We've been thinking of renting our current home rather than selling in this down market while we rent in some of the places we're thinking of retiring to. Unfortunately, movies like "Pacific Heights" where a bad tenant who knows all the tricks of staying in a place without paying rent, haunt us.
Yesterday I saw a 'People's Court' episode where a deadbeat had managed to stay, rent-free, in a Section 8 rental for three years by using a loophole that says a tenant can't be evicted from Section 8 housing if there are code violations. Every time he was about to get evicted, he just broke something to forestall the eviction process, eventually plugging all the sinks with rags and flooding the place.
How can you drive a bad tenant out from a rental in such situations? How do you prevent them from completely trashing the place on their way out? I know that tenants should be checked out thoroughly beforehand, but even so, people can have no record of evil behavior but still turn evil. While I'd probably NOT rent to any Section 8 tenants, I could easily see someone losing their job or some other such tragedy and so decide they wanted to live in my house rent-free for as long as they could get away with it.
I'll entertain all solutions, even extra-legal ones (as long as I can implement them without getting caught!).
Credit checks cost a little money but can help eliminate bad apples. Actually talking to the previous landlord is important also. They may be reluctant to say anything bad about tenants but you mignt learn something. It is better to leave the place empty for a month or two rather than just grabbing money from the first person who comes along. Beware of people who talk too much or tell you lots of stuff that has nothing to do with your problem. They are often blowing smoke as a distraction.
Might help to talk to the sheriff, or whomever does evictions...may know some loopholes, history. Check the local codes for rentals. Get a good application that requires job and housing history and take a personal look at where they have lived. Gotta be careful of stuff that implies discrimination, as that can include family size or ages of kids. Lease sometimes can limit number of people who reside, as can some building codes. If you have a network of friends or church members, they might steer reliable applicants. Attorney advice? Advertised as being worthwhile, but I am a doubter :o) Just doing a google search on a name sometimes turns up news of arrests or suits.
For the reasons you fear, I had decided a few years ago against buying some rental property. From my experience, with other people's rental properties, you have two ends of the spectrum. You have low end sec 8 low lifes trashing your property, or you have high end legally savvy dirt bags living in the place rent free while you spend piles of money on lawyers trying to evict them. I think that in a lot of the more "liberal" states, the laws are designed to protect the offender and few to protect the evil, greedy landlord, so my best advice would be to find tenants via friends in the real estate business who are willing to "illegally" screen them for you.
Don't know about Section 8. Here, you go by the time written in the contract which can be as little as 3 days. You hand deliver and mail a Pay or Quit Notice and then you file on them. They have their day in court and that is it.
I'm a new landlord, but I have observed others. My thinking is not to serve the rock bottom of the market. Have a high enough rent to drive the bottom end away.
I'm also putting in these:
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Given the opportunity deadbeats will milk the system.
How do
My property manager decked one of my tenants who was drunk and got in his face. The tenant threatened to call the police and my guy said: Call them, we will both go to jail, but I will get out. That ended that!
I find being a landlord very entertaining, if you don't, don't do it!
Here is a question that you will probably not be able to answer:
What jurisdiction was that case you saw on People's Court from?
Different laws apply in different states -- People's Court takes cases from ALL over the place...
Now to address your specific concerns within the law:
Nothing REQUIRES you to accept Section 8 housing vouchers, if it concerns you so much don't accept that as a form of rental payment and then the situation you saw on that TV show won't apply to you...
You should have your home thoroughly inspected by the local AHJ for any violations prior to ever even inviting potential tenants over to view the place...
Address any deficiencies listed on the inspector's report... Then have a re-inspection done where you are given a clean bill of health which you would keep on file in the event of any future disputes... (it isn't a bad idea to have the rental unit reinspected by the AHJ between every new tenancy...)
Then you will document EVERYTHING about the house by taking pictures with a camera that uses film... Make sure that the camera prints the date in the exposure... These pictures will be used if there is a dispute between you and your first tenant about the condition of things at a later date... (You will need to do this before every new tenancy and be sure to keep the pictures and negatives in case you need to use them later on in a dispute...)
Periodic inspections during the tenancy will alert you to damages being done by the tenant which can either be addressed at once if a code compliance issue, or you could confront the tenant at the end of one lease year about the damages... At any rate, never extend a lease from one year to the next without bringing in an independent inspection firm to go through a house you are renting and getting a report from them on the condition of the home... Effect any repairs that are necessities -- again have it reinspected so that you have a piece of paper created by a 3rd party which states your home is in good condition...
Now damages done to your property by people who checked out through your background and credit check process can be addressed by having a thoroughly and well thought out lease contract which is reviewed by a licensed lawyer in your state prior to ever putting a tenant's name on it... Then it is a very good idea to have the lease signed in the presence of a notary public rather than having "witnesses" sign... A notary records the identification information in their log book of every person whose signature they officiate -- that is a non-interested 3rd party record which could be subpoenaed in the event of a later dispute...
The terms of your lease should describe the premises being rented, the amenities offered, the responsibilities of the tenants and any rules they must follow (this should include complying with the minimum cleanliness standards that your local health department requires as well as not storing extra disabled cars on your property, etc...) and the process which must be followed by the tenant to report some sort of malfunction or failure of some aspect of the rental unit which would impact its habitability...
You must learn and follow the eviction procedures for your jurisdiction... Having the lawyer who consults on the legality and specific verbiage of your lease contract can instruct you on that process... It begins with an official demand letter which is served upon your tenant by a constable who will certify that it was delivered and return a sworn statement to that effect stating that the tenant is x-number of days delinquent in payment of rent... It is important to initiate this action no later than 15 days after non-payment of rent and to keep sending new notices for every month the tenant is in non-payment since after you have your tenant served with a "notice to quit" (the precursor to an eviction process) it can take three to six months depending on how busy your local housing courts are to file an eviction proceeding against your tenant and obtain a judgment against them which can be enforced by the constable/sheriff who can physically remove the tenant and the tenant's possessions from your property after the court grants an eviction...
All of this sort of stuff costs money, but you need to protect yourself and your property... Cases in civil court are won or lost by evidence (documentation) and the better your evidence (from disinterested 3rd parties) the more persuasive it can be... DO NOT EVER RELY on your word against the tenants -- that hardly ever works out in totality for one side or the other...
If you feel you do not possess the skills to be a landlord, find a property management company who will act in your place on this issue and grant them a power of attorney to act on your behalf (especially if you are going to be moving far enough away so that you can not report to the property in a period of a few hours to approve expensive emergency repairs and then inspect them as they are being completed or just after they were completed) as many things must be done and that 3rd party (property manager) needs to be able to enter into contracts and order services on your behalf in order to properly operate your rental unit...
It all boils down to CYA and knowing what your legal responsibilities are as a landlord under the law in your area... If you are not sure as to either of those things don't rent any property until you have learned what you need to do... Otherwise it will bite you on your ass later on HARD and you could be out a lot of money or end up with a useless damaged rental unit which requires very expensive repairs in order to be in a rentable condition...
There's not really a hell of a lot you can do, and it depends on the locality, so you may be better or worse.
If a person even has one piece of mail addressed to them at an address, they have proof of legal tenancy even if they are not on the lease. It then becomes a legal matter, and that process is lengthy and costly. I own vacation rentals, and the laws are a little better, but not too much. What I did with one was to pull the AC breaker, claiming it was inoperative and that I didn't have the money to pay to have it fixed, and they left without trashing the place. We get $1,000 deposit, so have a little leverage. A house has to be habitable, and that is the responsibility of the owner, but who knows how long repairs take. It is purely a civil matter, so the police won't do anything. And if they take you to court because there isn't any water or heat, you can counter that they aren't paying rent so you have the money to fix it. And if they aren't paying rent, what are you going to lose? If the house is nice, in a nice neighborhood, or close to business or conventions or other attractions, you may want to consider it as a vacation rental. You get a month's mortgage or more for a week's stay. Contact me if you need further information.
On Tue, 1 Feb 2011 09:14:55 -0500, "Robert Green" wrote Re Bad Tenants:
In liberal cities/states like San Francisco, NYC, Chicago you can't prevent them from trashing the place and living rent free. The answer is as simple as that. Unless you have a lot of rental units so that your "good" units can carry the "bad" ones for a couple of years, you take a bad hit. I've seen it several times.
Bottom line: stay were you are until you can sell the house.
We had short-term renters in our beach-area neighborhood in Florida...great for college kids to gang up and drink for a week. It was violation of local code, but was not enforced. Great way to piss off the neighbors.
What kind of area is it, what are the people like. I rent apartments everyday, your area determines what you get. But I demand married couples, both work, no smoking and refrences. Houses are hard to rent because of cost.
Understood, but knowing a place welcomes section 8 drives away other potential tenants. Most landlords don't TRY to get section 8 tenants (unless they haven't been burned yet), but if the complex or houses are starting to show their age, section 8 soon becomes their bread and butter.
Standard disclaimer- not all section 8 tenants are bad. Some are merely going through a rough patch, and don't throw wild parties, shack up with drug dealers, and trash the place. An actual married couple is usually pretty safe, if both have jobs.
I don't do section 8. If they don't pay their rent it takes 23 days to get them out. If they are paying and I don't want them there anymore it takes
33 days to get them out.
Here you simply serve them with a notice to pay or vacate or a notice to vacate. The judge does the rest. There are no valid reasons for not paying your rent. The judge doesn't even listen to the excuses.
That's a good idea, although I wonder in this day and age if asking the sheriff any questions doesn't get you into some damn terrorist database! We are in a college town and have very strict limits on the number of unrelated family members living together as well as many other things. One very bad thing is that code violations are charged to the property and I can get stuck with some pretty hefty fees if I don't get timely notices.
I've started talking to a neighbor who's rented out her house on occasion and she's been burned repeatedly by renters who know how to use the strict rules as a club. Her advice is very much like yours - learn all the shall nots, will nots and can nots and make sure you account for them in the lease.
The ways she got burned pretty much parallel all of the tricks I've seen pulled on the various TV court (arbitration, really) shows. Today there was another one. A Section 8 renter claimed that broken windows, punched doors and dirty carpets were "like that" when she got the place. That state (NJ, IIRC) had strict time and format limits (and fines) for landlords who withheld damage deposits. Fortunately, although neither side had meaningful photos, the landlord had a Section 8 property pre-rental inspection report that found those items to be new (she had receipts for new carpeting) so the judge threw the deadbeat tenant out.
Well, forewarned is forearmed. Lots of research to do. Maybe even spend a day at the courthouse when they are hearing evictions. That could scare me straight into leaving the house vacant while we tour the retirement areas of the country. We really want to be in a natural disaster free zone, having had a lifetime's share of hurricanes, floods and most recently, tornadoes and earthquakes. At some point, rebuilding your life from scratch loses its novelty value. )-" With all these drastic changes in the weather, it's hard to say where the best places to live are anymore.
You raise a good point. On the daily court shows, there seems to be exactly the two ends of the spectrum you describe. There's also a third class - the honest beef about what wear and tear is worth. I've yet to see a landlord and tenant agree on that. The worst ones are those that know they can do a hell of a lot of damage that they can never be held accountable for. I want to try hard to eliminate them from the candidate pool and failing that, have some sort of way to feed 100,000 bees into the heating system by remote control and force them out! From what I see, it's pretty painful to have to pay the mortgage for a bunch of deadbeats who are destroying the property while they game the system. Leads a lot of landlords to engage in illegal self-help. There has to be some sort of legal "self-help" that works.
What if the place becomes condemned and the local government then is in the role of forcing them out? It just seems so bizarre that so many people seem to be able to get away with freeloading. Apparently a foreclosure notice of any kind seems to be a "rent no longer required" notice to some tenants, even if it was placed there in error.
Yes, that's the point - deny them the opportunity.
I was thinking of something remote controlled, like a kill switch for the furnace or something similar. Something that would make staying in the home, not paying rent unpalatable. Would it make sense to keep the utilities in our name and pass them through so that we could cut them off, or does cutting off a deadbeat's electricity boomerang back on the landlord?
It's not really what I would call entertainment but I guess it's at least interesting. It's not for the faint-hearted or the ill-prepared, that's for sure.
I also would not ever install any sort of remotely accessible video surveillance equipment in a single unit rental property as that can be considered wiretapping and trust me, you never want to be accused of that...
Also, if you cut off the heating to your tenant to try and entice them to leave, you WILL LOSE the battle in court and pay at the very least a fine... That is a code violation, a unit without heating is not habitable...
You can not remove water, power or heat from a rental unit... Those facilities are required by law for a structure to be used for human habitation as its primary non-emergency purpose...
It would NOT make sense for you to keep the utilities in your name, as you can not cut any of them off to try and entice your unwelcome tenants to leave... You can however call the cable company and internet service providers and withdraw your authorization for those companies to use the facilities provided at your property and order those services disconnected...
Anything that effects the habitability of the unit will come back on you ESPECIALLY if you willfully undertook those actions in an effort to harass a tenant -- that would be seen as retaliation or retribution...
With ideas like this you are better off cutting your losses and selling for what you can get and not worrying about what is going on at your rental far far away from where you are... Absentee landlords are often frowned upon and caught unaware of issues which effect the rentability of their property because they are not local enough to check in on it frequently...
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