All Forum Posts by: Brenna Sullivan

@Brad Sanford you are understanding correctly, except that her 60-day notice is up on December 12th, and the house is nearly ready to re-lease now, and she has told the PM that she would be happy to allow him to re-lease the property prior to December 12th, while still paying through December 12th, in order to mitigate the loss to the property owner. I have no idea why he stated it would not be ready until December 23rd.

@Dawn Brenengen They actually have no online reviews at all, on google or yelp anyway. That might be something to change :) And based I think will have my mother contact legal services, thank you for the recommendation. 

@Denise Evans Thank you for the information about the Madison County legal services group. I'll look them up. And it's very good to know about the downstream consequences of being sued. 

   I have read her lease in it's entirety and there is not an automatic renewal, and the term of her first/original lease is not yet up. There is nothing at all in the lease regarding a lease break. 

Help please!

 My mom is renting a home in Madison County, AL. She is in a one-year lease. However, the option to purchase a home was made unexpectedly available to her, and she jumped on it. So now we're dealing with a lease-break situation. The leased home is currently almost completely cleaned out and cleaned. 

There is nothing in her lease about breaking a lease. In the Alabama Uniform Landlord and Tenant Act, the lease break stipulations are that the renter is required to continue payment until the property is re-rented, and the landlord is required to put in a good faith effort to re-rent the property quickly. Her property manager is stating that she is required to give a 60-day notice and that she must pay 2 months additional rent as a lease-break fine. In a spirit of good faith, she agreed to pay the rent through December 12th (60 days), but has not and will not agree to pay the additional two months rent unless the property does not re-rent. We have stated this to her property manager repeatedly in e-mails that he is refusing to reply to, we have mailed him printed copies of those e-mails via certified mail and dropped them off at his office. He is refusing to communicate via anything but phone calls.

We have listed the home for rent on Craigslist, and her PM company has listed it as well. They have both had lots of interest and two filled out applications. However her Property manager is telling people that the home is unavailable until December 23rd (it could be ready in about 2 days from now), and he called my mom today and told her that he has an approved applicant, but if she doesn't pay the two months rent then he will "send them elsewhere" and reject future applicants, forcing her to pay the two month's rent because the home is unrented. 

Obviously, this is illegal, but we have no idea what to do. It's just her word against his, as he will only communicate via phone. She has kept detailed lists of all communication between them, but they're just her own lists of what he said via the phone. Nothing we can prove. 

Any suggestions on how to proceed? My mom has been exceedingly kind, trying to re-rent the home as quickly as possible, cleaning it thoroughly, apologizing for the inconvenience, etc.. The property owner would not be out any money if the Property Manager would just allow these applicants to move in. 

*I can post the e-mails we have sent, if it will help. 

Did that work for an investor purchase? My lender says gifted funds are no problem for an owner occupied property, but not for an investment purchase. I'm just not sure if that is a lender specification or a federal rule. 

Hello! I could use some advice please :)

 I am buying my first investment property, it will be my first second mortgage as well. The home will be designated solely as a residence for my mother and minor sisters for at least the first three years. My uncle is giving me a large sum of money as a 20% down payment in order to do this, to help both myself and my mom and sisters. The home is about 10 miles from my current home, and is in the school district that my sister needs to be in, while my current home is not. 

At first, I intended to buy the home as owner occupied, move out of my current home for a year and into that one, then move back in a year's time (once the owner occupied time had passed). But then I realized it would be a heck of a lot easier to just get investment financing (only 0.5% difference), stay in my current home, and go ahead and move my mom into the investment home. However, I just found out today that investment property cannot be bought with gifted funds (the money from my Uncle). The money has to be in my account for 30 days, which means I would need to push our closing date by three weeks and I don't think the seller will be willing to do that.     

My dad (who doesn't live with my mom), thinks I am crazy for thinking about moving 10 miles away for a year, trying to rent out my current home, possibly being stuck with both mortgages if my home doesn't rent quickly, and then moving back in a year. He thinks we should change our address, insurance, property taxes, etc., to reflect that we moved and rented my current residence to my mom, let her legally "move" to this address, and keep living arrangements the same. He swears there is no way the bank is going to care or know as long as payments are on time. 

I never wanted to do that, but I can't lie that it does sound rather appealing. Moving a whole household twice in one year, just swapping houses back and forth seems ridiculous. Could that really be that simple? Or would I be risking unleashing financial hell on myself?

 

Well, as much as I don't want to hear that you make a good point. Ugg. Scumbags with nothing to lose are pretty sucky tenants.  

Hi everyone, and thank you in advance for your help. I am also sorry for the long post. 

I am actually asking this on behalf of my MIL, but I am very familiar with the situation and... help please!

My MIL rented her home in Autauga County, Alabama last September to a newly married couple. She lives in AZ. She is a bit naive and this was her first foray into renting, and she did not do any background checks, other than calling the numbers the couple gave her as references. They did sign an application stating no felonies, etc., but my MIL did not know how to perform a background check. My husband and I thought she had, but turns out she had not. The tenants signed a one year lease, Oct 1 2015- Sep 30, 2016. 

 There have been problems from the get-go. There have been many MANY issues, attempted cons and scams, etc., but the biggest problem is that shortly after they moved in my husband and I discovered that the male is a registered sex offender, meaning that he lied on his signed application. He does not know that we know, as my MIL did not want to go through the hassle of evicting and having them possibly destroy the house as long as rent was still being paid. She felt it would be better to have an ace in hand if she ever needed to evict them than to acknowledge that she knows and allow them to stay anyway. 

 Yesterday he contacted my MIL to say that he and his wife are now getting divorced. He tried to sweet talk her into lowering his rent, as he lost half of his income, but thankfully she is not willing to do so. She wants to end the lease as peacefully as possible, believing this man to be the type to vindictively steal appliances or otherwise trash the home. 

 Allowing this man to stay is not an option. He cannot pay the rent on his own and has admitted as much, and is a manipulative con man. We thought about having her say that he would need to qualify on his own, but that would mean actually running background checks, which of course would bring up his offender status, which means having to actually evict. 

Our current plan is to have her give him a polite 30 day notice, and say something like "Per the lease you will forfeit your deposit and owe an additional month's rent in order to end your lease early, however I am aware of your situation and am willing to allow a lease break without the additional month's rent". He won't pay the extra month anyway, and hopefully that will keep him "nice". But since he is an offender I don't know where he'll go, and I'm worried that an actual eviction will be required anyway, which would then allow him to stay there for 2 months- the first 30 day notice and the 30 day eviction period. 

  Does anyone have any insight into this? Any ideas on what to do? Is a 30 day notice a good idea, or should she go straight to eviction? Does she have to wait until the beginning of March when the rent isn't paid? Both this man and his wife are on the lease, but the wife has moved out and is not returning messages left by my MIL. 

Thank you SO MUCH for your help.