# Rental Nightmares



## cherokeelady (Jan 5, 2008)

We rented a home to a family, and it has turned out to be a real nightmare. The man is an alcholic, and bullies people even his own family. He has tried to tell my husband how he is going to do things around here. First of all this isn't his farm, it is ours. Seems he does as he pleases. He has crossed fence lines to hunt on our neighbors property and it is posted NO HUNTING. 

He talked us into putting in a garden and he said he would take care of it and would weed it. He hasn't done nothing to it, we did the tilling, getting out the rocks, watered it, used Miracle grow. When I went out to get some of my vegatables, he accused me of stealing his which I didn't. The man was drunk and baligerant and called me names. So he was served with an eviction noticed that night and the sheriff served him as well. 

I just recently found out that this is the 3rd time they have been evicted, and they are putting on a big cring spill about how we attacked him, he and his wife are telling lies to out neighbors. They have called and told us how they are telling everyone how we attacked him. But thank God our neighbors know us so well and know how they are muchers, and looking for someone to prey on.

So beware of who you rent to.....run a background check on them, we will the next time we rent.


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## deaconjim (Oct 31, 2005)

We had a similar experience. We rented a house to a couple that seemed to be ok. After they moved in, we discovered that the husband was about to go to court for child molestation, his wife's mother and sister were in prison for murder, and she even admitted to us that they never pay rent. They move into a place and stay there as long as it takes to be evicted (and they know all the tricks to drag that out), and then move on. At one point, the wife even physically assaulted Rose in front of her kids.

Ours turned out a little better. I managed to force them out after about a week, and when they called the sherriff to stand by while they moved their stuff (because they were afraid of us!), the deputy came to our door and told Rose that these people were trouble and that she should stay as far away from them as possible. He said he was going to stay while they loaded their stuff so that he could watch _them_. He did try to get her to press charges, but she refused.


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## onthespot (Oct 7, 2007)

The one and only time I rented my home it was about the same. friends of friends, didn't do a background check. They leeched, mooched, destroyed, lied, you name it, I finally had enough and bought a Landlord's Law handbook or something like that from nolopress.com and did a do-it-yourself eviction. They bragged to their neighbors that it would take me three years to get them out of there, and they would end up owning the house before then by suing me. I had them out in ninety days, could have done it in sixty but I noticed a mistake I made in my first service and let the thirty days run out and started over and it went down to the wire, with the marshall posting the eviction notice and they moved out about a day before they were to be dragged out kicking and screaming. All that being said, i needed the rent money at the time and would have lost my home without renting it out, and if I had to do it over again, I would but I would do checks and require deposits and all of that. I also wouldn't wait long to evict. Pay or go, two choices. I am not such a chicken any more.


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## luvrulz (Feb 3, 2005)

Rental property is a big fat headache. I was a much better tenant than the ones I had rented to.... It made me crazy and I sold the duplex after about 10 years of that abuse! It was great cause you could write off everything!!! But the headaches became monumental. Good luck!


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## prairiedog (Jan 18, 2007)

people like that sure make it hard on us good renters


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## adamtheha (Mar 14, 2007)

We are currently renting while we build our new homestead on a quarter section outside the city. When we told our landlord that we would be moving, he was actually dissappointed, and tried to convince me to stay a little longer! I never realized that renting out a house was such a crapshoot! You get applications from the worst sort of people, and they try to screw you at every turn.


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## Scott SW Ohio (Sep 20, 2003)

At one time my wife and I owned three houses in Michigan, two of which we had lived in and another that we bought as an investment - and ended up renting them all. The houses started as fixer-uppers which we renovated ourselves at no great cost. The first house (which we rented the longest, 14 years) was paid for after a year so it generated enough cash flow to make the down payments to buy the other two. In the late 1990s, when the housing market had improved and as our renters moved on, we sold the houses and made quite a lot of money. 

We had a few not-so-great renters but the majority were good, and several were flat out terrific. A couple of the families made significant improvements to the houses, for which we were very grateful. 

Most people I know that have tried their hand as landlords had bad experiences and got out of it quickly, so I guess we were lucky. But our approach, which seemed to work, was to offer folks a nicer than average house at a below market rent. That got us a lot of rental applications, and we were then able to pick someone that we thought would be really good.


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## Dave (May 10, 2002)

Many of these problems could be avoided with just a few precautions.

Run a credit check. Well worth the $30.

Check their local county court records. Many of them can be searched online for free. The rest for free at the courthouse. You will see if they have any criminal, traffic or civil records, evictions, judgements, liens, etc. This is the same thing you'd pay for in a background search which can get expensive.

Check the Federal court records @ http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/ You'll need to set up an account but it's free if you have less than $10 worth of searches per quarter(searches are cheap). Here you can check for bankruptcy and other federal court records.

Just doing those 3 things can exclude most worthless tentants. And you don't need to spend a fortune to find out.

A visit to their current residence can give you good insight. Just "drop by" for some reason in a friendly manner and observe. Even a look inside someones vehicle can tell you how good they'll care for your property.


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## moongirl (May 19, 2006)

adamtheha said:


> We are currently renting while we build our new homestead on a quarter section outside the city. When we told our landlord that we would be moving, he was actually dissappointed, and tried to convince me to stay a little longer! I never realized that renting out a house was such a crapshoot! You get applications from the worst sort of people, and they try to screw you at every turn.


We rent and have been lucky enough to have a great landlord. But she also tells us how much she appreciates us all the time. Every July she gives us an anniversary gift! Usually money to take the kids to the fair when it is in town. We get to garden some and have become very friendly with her. I always tell her we do the things we do around here because we are apartment renters with homeowner mentalities. Sometimes good landlords are just as hard to find as good tenants are.


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## cherokeelady (Jan 5, 2008)

Thanks Dave for the US Court site......thank you all for your helpful hints and suggestions. These people are really a bunch of white trash as far as I'm concern. Their cars are in terrible shape, his smells of old dried blood where he brought home a deer in his station wagon and never cleaned up the blood. You talk about smell......it will make you gag. Hers is always full of trash, neither one of them are every cleaned out or washed.

I did find out that this is their 4th eviction. Had we had known that in the beginning they would of never gotten the place.

I guess they think we can't make them move....they have made no effort to pack or look for a place......I think when the sherriff sets them out, we will watch from our lawn chairs. People like this I don't feel sorry for.


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## Skykomish (May 28, 2008)

I just had my "tenants from he**" experience that ended in May. Granted it was partly my fault because their screening was really lax (we were desperate for rent, I would have lost my house otherwise) They always paid rent on time but since they were only supposed to be there for 5 months we just left the utilities in my name (BIG mistake). Not only did they completely trash the place, they ran up the utility bills in my name and disappeared. One of them even tried to squat the house. The garage was FULL of trash its like they didn't know there was a trash service 20 feet from there. There was furniture that was used as dog beds and a mattress that reeked to high heaven. All in all we covered almost all of the cost of getting the place back to rentable status through their deposit. (including the utility bills) But what a headache and a lot of work. My DH had to spend about a week and a half hauling stuff to the dump, and we would never have had it ready in time for our new tenants without the help of some wonderful people around here that cleaned and fixed the mold problem (apparently the basement flooded during the tornado and they never told us) in 3 days. But now we have the world's BEST tenants.. he is always fixing stuff around the house and he actually brought our broken down car up to our new house for us- just so we wouldn't get a ticket for leaving it on the street. Wow now talk about nice! They normally buy houses though so I doubt I'll get to keep them for long :/


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## obleo+6 (Jul 21, 2008)

We're an older couple, if you will, and have been trying to find a small farm house to rent long term, somewhere in TN, Jackson, southern Jackson area and I guess one bitten, twice shy by most owners. We have excellent references, have no debt, no children, well, 6 if you count chickens as children LOL..... we both still work, cause we like to, and still we don't seem to "qualify".

I really can't blame owners though, years ago I owned a cleaning servie and cleaned for a real estate place that rented homes and the messsssssss that people left was unbelievable!!! And most of the time it was AFTER they were evicted. Sometimes it took two weeks just to get the stuff out...then I had to clean it which took another week...ugh!

Sure does give us good guys a hard time....but my heart goes out to anyone who has to deal with this, you work so hard only to have someone come along and tear it apart because you trusted them...kinda hurts in many ways.


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## cherokeelady (Jan 5, 2008)

Hello Obleo+6, yes it hurts, especially when we have been good to these people and have helped them out in alot of ways. This is the thanks we get. It has gotten even worse since my last posting. We have called the sherriff and there is just nothing we can do till it goes to court, which I think it will. They aren't even looking for a place to live. I think they are going to have to be put out in the middle of the gravel road. That is what the sheriff will do after we go to court. Seems like the tenent has more rights than the landlords and they can do what ever they want and nothing can be done. They come up and steal my vegtables from my garden while we are at work. They have trash in the yard and on the back porch. I hate to see what the inside looks like. She isn't a good housekeeper anyway. Everytime I have been there, there was dirty dishes everywhere, even in the livingroom, dirty clothes thrown all over. It just makes me sick to see the house trashed knowing how hard we worked to fix it up. What really gets me is this man claims to be a Christian.......well, that is what keeps alot of people away from church is because of people like that. I am a christian and I never acted like that. We rented and we always took care of the place as if it was ours. In fact it would look better . Where is the law, and why won't they protect the landlord from people who is nothing but trash and wants to distroy other peoples property. Don't they think about how they would feel if it was there property?


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## obleo+6 (Jul 21, 2008)

cherokeelady,

No, they don't care and don't think about things like you wonder. They don't know what it's like to be responsible for something and they don't WANT to know. If they did, then that would mean they'd have to take responsibility for their lives and they don't want to do that. They have lived their lives like this for years and it's natural to them to be this way. To them, they do what they do for as long as they can get away with it and then they move on, by force most of the time.

I and my DH are believers in the Lord also but.... I had a friend who always told me that if someone "claimed" to be a Christian, (you will know them by their fruits)...RUN!!!! LOL!!! And he normally wasn't wrong on that.
And it is people like that that give Christianity a bad name and in that case all you can do is pray that the Lord rattles their rafters before it's too late and leave it in His hands, which is tough to do sometimes, I know.

And yes, you're right about them having more rights than you do. I was a bail bondsman for about 10 years and I can tell you that the laws are written FOR the criminals and not the law abiding Citizen. Used to mad me madder than a wet hen to see criminals get more from the system than the victims. Ugh! I just hated that job.

Prayers will be with you to get them out asap and maybe let the Lord lead you next time you are looking for a tenant. Or as some call it, "going with your gut feeling"....I'm so sorry you got taken like this, it's so difficult, especially in this day and time.

I can suggest taking pictures as time goes on for the record, dates, time of day, etc. I'm sure the courts will find in your favor, but you never know. Best to be prepared no matter what.

God bless,

obleo+6


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## mnn2501 (Apr 2, 2008)

My one and only experience renting out a house I owned cured me. These were people we knew from Church. Won't even go into all the nasty details, but will just say they were not the kind of people we thought they were.


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## cherokeelady (Jan 5, 2008)

Obleo+6 and mnn2501, thanks for the advise, I have taken some pictures. One of the garden where he claims the zuchini is his.....there are 20 zuchini plants, 9 are mine, the other 11 are his, but somehow he thinks 11 and 6 equals 11!! What school did he go to?

He had friends come over that was in a big pick-up truck with a trailer and boat and told them to back up in our yard!! They just barley missed my flag pole....you can see the tire marks in the grass. When is this stupid man going to stop? He is pushing buttons and my husband is about ready to put an end to him and his stupity. Evertime they do anything I call the sheriff so there is a record of it. I did contact their last 2 landlords and they told me the same thing, the man is a drunk, talked filfty to them, cussed all the time, made sexual remarks, one lady said when she went down to see when they would be completely out, he started cussing and throwing things at her. She said if we had to take them to court to get them out she would be glad to drive all the way down here to testify against them. 
I am thinking seriously about just cutting the garden down. They never worked the garden, never watered it, pulled weeds, and I am on my 3rd box of Miracle Grow and yet they accuse me of stealing!! I don't have to steal from their plants. 

What really gets me is that they are telling people my husband and I are liers, everybody tells lies about them, everybody picks on them, everybody is trying to screw them over. HUMMMMMMMM.....this is the 3rd eviction in less than 1 1/2 yrs...I know it's not us. But is how alcholics are, which we didn't know he was an alcholic until about a month after they moved in. Had we had known they wouldn't of gotten the place. But we felt sorry for them, they had no place to go and have 3 kids. Being soft hearted doesn't pay.


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## big rockpile (Feb 24, 2003)

I had an Older Couple renting I never had a problem with them.I finally sold the House to them.

Had one Girl renting she drank pretty heavy,but always kept good care of the House.She had a Son that had Health problems,she came over and got me one morning,seems her Son had died durring the night and needed me to help her.She couldn't live there after that.

Had one house the Guy decided to get drunk and shoot it full of holes.

Had some renters burn one of my Houses with a Flue Fire,they was using Green Wood.

Then the one that got me out of renting.Had a Family moving in,the Guy had been working on a Tractor had Gas on him.Well he went down to light the Hot water Heater,caught his clothes on fire,ran up the Stairs caught the whole house on fire.He died week later.Then his family tried to sue me.Thats when I said I had had enough.

big rockpile


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## willow_girl (Dec 7, 2002)

Part of the problem is the fact that in recent years, mortgage companies would write loans to practically anyone with a pulse! As a result, most people who had anything at all going for them could afford to buy something, and generally did. 

It boggles my mind that people would rent out a property to strangers without running a background check. Sorry, but that's asking for trouble! 

I have found that selling on a land contract is preferable to renting. Buyers generally will do a better job of taking care of the property than renters. And it seems very often the buyers don't follow through on the purchase, for whatever reason, and the seller ends up reclaiming the property, while keeping the downpayment and all monthly payments. 
I knew a man who made a considerable amount of money selling the same handful of houses, over and over, on land contracts.


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## AngieM2 (May 10, 2002)

I agree with Rose2005. I've known of someone having difficulties with a sold piece of property.

So, do due diligence and check everything out that you can.
And document, document, document.

Angie


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## Guest (Aug 19, 2008)

My landlady called me two nights ago..she explained that since I was "such a good renter", and not only paid the rent on time, but also often paid it early, that she and her husband wanted to do everything possible to keep me here..LOL..
This lovely home is an oldie..built by her grandfather in 1910..it's VERY hard to heat in the Winter..sooooooooooooo, she went on to tell me that she and her DH had decided to REDUCE my rent..say what?? Yupper..she dropped the rent from $450/month to $300/month for October through March..I'm rarely speechless, but I certainly was when I heard that..What lovely folks!!

BTW, before she rented to me, she made it her business to check my references from my two years in apartment living..good for her!!


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