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!
Dan Squadron (and several other state senators) want to eliminate your ability to take over apartments in your own house.
Your prospective tenants have leases that expire, and those leases uniformly state that access must be granted on reasonable notice for inspections or sales.
Let the current owner deal with them — DO NOT PAY THEM, or else you’ll never get their cooperation.
1) Put yourself in the shoes of the existing tenants and imagine what it’s like to look at losing your home/apartment, lease or no lease, month-to-month status (and any other details missing from story). 2) Better check that house is currently a legal 3-family and that use conforms with existing CO before even contemplating a housing court action. 3) Don’t even imagine that eviction, alteration and/or new CO are quick, easy and cheap processes.
I’m assuming these are below-market rents.
This will not go well. Why buy into an already adversarial situation??
Maybe a consultation with an eviction attorney will be money well spent.
Thanks everyone…answers to a couple of questions. The tenants on the middle floor will be evicted because I am coverting their floor plus the ground floor into a duplex for my use. I am undecided about the top floor tenant because I don’t know whether or not I will convert that 2 bedroom apartment into two studio apartments. Keeping in mind that as of right now, I don’t have any right to speak to these tenants, as I don’t own the house – they are still the seller’s tenants, and he/she doesn’t seem to be having much success in the past in getting them to cooperate with open houses and now my inspections. Longer term, if they don’t cooperate, and the sale of the house goes through, my next question will be how much to get them to pay to leave, as I have heard that the brooklyn court system is notorius for leniency on the side of tenants in the case of evictions. BTW, these tenants do not have leases.
Are these going to be your tenants or are you moving in and replacing them?
Not sure you’ll be able to pull this off, but you might do better “incentivizing” the tenants to sit down at a meeting with you and your attorney where they can air their concerns about existing conditions and a potential new owner. (Obviously, you need to be sincere in appreciating their concerns, as well as discuss in advance with and maybe incentivize current owner.) If you’re able to put that meeting together, you’ll have a much better idea of how much access might be possible, as well as the issues and costs both now and in future.
Who is defining reasonable? If the word in circulation is “hostile”, figure that their “reasonable” number is $1200 per month until you start to put money on the table in 10K increments. Most people out there still think it is 2005 when they have something to “sell”.
Who is defining reasonable? If the word in circulation is “hostile”, figure that their “reasonable” number is $1200 per month until you start to put money on the table in 10K increments. Most people out there still think it is 2005 when they have something to “sell”.
Is this house in PLG by any chance?