Tenant Abandonment of a Property?
Has anyone had to experience or work through a Tenant abandoning one of your properties? I'm currently in Washington State, and the Washington State Tenant Law states that someone is considered to have abandoned the property if they owe rent and they have verbally, written, etc. told the Landlord they were moving out (see below). Both of these were true, so I proceeded to hold the items in the property for a month (by law), then the next month I moved the property into a Storage Unit (I gave the tenant a key, the code, numbers, etc) and held it there for another month before I proceeded to donate everything to the Goodwill (In total, there was about 2 months worth of availability for the Tenant to collect their belongings) Currently, this Tenant is now saying that I illegally removed his belongings from the property and is looking to sue, and I'm curious if there's anyone that has had experience in this subject or had to work through going to court in a similar situation. I did talk to my attorney before moving his stuff out of my property and into the Storage Unit and am in the process of working with him in case the situation goes any further. However, I didn't think it would hurt to gather other people's opinions and experiences.
Thanks!
