All Forum Posts by: Paul F.

Our tenants are purchasing a home and plan on leaving the property before the end of their lease term. They have been great tenants.

Our question: once they move out, do we have access to the property to prep for new tenants?

yes for Real!

Thanks for the advice. We finally got her to sign the Termination of Lease agreement after consulting with a lawyer on the wording. She agreed to meet us at the property for the Move out inspection. Its been a roller coaster ride! We will def change the locks. In moving forward, how do you screen for crazy? We did all the right things before choosing her as a tenant, then she literally turned on us! I like to learn from our mistakes, but don't see where we made any! We followed all the rules!  Praying we can find another tenant and quickly!

Another question though, how do we get the keys back from her? We have to give her a cashier’s check too. Meet somewhere neutral?

we offered for her to stay as long as she complied with the “not smoking on or in the premises” as stated in the lease! We told her we would do periodic inspections of the property to ensure it doesn’t smell like smoke. Her response is that she is contacting her lawyer and that we are discriminating against her for being a smoker. We specifically and previously said in an email that it doesn’t matter if she smokes, but that she only needs to comply with the terms of the lease. Bottom line is that we bent over backwards for her, we made our property sparkle and shine AND we did all the screenings and background checks, so it’s pretty discouraging that our first tenant is a nightmare. Makes us want to give up before we even started. We are talking to a lawyer tomorrow, but offered her a full refund for deposit and paid rent. UGH

The tenant wants to stay, and “make it work” but also just told us she smokes “only outside” (yeah right) So how do we break the lease if she wants to stay?
She did not tell us she is a smoker, and that alone is reason enough to break the lease! Btw she did not even move in yet. 

We are first time landlords and our tenant is moving in this week. We already did the walk through inspection and gave her the keys. However, we Just received a text from her that the "cat smell" is causing a severe reaction. We had All carpets professionally steam cleaned the day after we moved out. We did have a cat but moved him out over two weeks ago!  What should we do?! We thoroughly screened our tenant and everything was seemingly going smoothly. In her text she mentioned tiling the floors at her own expense. That seems weird and not normal to me! Help!  Another strange thing as that we spent over an hour in the house during the inspection and she made no mention of the allergic reaction then or when touring the house during the showings, when the cat was still living there. UGH