03.30.14 Tenant goes missing

So to what lengths would you go to find a missing tenant?

The back story: Our one bedroom has been rented by a single retired (fixed income) guy for about three years. He had a storage trailer parked in the back yard. He had a lot of visitors but we couldn't tell whether they were living there. When we did a maintenance inspection once he introduced us to his daughter who was staying for a few days. We suspected he was smoking indoors against policy (smell and incense burning to mask it) which he of course denied. He was a typical tenant - pulled down the quality of our improvement efforts but not bad enough to do anything other than shake our heads, and a bonus that he paid on time. Our agreement with him has a clause in it naming someone who can make decisions about his tenancy if something happens to him.

The recent story: He fell behind on his rent $50 five months ago. He paid late fees on it each month but never got the $50 resolved. He paid March rent (less the $50) on time for March. About two weeks later I noticed the trailer was gone and shortly after that the city called informing us that power had been disconnected for non-payment two weeks ago. We immediately go over to the unit. Someone else answers the door and says that our tenant is moving out. So our tenant is missing and now we seem to have squatters. We were joking through this that one moved out and six moved in.

Our options as we saw them:

Post a three day pay or quit for the unpaid $50.00.

Work on getting the unit deemed abandoned: post, ask around, wait a few days

Post a 10 day cure or quit for the PUD being disconnected, since it is a condition of the agreement to have utilities paid up and functioning.

We thought the three day was harsh for a long term tenant, so we decided to work both other options concurrently.

We posted the cure or quit and a letter (a plea to to contact us right away) to the tenant on the door.

We started asking around. The people living there said they were moving him out and that they had not heard from him in weeks. His daughter was there at one point and expressed concern at not hearing from him. We were also told “He moved to 11XX N 3rd with a guy with a pink truck two weeks ago.” They also did not have any keys to the unit.

One evening we went on an adventure hunt:

Checked the jail website and obituaries.

Drove to the address we were given, except it didn’t exist. Knocked on the door nearest the address, asked around.

Saw a trailer that looked like his around the corner, knocked there too. No answer. Photographed the trailer and compared it to photos at home. No match.

Drove around that neighborhood looking for any other matching trailers, no luck.

Saw a pink truck at the gas station, asked if he knew our guy. Nope.

Stopped at the hospital and tried to "visit a friend". No matching admittance. (Privacy freaks, lay off, we already got a tongue lashing when we retold the story.)

We went to visit the person he designated on his rental agreement as making decisions for him if he was not able. Turned out to be his ex-girlfriend, she started a social media hunt.

We explained to her that we were taking possession at the end of the 10 day, that she had a right to be there and take any of his remaining belongings. And that if she wanted to take any action sooner we'd work with her. We monitored who was at the unit each day, what progress was being made toward move out, and made it clear we may call the police for theft of our tenants belongings if we felt we needed to.

Incidentally a corpse was pulled out of our local lake during this time, but it was finally identified as someone else.

The squatters and the emergency contact eventually told us they had been in contact with our tenant, but he has never contacted us. I’m guessing he was embarrassed or too lazy to handle it with any grace. The ten days expired, the squatters left peacefully with most of his belongings, and we were able to take possession without incident. Whew, glad it is just another interesting story rather than a drawn out battle.