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On 2/1/2011 9:14 AM, Robert Green wrote:
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!).

--
Bobby G.



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 ) Just doing a google search on a name
sometimes turns up news of arrests or suits.

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.

--
Bobby G.