LL evicting tenant, but my vending machine is inside!
Hey Biggerpockets,
I have a service contract with a tenant, who was served an abatement warrant. For those unfamiliar with abatement warrants, the city puts it's own locks on the property for a period of time to stop the activity. This abatement warrant ends tomorrow (10/1), and the landlord has an eviction hearing sometime around the 7th-9th. Poor guy is pulling his hair out because his tenant isn't paying.
Here's the catch, I'm a third party with a service contract at the property and have no agreements with the landlord. My machine is locked inside because of the abatement warrant. I've called the landlord today to ask if I can get my machine tomorrow and show him a contract between the tenant and myself stating that the machine on site is mine, and the tenant has no claim to it. The landlord said that I have to wait until the eviction process is over.
I went through this exact scenario at another location, and it was no problem to pick up my vending machine. The landlord sounds like he wants to hold me financial hostage telling me there might be a fee for him boarding up the property to protect my machine. It sounds like because the tenant isn't paying him, he wants to take my machine.
As a parallel, a landlord doesn't have a claim to a third party's POS system leased to the tenant right?
This sounds really illegal to me... landlord thoughts?