Tenant damaged property, causing problems

[Chris M.]

I have a tenant in Indiana, who damaged the plumbing causing a leak in the crawl space.  He then called the Board of health to complain about the plumbing not working.  Upon notice, I immediately called out a plumber who had to pump out the crawl space and fix the pipes for $2000.  In addition there are 4 pages of other Board of health complaints, the majority are minor items like things not being cleaned (which is his responsibility).

The lease states that the tenant signed off that everything was in good conditioned when he moved in, and he's only been there 5 months.  It also says that he is responsible for maintaining the house, and specifically responsible for plumbing damages.

To make matters worse, I sent a contractor there to look at the other items from the board of health and the tenant denied access and threatened to shoot him.  I told the board of health that this, and they don't seem to care.

I think that I should be sending the tenant the bill for all these items including the plumbing, but I worry about how he will react since he's already threatened my contractor.  Any advice would be appreciated.

[Michael Gansberg]

Evict this guy. Don't even think twice, he's bad news. Here's how to do it- call an attorney who has a bad-a$$ process server. The process server should have a sidearm, considering what's going on here. Many of the servers are ex- or current law enforcement. Let the attorney know exactly what's going on- I mean everything. Then ask how to best evict this POS. Then proceed. Your tenant will call all of the government agencies on you, so be prepared for that. 

You'll get through it.