No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

So here is one for the books.  We had a model tenant.  He had been renting from us for over 4 years.  He was occasionally late but would always pay the late fees and get caught up before the 3-day notice would expire.  Back in October as I was signing 3-day notices I saw that he had not paid September or October rent yet.  I thought that was rather odd so I picked up the phone and gave him a call.

He told me he had been in a terrible auto accident and had not been able to work for over a month.  He was going to have to break his lease and move out of state to go live with family.  The tenant did not want to have an eviction on his record and asked if he could leave in good standing and make payments when he got settled to pay what he owed.  

I felt bad for him and spoke with the owner of the property.  He agreed and ask me to make the arrangements for a notice to vacate and a promissory note because he had been a good tenant.  We had the documents drawn up and signed and we were ready to take possession of the property.  3 days before the move out day he called and said that he would like to stay and had saved up all the money that he owed.  I thought that was great so we made arrangements to have him come to the office with a money order to reinstate his lease.  Then over the weekend all his money was stolen and he decided not to stay.

He moved out but left behind a lot of things.  We changed the locks and made arrangements to inspect the property.  The inspector made his report and we estimated the turn around costs and got with the owner.  In the mean time we began to pre-market the property and found a qualified applicant.

Last week the tenant called and said that if it was ok with us he would like to get some of his stuff.  I thought that wasn't a bad idea and could save the owner about $500 in trash out and dump fees.  So the cleaning vendor made arrangements to meet him there to get his stuff.  When the cleaning crew arrived the tenant had broken in and decided that he was now going to stay.  He told the cleaning crew that he had been studying Florida Landlord Tenant law and he decided we were going to have to evict him now.  We called the Sheriff to try to have him removed for trespassing but the Sheriff said that our notice to vacate and the agreement that he signed was a civil matter and would have to go through the process of litigation or we could evict him for non-payment of rent.

Lesson learned.