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Tenants and Instincts |
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By Dr. Danielle Babb
Sometimes we get a gut instinct about our tenants - something just doesn't feel right. Your assistant goes to one of your houses a tenant just left. What do you find? Feces, walls punched in, beer bottle caps pushed into the ceiling, carpeting more disgusting than airplane bathrooms, broken everything, stolen everything, garbage for days. You start to repair the home, and realize this is going to take weeks - and thousands of dollars. It's exhausting to think about. What do you do? Keep plugging away. Fire the property manager - immediately. Don't let them charge you the 'fine for breaking the contract'. Stand in their office until they give you lease copies, keys, and checks. Find out what your legal rights are (the LPA can help!) for recourse from the negligent property manager and what responsibility the tenant has. Do a lot of the work yourself and save some serious bucks. $7,000 later, you're at least a years' rent upside down in damages alone, but you're done. Sometimes we landlords face serious, expensive, unrelenting and depressing problems like this. Keep plugging away, do your best with the house, get it back in order and move on. That is about all we can do.
Dr. Danielle Babb is a nationally known real estate expert and TV personality. She is the author of 5 real estate books and is also a fellow LPA member.
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Your property manager says everything is okay - but other tenants tell you the property manager is unresponsive. Your realtor goes to one of the homes and says the house is "disgusting". She isn't quite telling you how bad it really is. Next, you get a letter from the county that there is too much trash in the front yard. You've had enough of the drama - so one day you decide that it's time to check out the houses yourself.
For 14 long days working on 2-3 hours sleep per day, you begin slowly rebuilding the home - getting rid of all the trash, ripping up the carpeting, bleaching the concrete, power washing *everything*, replacing appliances, fixtures, smoke detectors, door locks, doors, hinges, door handles, cleaning up feces, urine and everything else you can't imagine having to touch on a regular basis. Eventually you paint, lay carpet, even landscape the yard. 
The entire neighborhood reeks of bleach for nights on end - you work all night. The neighbors begin to pitch in as they are thankful the tenant is "finally gone". You find out from the police that they know your address by heart - and not because your house was the hub for the local neighborhood watch program. You know your house was used as the local place for "johns" and that 8 to 10 people regularly lived in the home, subletted by the tenant for $80 per month. Nothing seems shocking anymore. The property manager knows everything.
You have a beautiful home that is sellable, livable, and provides suitable proper living conditions. The neighbor across the street loves the house so much he ends up renting it - on a two year lease - with LPA forms nonetheless. You add the tenant to the bad tenant list on the LPA, and then continue working with your attorney.