Our non-paying tenant skipped just before eviction, leaving a lot of damage to property and tons of trash. The biggest one is a car in a garage. Even if we repair and clean up the peroperty, I am afraid that we will not be able to rent the house to new tenant because of former tenant’s car sitting in the garage. We tried to reach the former tenant with no success. What should we do to remove the car from garage to make the property rent-ready again? The peoperty is SFR near Nashville,TN. Also do you know a good property manager in that area?
As owner and landlord of property in any state you need to know your state’s law re T’s possessions and what, how and when LL can safely deal with them.*
Local LLs’ organizations and associations are normally great source for this info and it’s pretty simple today to go on line and look up any state’s laws re “Landlord/Tenant”.
*in WA State e.g. all the legal steps and time-frame for this are set out by state statutes.
Basically in Oklahoma the statutes say that I as a landlord have to safeguard a tennants “good” possessions for 30 days. Then they can be disposed of. After 30 days from tennant departure or abandonment, I would simply have it towed off.
Figures that you OKs would have a sensible law on this but we can bet that CA will have something wildly favorable to the “poor trampled tenant” to detriment of “Silas Marner” LL.
Over my time since law school I’ve seen LL/T laws that used to favor the LL, then started recognizing Ts rights, now rabidly favoring T & opposing the LL.
I’ve seen where these abandoned cars mysteriously end up parked on the street where a neighbor will then call complaining about an abandoned car. The city will then tag it; wait x amount of days, and then tow it.
[QUOTE=Natalie-VA;887206]I’ve seen where these abandoned cars mysteriously end up parked on the street where a neighbor will then call complaining about an abandoned car. The city will then tag it; wait x amount of days, and then tow it.
Call up a big bonded towing company in your area. They know the laws in regards to cars in your area. If this is a car that’s worth something, there’s a good chance that they would be willing to tow it into their inpound yard at their cost and risk and then go through all the proper and legal steps to contact the owner and bring it to auction, if it ends up being abandoned
Im in Indiana and have a tenant that I served a 10 day pay or quit last monday. I stopped to discuss this with him today and although they were home they chose to not answer the door. I then noticed that the van I told him to get off my property (doesnt belong to him) was still there and the tags were expired. I called the city and spoke to someone in code enforcement. Since the city has an ordinance on expired plates/non running vehicles he said he would go down and tag it with a 10 day notice. Once the 10 days are up if it hasnt been moved or the tags renewed I can call the police and they will come down and have it towed with all charges charged to the vehicle owner. Theyll put a lien on it for towing and storage.
Problem solved…I imagine it will probably cause me to add some fees for damaged doors and/or drywall ;(
I don’t have tenants anymore but when I did I had leftovers occur many times. So I added a clause to my leases that any and all personal property left behind by the tenant shall become the property of the landlord and may be disposed of in any manner selected by the landlord.
I do have a similar clause in my purchase contracts to cover crap sellers leave behind expecting me to store it until they get around to getting it, if they ever intended to. Also stops that professional tenant from claiming the item they left behind was valuable or worth X and asking for payment. I can say tough, it was crap to me and I sent it to the dump because after you vacated that property became mine as per our contract.
We just got a house through foreclosure, it was filled with junk, we filled a 30 yard dumpster, not including metal for scrap and what wouldn’t fit in the dumpster.
There was a car in the garage, a relatively new car. The neighbor said that the car was financed and the finance company was not being paid. So they have some kill switch type devise on the car that if you don’t pay they make the car inoperable. I had never heard of this devise before. I presume that they also have a GPS, Lojack type devise that also tells the finance company where the car is located. Well the car borrower apparently paid the car loan delinquency, the finance company turned the car back on, and they came by one day and drove off in their now functioning car; which of course saved me from having to dispose of the car, though I did think about the Natalie method.