Re: Fire & Evacuation return - Landlord Forum thread 358823

Re: Fire & Evacuation return by Garry on December 11, 2018 @23:05

I went thru something similar to this 10 years ago, only it was floods instead of fires. Instead of trying to fight the tenant, you should return everything the T wants, except the 1 weeks worth of rent (Nov. 1-7) because the T was still living there under normal conditions. Call the T up, and tell them you will hand-deliver it to them, at the property, on whatever day BOTH of you can meet there at the same time. BUT----- they MUST have ALL there possessions OUT of the property when you meet, AND they need to give you the keys back. No property out and no keys back, means NO return of any money till that happens. If need be, start formal eviction procedures for nonpayment of rent, for either December, or January, to force their hand.

Once you have them out, change the locks, clean and fix up the place , and get it ready for new renters again. And don't worry about finding new renters. They will be coming from "out of the woodwork" to rent your place. In fact, you could probably get 25% more rent now, over what your old Ts were paying. That's because with thousands of homes burned to the ground in your area, there will be a HUGE demand for ANY rental within 50 miles of where people were originally living before the fires took THEIR homes. And remember, in the next 5 years, there will be thousands of people coming from all over the country, to REBUILD all those homes. And they have to stay SOMEWHERE relatively close (50 miles/1 hours drive) of where all the building will be going on. This is the laws of supply and demand TOTALLY working in your favor.

By the way, sorry to here that you lost a duplex in those fires. Hopefully it was insured. I lost 5 housed in a MASSIVE flood in my city in 2008. All of them were insured for fires or tornadoes, but only 1 had flood insurance on it. Between the 4 other properties, I lost about $100,000 in equity, and about another $50,000 actual cash, as I sold them to other investors at vert cheap prices, just to get rid of the. Good luck on what you decide to do next.

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Re: Fire & Evacuation return by Rebecka on December 12, 2018 @16:26	[ Reply ]

Thank you Gary, That makes a lot of sense.