Some of you may have read my earlier post about our relief of finally finding tenants for our home in Tampa. I thought I would give an update on the mess and craziness that has ensued. We got a call from our management company while I was in California telling us that they had found some renters for our home. It was 3 young college students( 2 boys, 1 girl) that all passed the credit, criminal, and rental checks. It seemed strange because we lived pretty far from the college, but we didn't really have a reason to turn them down. The management said they seemed nice and they put up all the money needed. We went ahead and accepted them with a year lease. I was so excited to finally find someone! It didn't last long..........
They day after they moved in, we received calls from both of our neighbors notifying us that the night before, the tenants had a huge, out of control party till 4 a.m. There was loud cursing, fighting on the driveway, beer bottles left around and just a big mess. Apparently they had also left underwear on the lawn. I was really annoyed, but thought "ok, it's their first night there, maybe they just wanted to have a move-in party and it just got out of had."One of my neighbors is a police officer and he was pretty mad. He went over and put some fear in them the next day and they explained how sorry they were and that it would never happen again. I apologized to my neighbors who both have young children and hoped that everything would be fine.
Then the weekend came. Friday night, after being there only a few days, it happened again. They had a party loud enough that it kept people up across the street all night. There was another fight outside the house, beer bottles left in my neighbors yards, they were speeding up and down the street and shouting obscenities at each other. It was disturbing the whole street. We lived in a very quiet, family neighborhood with an association and nice, decent people. They were treating it like a frat house and had no respect for the neighbors. We called the management and let them know about the complaints and they gave them a warning. If it happened again, they could get evicted. I wanted to give them a chance, but if they were leaving trash and fighting outside, I wondered what was happening to the inside.
Then, not even a few days go by before I get another call about them. A neighbor across the street came out early in the morning to find extremely offensive, nasty language written in chalk across our driveway. She took a picture of it and sent it to the Clubhouse manager in the neighborhood. I got a copy of the picture and sent it to our management. After seeing the language written, (which I could never repeat outloud) they were absolutely irate. With some of the language, they felt it could be characterized as a hate crime. They decided that there was no other choice than to evict them. Apparently, the tenants friends wrote it as a prank and thought it wouldn't be a big deal. Again, probably at a frat house it would be funny, but not in a neighborhood where kids are walking to school.
They also had a dog without our permission and had 2 more people living there that were not on the lease. To their defense, they did apologize again to our neighbors who said that they seemed like nice kids, it was just the trash they were inviting over that was the problem. Even still, they must be responsible for who they associate with.
The management met with them and let them know that this was unacceptable. If they left on their own in 7 days, they would be let out of the lease without having to be evicted and they could have their deposit back (minus damages). Otherwise, we would go through the eviction process. It's always better to part peacefully since and eviction takes longer and costs more.
So, after living there only 2 weeks, they are moving out and we are looking for new tenants.
Back to the drawing board! We are just praying that we will get someone SOON! We don't want to have this baby and still have to worry about our house in Florida.
*SIGH*
What a mess.
3 comments:
Haha! We just got a call from the mgt. company stating that our tennants can't afford to make rent anymore. We need to lower the rent $300 a month or they have to move out. The contract we signed with them states they owe the full amount for a year or we evict them. We have not decided what we are going to do yet but I think we may be in the same position as you in a few weeks! Yeah! The joy of the Florida housing market.
Sad! I hope you can find some better renters soon! Good luck with all that! Things will work out for you.
wow, that sounds horrible. i would hate to deal with that, i'm so sorry.
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