Tenant Eviction?
We rented the 2nd fl apt in our house earlier this year. Please keep in mind we are new home owners so the whole landlord thing is new to us. We did not make the tenants (2 brothers) sign a lease since we heard mixed things about it. So before we agreed to rent it…
We rented the 2nd fl apt in our house earlier this year. Please keep in mind we are new home owners so the whole landlord thing is new to us. We did not make the tenants (2 brothers) sign a lease since we heard mixed things about it. So before we agreed to rent it out we went through the basic rules and regulations with them. The two voliations that are driving us up the wall are..
Pet – We specifically said there are no pets in the apt. On the first night they moved in.. we heard a dog barking and confronted them. One of the brother said it was his gf and the dog will only be here temporary. Then a week or so later we heard the dog again and the tenant said that his gf got in a bad car accident and the dog has no where to go (What can we say?). It is now APRIL and the dog is still here. I have nothing against dog except that they do not curb their dog. There have been multiple occasions where we found poop (we actually caught him a couple of times) right outside our house, we confronted..they denied. So enough is enough.. Last week we asked that if that if the dog is staying, he will would have to give us an extra month of security deposit. The tenant responded a couple of days later and told us they would be moving out at the end of April. We thought about it and found it a bit uneasy. What happens if they do not leave and use this excuse to avoid the extra deposit by just delaying using the excuse they cannot find a place?
To makes matter worst, this morning I found our main door fully WIDE open. Luckily we live in a decent area and nothing was missing. The tenant walks the dog around 3AM-5AM so I am pretty sure when he walked back in he did not fully closed it. There has been incident in the past where they would not lock the deadlock even though we keep stressing it. So enough is enough..I’m not sure if they are doing this knowing that they are leaving at the end of the month.. I will be asking for legal advice but I just want advice based on experience. What can we do to ensure they will be leaving at the end of the month as promised? Safety and Health concerns (dog poop) are something we cannot compromise. HELP!
You have and difficult problem, you have no experience, you are seeking free advice and have a good chance of getting what you’re paying for. Pay for a consultation with a landlord attorney and get them out asap.
I’m pretty much with witchdoctor on this one. Sorry, I don’t have much sympathy for what you’ve written, nor words for how foolish it is—for landlord OR for tenant—to rent without a lease. Being a landlord is a business relationship, defined by the terms of the lease. Yes, there’s a learning curve, but it’s not that hard to be a good LL—understand that you’re exchanging shelter and services for payment and treat others as you like to be treated yourself. If you’re new to landlording and don’t know how to separate the wheat from the chaff, do as Bohuma suggests and rent your premises through a broker until you’re better acquainted with ownership/landlording. Alternatively, leases are easily available online as well as through most neighborhood stationery stores. Easily altered/supplemented by riders to meet your particular concerns (no pets, for example).
REBNY lease: http://bit.ly/armtNS
Blumberg forms (NY apartments): http://bit.ly/9OBZei
From what you write, better get familiar with housing court, too. Just like the dog, these tenants are unlikely to disappear by the end of April:
LL’s Guide to Housing Court: http://bit.ly/cbskfr
Tenant’s Guide to Housing Court: http://bit.ly/ackb1f
I just went through last month basically what you are going through. I too had no experience as a landlord and believed everything my tenant said. If you see no movement of packing, etc. by the last week in April, on April 31st serve your tenant with a notice of eviction. If you don’t and you don’t seve them, you are stuck for another month. Unfortunately, you then cannot collect rent from the tenant if you have no lease but when you go to Housing Court, you can and will get a judgment for the owed rent (collecting it is another matter). I, for one, am only going to give a 3 month lease from now on – plus get first and last month & a damage deposit. When the 3 month lease expires, you then have a month-to-month rental again, but all parties are bound by the terms of the original lease. If you only have a 2 family, you need no reason to evict your tenants. By the way, I am an attorney, but I hired one because my tenant was becoming hostile and I lost my temper – so it was best to have someone else speak for me.
We kept stressing that the dog cannot stay but they kept giving us excuse after excuse and apologizing. Who would think they would lie that his gf got into a car crash? Besides the dog poop, I guess they are not as bad as I hear other nightmare tenant stories (until they left the door wide open this morning)..so we thought we will work it out by asking them for extra deposit (recoup damages by dog).. and stressed that the dog can only stay temporary but they said they would move out.
Telling them first that the dog has to go and then telling him it can stay for more money was a mistake. But the end of APril is near.
i stopped reading after you said that you didn’t make them sign a lease. a lease is a leagally binding contract. what do you have now? nothing and now your life could be miserable for a VERY long time. good luck.
This is definitely a learning experience. It seems like once you become a landlord you are more lenient on a lot of issues..basically the tenants are always right mentality. Something that I have to slowly accept.
Thanks for the insights.
Agree with everything CMU wrote. You need to learn from your mistakes. First, join the Rent Stabilization Association (RSA), which is a landlord’s association, and use their pro-forma lease. Second, contact a local broker and get them to find a tenant, they’ll put a tenant package together for you so that you can assess the tenant’s finances comprehensively – as a board member of a condo that allows sublets I’ve seen these and their very good. In New York, tenants pay the brokers, so it won’t cost you anything to use their services. Third, reconsider your pet policy, dogs and cats are both very good at deterring mice and to a lesser extent rats. Fourth, develop a relationship with an attorney who specializes in small landlord issues – the RSA should be able to help you find one.
Don’t panic, the tenants are probably as sick of you as your are of them, so they’ll probably move out as planned and your life will be easier.
“…told us they would be moving out at the end of April”
Count yourselves lucky…why not just wait it out…it’s only 3 weeks, and then panic?
afa door is concerned, maybe you should just pop for a closer and at least get it latched automatically, it’s easy. It might have been a genuine mistake, most tenants are responsible and if you’ve got some bad ones, it’s the exception. Also, is it a common entrance…you don’t have your own lockable door? You make it sound like the entire house was open to raiders.
Leaving the door open is not, to my knowledge, an evictable offense. So you may have to raise your ‘had-it-to-here’ trigger level.
While of course I don’t endorse the no-cleanup-poop action, do you have a reason for no-dogs? I’ve have several tenants with small dogs and, except for the fact that the floors have to be refinished when they moved (dog scratches) I considered that part of the ocst of doing business.
Finally, rent to professional couples