We rented to a family for several years, with yearly renewals. They announced in November (five months into their lease) that they planned to move and that they had found replacement tenants on Craigslist who wanted to move in in two weeks. We were uncomfortable with this and refered them to our usual real estate agent who handles our rentals. He attempted to negotiate a break lease agreement with the tenants, which they fought vigorously. They barraged us and the agent with countless emails and phone calls. We kept saying we can’t move forward with processing new tenants without a written break lease, which the tenant refused to sign. This tenant had been a real pain in the past but he always paid the rent (albeit almost always late).
The tenant finally resorted to threatening us with a variety of made up code violations (leaking sewage, extensive mold, structural cracks). We finally gave up and signed a mutual agreement to let him go without penalty as long as he did not pursue his intent to contact government agencies regarding our supposed violations. We were advised by our agent that this could get ugly, regardless if there really were violations.
Fast forward…the tenant has moved out and we sent him an itemization of deductions from his security deposit, citing several instances of damage to the property and witholding some monies until he provides proof that he paid the last month’s utilities and took care of maintenance items required by the lease (carpet cleaning, chimney cleaning).
He is threatening to sue us unless we return his entire security deposit. He claims that a less than 1’ x 1’ area of moldy drywall in the basement - which he never notified us about - has caused his son health problems. He also plans to notify every government agency he can find regarding the fake housing violations that he made up. He also says he will sue for housing discrimination since the tenant that he found (and we never rejected - they moved on) was Indian.
Any thoughts? My husband is not willing to give into this jerk any longer. Personally, I just want this over. What is the likelihood that this guy is just blowing smoke? I can’t imagine that any reputable lawyer would take his case, since he really doesn’t have one.
Looks like this guy found out he could yank your chain and push you around and you helped reinforce his conclusions. This jerk was in charge from the beginning instead of you.
I won’t list the many errors you made but I suggest you start studying landlording or get out of the business. Never allow this to happen again, qualify the tenant thoroughly, rewrite your lease, and enforce it to the letter, and you should never, never have to go through this again because the tenant will know you will pursue him to the end.
In my leases I never had late charges, it just seemed to make it OK and they could be late. I gave a discount if paid on the first or before, and if I didn’t have the money then then no discount, if not paid by the 3rd I posted a 3 day notice to quit.
When I quit being a nice guy life was easier and my wife liked the new system because she handled the collecting and quickly learned many sob stories and if you gave the inch they wanted the mile and that BS ended.
Thank you for your candid opinion. We have had many tenants in different properties over the years, and we’ve generally had very good relationships with them. No one has ever defaulted on the rent or attempted to terminate the lease early before.
This guy was a pain in the butt from the day he moved in. We initially tried to be responsive to his demands since the previous tenants had left the place a mess and we knew that some work was required to get the house into shape (there was no time between the two tenants). But it soon became clear that this guy was a control freak. We debated whether or not to renew his contract after the first year. In hindsight, it was a big mistake that we did. Nonetheless, we had no idea that he would be this vindictive and just make stuff up.
We’ve learned our lesson. We use a standard Virginia lease, but I want to tighten up some of the terms. No more late rent and no excuses.
Through lots of LL/T deals-gone-awry I long ago learned to look very hard at prospective tenants before ever letting them into the property.
I make them give me their credit reports (free to anybody) and their last 2 addresses and LLs’ names and then I call those LLs and any delinquent acct holders…now the current LL might say anything to get rid of the people but the one before than will likely tell you truth.