn't really helped giving me a real sense of what to do on this situation.  If both the husband and wife agree to remove him from the lease then I figure it shouldn't be a big deal to just change the lease.  I should probably get it in writing from the husband that he is OK with changing the terms, right? 

  I'm still concerned about how she is paying for the rent when she originally had concerns about it.  I do plan to ask her in my follow up but I wanted to post here and get any thoughts before I got deep into the conversation with her.  That said, she/they have paid on time, every month for 18 months, and apparently he moved out several months ago, so there is must be some arrangement between them that is working currently.

 Thanks in advance for any ideas and your thoughts.  Isn't this fun?  

Just wanted to add my 2 cents to this conversation on Morris Invest and Ocean Pointe.  I am hoping that @Vera Herlihy is right that they are perhaps growing too fast and can't handle it.  I closed with them in mid-May, and am now at 16 weeks without a tenant... as far as I know. As stated several times earlier they are not terribly at communicating as several posts have already covered.  I want to add my experience to that list.  I am also concerned that my property renovation might be more along the lines of @Eric Rodriguez.  They sent me a series of pictures that honestly looked like nothing had been done. The person that sent me the email added the caveat that, some of the pictures were taken before the rehab was finished, but to be sure that everything would be ready for tenants.  That was about 6 weeks ago.  Still nothing.  We'll see what happens, but if anyone out there is on the fence, I'd recommend holding off on working with these companies.