Resolving Matters After A Problem Tenant, A Simple Guide
It’s easy to think of landlords as corporations tasked with developing and managing large apartment blocks, but that mostly only applies to certain properties. A good portion of landlords own one or two properties and rent out the second place in order to supplement their income and help pay their mortgage. Investing in real estate is just that, an investment, and so any disturbance to your return can be a problem.
Tenant rights exist for a reason, and are important to keep in mind as you hold up your end of the contract. That said, after suffering a problem tenant and going through the process of eviction, it’s important to know what to do next.
Resolving the difficulties of the household, reclaiming lost funds, and making sure you prevent this problem from happening again is all worthwhile use of your time. So, in this post, we’ll discuss how you achieve exactly that, and where you might even get started with such an effort. Without further ado, please consider:
Documenting Correspondence & Payment
Collating all of the information you have for the tenant, including agreed-upon rental rates, requests for payment, complaints, damage fees, and more can help you prove the trail of your fulfilling the contract, the patience you showed to your tenant for them to change their behavior, and also the incremental actions you’ve taken to try and resolve the issues or warn further action. This package can help you more capably if you decide to litigate or go through the housing authority to prove your case and see what your options are.
Deep Cleaning & Repairing The Property, Itemizing Bills
It’s good to use what you have of the security deposit to clean up and repair or replace elements of the household that need it. A helpful cleaning company can restore the house to its previous condition, services like Highland Park Housekeeping https://highlandparkhousekeeping.com/ can be incredibly useful here, but make sure you itemize all of the expenditure you have returning the property back to normal. Again, it will help you better prove the actions you’ve taken, show you were acting proportionately the entire time, and potentially try to reclaim that cost through litigation. In the meantime, your property will be returned to the value it deserves.
Review Your Vetting Process
Of course, you probably don’t have the crystal ball that the secret society of landlords grants you when you hit 1,000 consecutive tenants just yet, meaning you can’t really be blamed if a trusted tenant acts in a way you couldn’t predict. That’s just people. But you can vet people ahead of time, be that through job references, a credit check, and good references from prior letting agents. Reviewing your vetting process and how this person came to rent from you can help you understand how you might catch someone out next time within reason – but don’t worry, you don’t have to act like a CIA agent every time someone asks for a viewing. Just do the best you can.
With this advice, we hope you can resolve matters after a problem tenant, and also find some closure despite the difficulty.
Originally Published on https://www.breakfastleadership.com/
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