Foo - landlord/slumlord resources?

Hey, where are all the online resources for landlords? All I see are stuff for renters. Cali being a very renter-friendly, landlord-hostile place, I need to find some info and legal help on evictions and capping troublesome tenants.... grrrr....

I think you're onto something - there ARE NO resources for landlords.....

My wife recently had to sell her mom's house and there were two tenants to dislodge. One was just slow moving - the other was insane and destructive (think "Pacific Heights"....no, I'm NOT exaggerating - I was ready to apply for a gun permit...there were arrests and restraining orders involved).

I don't recall her finding anything but frustration and apologies from the authorities that they couldn't do more to help us.:notamused:

In Austin, I found the Austin Tenants Council actually helps landlords sometimes.

I don't know any specific resources, but Siu has a number of places she rents out I believe. You might want to PM her in case she doesn't see this thread.

I don't know of any resources, but I know it is difficult to be a landlord in California.

My ex-wife worked for a while in a corporate housing company that rented apartments, furnished them, and then sublet them, usually to corporations but also to individuals who needed temporary housing.

In general, if a tenant wanted to screw them, the company just got the shaft, and knew not to rent to that person any more.

For example, for eviction, if they hadn't received rent, and it was 30+ days late, they would give a 3 day notice. The tenant basically had 3 days to pay the rent. After the 3 days, the tenant was supposed to move out. Of course they wouldn't, so then the eviction process would start.

The process was tedious, and as I recall, any time the tenant filed an objection to the eviction or paid a partial rent payment, the eviction process started over.

In the couple of years she worked for the company, she ran into three or four tenants that really knew how to work the system and eviction took 4-6 months. And of course, they also left the apartments completely trashed when they left after living for 6 months rent free (having only paid their move-in fees.

They did their best to keep out this type of person by running credit checks etc, but it didn't always keep them out.

It's difficult anywhere. I'm a landlord in Ga (furnished condo)...damn renters destroyed my stuff...again.:crash:

Eviction is hard, get friendly with a marshall.

I don't know of any resources, but I know it is difficult to be a landlord in California.

My ex-wife worked for a while in a corporate housing company that rented apartments, furnished them, and then sublet them, usually to corporations but also to individuals who needed temporary housing.

In general, if a tenant wanted to screw them, the company just got the shaft, and knew not to rent to that person any more.

For example, for eviction, if they hadn't received rent, and it was 30+ days late, they would give a 3 day notice. The tenant basically had 3 days to pay the rent. After the 3 days, the tenant was supposed to move out. Of course they wouldn't, so then the eviction process would start.

The process was tedious, and as I recall, any time the tenant filed an objection to the eviction or paid a partial rent payment, the eviction process started over.

In the couple of years she worked for the company, she ran into three or four tenants that really knew how to work the system and eviction took 4-6 months. And of course, they also left the apartments completely trashed when they left after living for 6 months rent free (having only paid their move-in fees.

They did their best to keep out this type of person by running credit checks etc, but it didn't always keep them out.

yeah, sometimes you get scumbags as renters. my uncle does this for a living and he's had people take a hammer to the bathroom (toilet, tiles, bathtub) and piss all over the place before they left.

who the hell does that kind of stuff??

Mrlandlord.com q&a forum I found somewhat useful. There are many california landlords on the site. You have to sift through misinformation and sarcasm, but there are some knowledgeable people there.

Our guy wasn't just vindictive, he was insane.

He continuously changed the locks so we couldn't access his apt. He had surveillance cameras installed everywhere, played a drumset along with a stereo blasting at all hours of the night, broke down a reinforced and boarded up door to the rest of the house and chopped up the furniture with a band saw, stole framed family photos and the little girls' toys (police found them neatly arranged/displayed on his tables and shelves), cut up the heating oil tank and made a spill (turned the front lawn into a superfund site), overloaded the electric box (He had spliced in a high voltage line and was running four washers and dryers simultaneously) dug up a concrete foundation shed in the yard:eek:, and he had about four vans on the property each filled with junk and refuse.

Apparently he answered the door with a knife in his hand at one point when the cops came knocking.

Any wonder I was shopping for weapons? Only time in my life I ever considered such a thing...

apparently he found another apartment in the neighborhood - one of the neighbors told my wife the new landlord was already calling the police and trying to evict him about a week and a half later.:twitchy:

One possible explanation: Landlords are probably more likely to hire lawyers, whereas tenants may be doing it on their own.
A few things to look at here:
http://www.caltenantlaw.com/Res-Law.htm
http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/landlordbook/index.shtml
http://www.landlordtenantinfo.org/

Normally the people that boot out dead beats are the sheriffs departments. If you need info, maybe call them and ask for the division that does that stuff?

yes - we wound up going through the sheriff, and I believe the Fire Dept. - he was causing hazards.

Mrlandlord.com q&a forum I found somewhat useful. There are many california landlords on the site. You have to sift through misinformation and sarcasm, but there are some knowledgeable people there.

So it's like every other forum then.

So it's like every other forum then.



Except for Foo, the sarcasm-free zone.

Thanks for the info folks. The local sheriff has a housing office that's been helpful. I've gotten all the legal paperwork to get her out and she's actually gone. But I still have to fix up the place and send her deposit back. From all the damage that's done, the deposit won't cover it and I'll have to take her to small-claims to recover the additional amounts (yeah right, good luck getting her to pay). And she's got some wannabe attourney sending me threatening letters that I owe her 1/2 month's rent as well as deposit back. I'm not too worried about that as I've got enough blood-thirsty Jewish lawyers from NY to back me up.

BUT... I just wanted to get some unofficial tips on what else I can do. Like semi-shady stuff to make her life as miserable as possible. I was thinking some sort of genetic-therapy thing I can inject to make her smell like cat-urine and rotting-flesh for the rest of her life would be a good start...

Semi shady procedures will depend on only one thing, laws that must be worked around. California laws are unlike most other state's laws, so what I honestly would do is find a big realty company within California, call them up, explain the situation, and ask if they have any quick pointers. My experience working with and for ultra bitter realty agents makes me think that many, if not most, would be happy to give you ideas about how to stick it to ass hole tenants.

I put two hotels on Baltic and Mediterranean. That shuts them down.

Advise?

Use a real-estate agent in future and only accept tenants with good references from previous real-estate agents. The bad tenants have nowhere to go but to private landlords.

Anthony

When we were renting - I checked out NYS stuff that was on-line - anything from the renters rights to lead paint (big thing in Rochester NY as most houses built starting in the 20's all contain lead paint and asbestos) and we were quite dismayed to find little available. For some reason things turned around where (and with good things passed as well for the renter) the renter was always the person who was in the bad way and the landlord was the scumbag.

Mom and I looked in horror at the many pages of leadpaint issues and forms and such and if your tenant thought they had this or that and how we had to deal with it and .... ARGHHH!

That house was sold last September.

Check with your state/city on-line entries - plus if you do own places that are renting - you have to have a lawyer somewhere in your paperwork - use them as they can give you the most up to date information.

We got tired of the crap that qualified to live in a pristine apartment (I know cause I cleaned and painted) and the jerks who would qualify were nice for the first month or so and then the fights downstairs started (usually under my bedroom) and the cops came and then a couple of relatives visited and never left and then we saw things missing from the basement and then the scumbags even beotched about the fact that they couldn't park both vehicles in the backyard (versus one) and WHY CAN'T THEY USE THE GARAGE.

We got terribly tired.... and burnt out. No more.

(big thing in Rochester NY as most houses built starting in the 20's all contain lead paint and asbestos) .


Off topic, I know. But you will have an exceptionally hard time finding a house or apartment in the US that is certifiably asbestos free. Lead paint, that's getting rare. But asbestos is put into all kinds of building materials to this very day.

http://www.thelpa.com/lpa/landlord-tenant-law/california-landlord-tenant-law.html

Click on terminations and evictions.

In Georgia if they don't pay you can take the front door off the hinges.

Here in Texas, we have the Texas Apartment Assoc (http://www.taa.org/). They have a standard lease agreement that all property owners can use when renting property. The lease agreement is effective when deployed properly and fairly. Too often, our office is called in after managemant had given a tenant plenty of chances to pay their rent and when the landlord decides to try and put pressure at the last minute, the tenant gets mad and decides to call the city in. Problems would be avoided if property managers/ landlords would stop being wusses and start enforcing the policies of their communities.
I'll get off my soapbox now.
Ernest

In addition to my previous post, Cali must be similar to Texas in renter laws (I don't know). Texas is a homeowner state. That is, homeowners and even squatters have rights in Texas. I once had a case where a homeless man housed up in a apartment complex laundry room. Neither us nor the police could touch him 'cause he had rights. The property management had to file eviction writs in court for the constable to finally get him out. But even with that, the TAA lease agreement gives landlords lots of leverage in managing a property. Surely California has something similar.
Ernest

In Georgia if they don't pay you can take the front door off the hinges.

That's also a useful trick when people don't pay for a newly installed door. Makes finding a check book a lot easier for some people.

I know you're just venting Danno...and I have nothing to add but a story.

A friend of mine and his wife started doing very well with their restaurant. They owned a modest but nice house and started refurbishing it for kiddos on the way. I was honored that they hired me to do the trimwork, and I did some great work for them, pulling out all the creative stops. We gutted the place, tearing out the doors and replacing them with custom milled pine, cut in new french doors onto the decks, tore out the horrid and flimsy handrail down the central stairs, replacing it with 100% handmade newells, rails and balusters (honestly, some of my best work with buildouts, raised panels, flutes, custom caps, etc.), taking a shoddy 70's style house and transforming it into a very quaint and warm country cottage feel. I was quite proud to have made their home so attractive.

Then came the divorce.

The house sold to another mutual friend who loved all the work I'd done, moved in, but due to circumstances beyond his control had to move out of town shortly after. He begrudgingly handed the house over to property managers to rent out...who lived right next door. The first couple months went fine...then the rent stopped flowing.

The property managers played by the rules and eventually had no choice but to pay the Sheriff's office to serve an eviction notice..then waited. Nothing happened, so they started staying home days to watch what was going on next door. What they saw horrified them.

What came out later was that the Deputy that had gone to serve the warrant to the single woman tenant ended up hooking up with her, never serving the warrant! He'd even gone so far as to move some of his things into the house, including some of his large dogs. The woman also had dogs, and apparently while the "new couple" was off gallivanting, left the pack of dogs to fend for themselves...inside the house, even though there was a fenced yard.

Later, when the property managers were able to get a second notice served (this took some time as there was apparently some resistance to the Sheriff's serving "one of their own" an eviction notice), the mutual friend returned to see what could be salvaged. These poor dogs had apparently been left for criminally long amounts of time, and had become so neurotic they'd chewed on doors, chewed almost through the stair bannister...even chewed holes in the drywall. Thankfully he'd already stripped the carpet and padding out to the subfloor by the time he called me in, but after seeing the throwrug-sized urine stains (and the stench) in the subfloor, I felt very sorry for both him and the dogs. It took about three coats of primer to the subfloor before the smell had subsided enough for human habitation.

Hired because I'd done the original work, I replaced all the railings and trim exactly as they had been (nearly half the staircase), the house sold to another couple, and they in turn hired me a third time to do further repairs...but that's yet another story.

Best of luck with your tenant issues Danno.

Note to self: If I'm ever in the position to be renting out a property, burn it to the ground for the insurance money.

pretty much.

Note to self: If I'm ever in the position to be renting out a property, burn it to the ground for the insurance money.Including the tenants!

I had some issue with 1 tenant.. he was renting the apt to some other people ... he was making more money then me.. he rented out the other bedrooms to 4 other people.... damn asians.. there like roachs living in the place.. when he called me to fix the bathroom i found out that he rented the other rooms out to strangers.. so my place was like a hotel.... now when i rent out i make sure its 1 family ....

Including the tenants!

sure, that works too

I have rental properties in WV, and I find that the folks at PrePaidLawyers.com are WELL worth the $160 annual fee. They will provide you with leases & lead documents approved for your state, and can point you to the state/county/city laws and resources in your locality.

I bought a 3 bedroom house, totally renovated it, rented it to 2 boys (college) with MOM signing the lease. These boys evidently like to break doors, because when they left, every single interior door had been replaced with unfininshed doors, and every single door fram was broken. Yeah, we're going to court, and the parents are counter suing ME for MORE than I'm suing them for - they claim they had to drive 385 miles to the house on numerous occasssions to MOW THE LAWN!!! I can't wait for court!

Heh, heh... Yeah, I rented to a bratty college girl in this case. Her father lives about 100-miles away and so does their attourney. She's got them both wrapped around her finger with lies and they believe the little girl can do no harm, HAH!. My flesh-eating attourney's gonna smother them with endless motions for discovery and depositions galore until they beg for forgiveness. Gonna get statements from every single person she ever brought to the house, people she works with, her classmates, etc. etc. etc.

I hope your landshark of a lawyer is doing this for love, because the course of action you've described could be veeeery expensive, even if your lease agreement has an attorney fee clause (and assuming you win, and assuming you can collect).

For future reference:

Santa Barbara is the county seat, which means it's the home of the Santa Barbara Superior Court, which means there is a public law library in town. Use it. Ask the reference librarian to show you where The Rutter Group's book on Landlord/Tenant law is. Rutter Group books are excellent practitioner's guides to areas of California law. They are what lawyers use. They lay out the law and the step-by-step procedures.

Also, check out Nolo Press's website. Nolo Press puts out consistently good self-help legal guides covering aspects of California law. I'd be surprised if they don't have a book or two that would be useful for you. Even ones aimed at more of a renter's perspective will help you avoid some common pitfalls and give you a better sense of what to expect.