Paying Tenants for Access
Hope you can help set realistic expectations regarding a potentially tricky situation. I am looking to buy a house that has what has been described as “hostile tenants”. The house itself is a good deal and I am including the price of dealing with these tenants in my overall cost/benefit analysis of the house purchase….
Hope you can help set realistic expectations regarding a potentially tricky situation. I am looking to buy a house that has what has been described as “hostile tenants”. The house itself is a good deal and I am including the price of dealing with these tenants in my overall cost/benefit analysis of the house purchase. Anyway, long story short, I would like to “incentivize” the tenants to cooperate with various activities, such as inspections, walk-throughs, etc that will require access to all of the apartments. The tenants are currently paying $1100 and $1200 a month in rent. What would be a reasonable amount to offer the tenants per visit, to make themselves or the apartment available for access by my inspectors, engineers, etc? I was thinking about $40 – $50 per visit, per apartment. Thoughts? Thanks!
I believe you should give each $200k. Even if you don’t buy it, you should pay them because you have money and they don’t (well, they might, but they’d like to keep it). Let me say it for the 1000th time: renters should not have to cope with life! Why can’t i own something without paying for it? No more selling and buying real estate. long live El Comandante. you greedy bastards.
JMT,
NYC is so dog-eat-dog that society has deemed it necessary to provide extra protection for the little dogs, i.e. the renters.
I really don’t understand New York’s tenant/landlord laws. Any other place in this country if you are on a month to month lease, if the landlord gives a month’s notice, you gotta get out in a month. That’s just the way it is if you rent. I’ve been there, sucks, but just gotta find another place.
Well, I was all set to commend OP for sensitivity and working with existing tenants, but I see he just wants his own way.
Taking over one apt to duplex it is reasonable, but he obviously wants to up the rents by converting one floor to TWO? Who does that?! And OP already has an eviction attorney!
Sorry OP, I’m all on the tenants’ side on this one. And I’m a landlord too, for decades. Why don’t you find another property and stop messing with people’s lives?
This is why “delivered vacant” is the only way to go if you are occupying even part of the building, and probably why this place is underpriced. There’s a house on my block that sounds exactly like what your describing, and it’s priced at least $150k below market. The realtor was offering to take prospective buyers on “drivebys”. Poor choice of words in Brooklyn!
If you’re not in contract yet, actually, even if you are, you’ll no doubt understand that there are many obstacles that could result in the deal falling apart. Are you prepared to put your grease money at significant risk? If it were me, I’d try to incentivize the current owner into securing access with their tenants. For your part, you could set up well in advance one inspection/architect visit and one contractor walk-through, spacing the visits a few days apart, so that the owner is only going to each tenant once to announce his/her intention to twice enter their apartments. The owner can legally enter the apartment, with or without lease, as long as proper notice is given.
Inviting your architect to the first walk-through will help him/her get an idea of any issues as the inspector does their work. I’d also invite three contractors and the same architect to the walk-through so that all are receiving the same information at the same time. That’ll help with the tenants only having to give consent once for two visits and it’ll help you get clear pricing on your proposed renovations, even absent drawings from your architect.
Do not pay them anything. This is the worst thing that you can do. Make the current owner deal with them. If he/she isn’t motivated enough to do this, then you don’t want to deal with a seller like that anyway.
Regarding eviction, do your research and hire someone who knows the Brooklyn housing court well. A meeting with the lawyer will give you a good idea of your options and a retainer fee should not be more than $700 or so.
Are you sure none of the tenants have rent controlled tenancies? Often, rent controlled tenants (as opposed to rent stabilized tenants) don’t have leases.
Yes, yes, and yes. Have an eviction attorney. It is a legal three family. And know how much it is going to cost to evict them. Plus I have factored in the loss of revenue during this time period and I can cover the mortgage on my own without their rental contribution (but I don’t necessarily want to). I guess the bottom line is I just need to try to have a discreet conversation with the tenants, throw a number out there to see if it sticks, if not just try to work around them. They have had a very sweet deal for a long time. My intent is not malicious in term of getting access, I was just trying to grease the wheels so to speak.