Real Estate Investor · Fort Worth, TX · Member since 2010 · 6 posts · 1 vote
I have a tenant who trashed a rental property of mine and broke the lease without discussion today. She has not paid her rent for this month (I was actually going there to deliver the Notice to Vacate for non-payment of rent when I discovered the surprise; I would have done this earlier already but I've been out of town). Nothing was stolen, there is just a lot of property damage (holes in sheetrock, over-flowing toilet, and lots of trash).
I was just curious if anybody has ever had any luck with filing a police report for something such as vandalism or the like for a tenant who has trashed their property....I do plan on continuing with the eviction process and reporting to the credit bureau....This property is in Texas if that matters to anyone.
Might be worth contacting the former tenant and offering a resolution that does not involve the authorities - worst case it motivates them to reimburse you for damages above their security.
Before seeing that article I thought the law enforcement response would be "its a civil matter."
I have a feeling this information would be sufficient to deter many tenants from vandalism Nathan Emmert so maybe you do want to KNOW but never USE it!
Dave Meyer Thanks for that article. Very informative. I'm going to continue with the normal civil process for now and give the criminal side of the issue some more thought. Thanks
Robert Creed you're more than welcome, as I mentioned to Nathan Emmert I also learned something which I can see myself leveraging in the future to avoid headaches so THANK YOU for bringing it up!
No, but I was at a REI meeting tonight, and a lawyer and another investor were talking about how, the lender has not gotten back to him on a short sale, but the reason for the SS was because the Landlord could not make the payments anymore after 3 years of being scared of her tenants! (apparently they stopped paying her years ago, and have threatened her).
I said maybe the Lender is not getting back to you because they were threatened by the tenants too! LOL!
Obviously, there is more to this Landlords situation!