All Forum Posts by: Daryl Luc

Get an attorney in Michigan to explain to you what the result of changing the filed title will be.  Your mortgage holder may have a real issue with the change.  They may reject your insurance payment if it's an escrow thing since the policy will have to have your LLC as primary insured, and the mortgage company as first named insured.  You can't just up and change to an LLC without crossing all the T's and dotting all the I's in the process.  A checking account is the least of problems.  Unless you have multiple properties, your regular account will work if you keep good records and you don't need to run out and get an EIN from the IRS either.

Trust me...this can have warts and hair all over it if you DIY without knowing all the follow up to do's.

I went through this with my mother in her Merrit Island house. She had a border whose 'rent' was companionship and occasional handyman, seems all these old ladies down there think this is a good idea without background checks, and he was a career criminal.  When I found out, reasoning was useless and low and behold, you cannot evict a squatter, or a person who has a verbal agreement to reside as easily as you can a renter who breaks lease language. If they bought one bag of groceries, they are considered an 'at will tenant', with rights!  The length of stay also matters, the longer they're there, the harder to remove.  It takes an attorney to file a removal action in the county court (Titusville in your case).  It costs money.  It takes time.  It will involve the sheriff if you succeed because he has to physically remove the 'target'.

Offer him $100 to leave by the end of next week and he can have the money when he hands you the keys.  If he accepts, have a witness there as he turns over possession.  Install new locks the same day.  Throw out anything not of value and sell the rest on Craigslist.  Find a new tenant.  Visit the property every day that it's vacant, just in case he, or someone else thinks squatting is the new cool.  Good Luck.

Tenants are like buses.  Wait half an hour and there's another one.  Don't settle for drama queens, you end up having to pay something when it's over. 

And boyfriends are to be considered....she's iffy...5 will get you ten, he's real iffy.  Now, she moves him in a couple of weeks after she takes possession (happens all the time and she knew he was moving in from the start), you discover the situation a few weeks later so you whip out your lease and tell him he needs to fill out an application and sign the lease.  Then you do your due diligence and run a background on him and Voila....he's a criminal, got no credit, but plenty of collections, FICO of 542, etc.  If he was applying all by himself, no way you'd rent to him. OK, now what do you do for the next ten months?

In most jurisdictions, threats of violence are no lesser an act than actually committing the violent act.  Threats require immediate and substantial mitigation.  This is what the police are for.

Your lease should have 'behaviors' not acceptable contained within your section on quiet enjoyment. These behaviors such as loud noise, illegal acts etc. are lease violations and will rarely be set aside by a magistrate during an eviction.  In my experience they accelerate the end result.  I don't do section 8, but I'm certain there are behavior standards that when violated are an immediate action to be taken by the HUD people managing the program.  Get them on it immediately, as others have stated, get the authorities involved immediately.
As a suggestion: get a recording app for your phone.  I rarely have telephone or in person conversations with tenants after the lease is signed unless a recording app is on.  I also use Google Voice since it allows me to press a digit on the phone keypad and record both sides of the call.  Voicemail by definition is a public message and not subject to any privacy laws.  I know, someone will jump in and tell me that this recording is illegal unless I tell them first.  No, it's not.  Recordings made without the knowledge of all parties to the recording are perfectly legal as evidence within judicial and quasi judicial arenas when presented to counter a lie.