Great Affordable Lawyer Suggestion for Dallas Fort Worth Landlord
3 Replies
- 1wDrew SygitBusiness MemberProperty Manager · Royal Oak, MI · Member since 2012 · 12k+ posts · 9k+ votes
Go to the court website and search for Landlord-Tenant cases, often abbreviated "LT".
You want to identify the attorneys who's names come up the most - these are the attorneys specializing in LT cases and should be the most affordable.
FYI - fire your PMC as they should have had an experienced LT attorney to handled this for you and should have known to send the non-renewal notice properly!
Logical Property Management4.9459 Reviews - Boston, MA · Member since 2015 · 47 posts · 7 votes5d
That is one story man, unfortunate that you have to go through that. I want to help paint a picture: if I was a landlord and the property management did not do what was needed on time, start shopping for another one (I would factor in lowering costs). The tenant in question has 90-days and on the 91st day (plus whatever grace period that was set) Legal team would step in.
I've not heard of a legal team like the one you described, so I would look for one who can take the case and then you would have to get the constable involved in "forcibly removing" the tenant from the property. You then need to check if there are any damages to the unit (floors, walls, the appliances, every inch then fix it up back to proper living conditions).
Furthermore, if and only if this is a "real estate savvy tenant" (meaning they are active in attempting to do deals and these are very rare tenants--Have them help you for reaching out to cash buyers they're all over the place in Texas. If you have you're own process, that's fine. I'm only giving you a suggestion: Make them a custom contract for a month-to-month. A cash buyer could step in and do all the rehab work for you, they can even get the tenant out like a regular real estate transaction. You become the Title Company, the coordination, etc. If the process should be successful, the tenant will have multiple calls coming in, perhaps they allowed a couple of them to look at the property and they will make an offer. This offer will be forwarded to you and the money can be used to pay for whatever is owed to you, the tenant now has the money they need to leave and not end up on the Texas streets, and the new tenant (the cash buyer) moves in signing a new lease with you. Just a suggestion and I'm not sure how it works regarding if it is an apartment, a condo, a house, or a multi-family property. I don't know the full details unless you tell me that it cannot be done--I'm going to challenge this same scenario in a case with a real estate attorney because I have looked up Landlord/Tenant Law myself in my state and read through a number of law books finding the clause where it says a tenant can help the landlord "mitigate the damages". If the tenant brings these words up in whether documented or verbal conversation and you refuse...I have nothing else to add.
I know my strategy was successful because I've taken the time to do the work no one else did. Zillow had to pull my listing off themselves because it was so popular and I didn't see any other options to help them out until I took matters into my hands. I care so much about your business and the industry itself, it got personal when I got a text message while I was at work for 6hrs that morning and three months later when a tenant said the wrong thing accusing me of something I had no knowledge of until I found out later that one of the people in the building was not even a legal tenant there, just staying with his friend.
I'm asking you as the landlord, please listen to the one tenant who is involved in real estate especially if he or she tells you what's going on, why rent is late, what kinds of deals they're trying to get to make ends meet. These people are your best option, however they're rare. If you have to go through your own process, I feel like you're limiting yourself to the ridginess of your process and not having an open mind for why you got into the landlording game in the first place. Perhaps most of you aren't actually trying to be investors. It's ok, I'm not venting about it. Thank you for reading and I wish you the best and safest success.
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