Interesting Story.
Situation.
Beginning of October we let tenant move in and not pay until Nov 15th so they can do sweat equity to property(is full of crap and needs paint/carpet). That is mistake one. Anyway his car breaks down so we accept $500 on the 15th and $270 a week later. A week later, he calls and says he's moving out because of his dad's health. He says he will have everything out Friday. Tuesday rolls around and we go in and change locks. He still has a couch in there. He calls us complaining saying we stole his stuff. We basically just tell him goodbye. Today he called my realty company and told them I illegally sold him a home(lease option) that wasn't even mine to begin with(in a corportations name). He wants $2500 in sweat equity(he maybe hauled out a trashcan or two worth of trash and did nothing else) and his $500 back.
How does this sound? Lol.
What did you do with the couch ?
Great question newkid
What does the lease option say about cancelling? Is the sweat equity agreement in writing? What does lease option say about breaking the agreement early and left-over personal property? Did he give his notice of leaving on that specific date in writing? Is the lease option from the corp to him or from your individual self to him?
LOLOL
give him his couch back. (which im sure you threw away) this type of stuff almost always happens with sweat equity for rent. its the landlords lazy way out and it never works.
Maybe I am missing something but the OP posted the the tenant claimed. Not that they rented to this dead beat with a LO.
What was the lease?
Sounds like this guys does this all the time.
My DH and I did rented our first apt.20 years ago with a sweat equity deal. The place was a pig sty we got 3 months free rent for exchange of our work and a great rent rate after that. We stayed over a year and left the Vict.brownstone in much better condition for it. This situation does not always have to be a bad one. But trust your gut.
Mal
It wasn't even like sweat equity for rent. What it was was a property that we had JUST taken sub-2. Hadn't reinstated it yet and we had a person call us off a house we were selling on contract saying he NEEDED a place NOW because he and his wife were living in their grandmothers house and she sold it to go into a nursing home and they have one week to get another place. So we let them in fairly quickly with no security deposit because of the cleaning/work needed done to this place. FMV in 2 years would easily be in the $70s, so we said since it needed the work it did(cleaning and paint, carpet, etc) we would give him the option at $70k. We said we may have work on OTHER properties he could do to pay towards his rent if the situation arised. Well that situation never arised, as he was only in there one month. The couch is still sitting in the property. He bailed on us owing us 1/3 of a months rent and he broke his contract. Now we were not going to pursue him for anything, just him walk away and accept it as a learning experience. But he now claims he moved out because we were not on title(deed had not been recorded yet, but is now). And he wants $2500 in sweat equity(no idea where this is coming from) and his $500 he paid in rent back because we never owned it and we cannot sell/rent something we don't own he claims. He has no case, but I find it quite funny that someone would goto these lengths to do this. The unfortunate part is that he is going to my real estate company, which has no part in this matter.
As far as the LO, it was signed by our partner, in which he owns the LLC that owns the property. We are property managers but have a share of the profits.
I am thinking that this guy has done this before, and won. That is why he is trying to do it now. He has not gotten a lawyer yet, but just trying to be a pest by going to the real estate company. We have two lawyers on staff which are helping us right now but since it is not a real estate agent matter I do not think they will help long.
Quote:
On 2004-12-11 09:18, Maleficent2 wrote:
Maybe I am missing something but the OP posted the the tenant claimed. Not that they rented to this dead beat with a LO.
What was the lease?
Sounds like this guys does this all the time.
My DH and I did rented our first apt.20 years ago with a sweat equity deal. The place was a pig sty we got 3 months free rent for exchange of our work and a great rent rate after that. We stayed over a year and left the Vict.brownstone in much better condition for it. This situation does not always have to be a bad one. But trust your gut.
Mal
And lastly, no he did not give it to us in writing. On Sunday, Nov 28th he called saying he needed a paper signed which was welfare to get medicine for his kid(ridlin that i think he used). We signed it for him, and that following Wednesday he called and told us he had to move out because of his dads health and most of his stuff was out and the rest would be out Friday with the keys in the mailbox. Friday was the day the 1/3 of his rent was due. So Friday they call and say sorry it will be Saturday. Then Saturday they say sorry Sunday, and then finally sorry, Monday. So finally Tuesday night we go change locks and start ripping up carpet just to rehab/flip the property now. They call Wednesday morning complaining saying they still have a couch in there, etc. I saved one voicemail from her saying "I know we said we'd have the stuff out yesterday but i couldn't find anyone to help me but now someone changed the locks I need one of you to call me TODAY".
Personally, I'd move the couch into the drive or onto the front yard and call and tell them it is waiting for them. I'd sit down and document everything that happened in this situation that isn't already written down. If they want to fight it, just tell them you had an agreement and they broke it. If they sue you (most likely in small claims) sue back for unpaid rent and your rent loss from not having a tenant (*judge will only give you a reasonable amount, i.e. acouple months to find new tenant and some marketing costs --You have to try to mitigate your losses as a LL)
First, you never say what signed papers you have with this person. Was it a lease, lease option, option, purchase and sale, or heaven forbid was it a verbl agreement?
1) never let anyone move in without a security deposit. this way you would have had some control during the move out process
2) with a security deposit you could have made him sign a terination of lease and move in move out condition of the property (which states that obviously they are moved out)
3) my leases say that anything left behind will be moved to the curb