tenant Disputes
Do you have difficult tenants for your Silicon Valley rentals? Is rent collection a challenge? Do they often violate the lease agreement terms?
Well, you are not alone. We have difficult tenants despite our rigorous tenant screening. We have written before about a tenant who was raising livestock (chickens) in clear violation of their Los Gatos rental lease.
So, how did we deal with these tenants? Here are the top 3 options to deal with bad tenants:
Serve notice: Serve your bad tenants a notice that clearly identifies the violation of the lease terms. You can include a copy of the lease temrs that are being violated. In the case of the Los Gatos tenants with illegal chickens, we added the pet policy in the residential lease agreement that was violated. Do not hesitate to include proof of the violation including photos of the damage.
Keep in mind that this notice is a legal document and you need to have proof of the recipe. So, if you are going to email your tenant, you need to make sure to flag the email to notify you when the tenant has opened it. This will eliminate the option for your tenant to claim that they never received this notice. If you are going to mail this notice you should send it with signature requirement that the USPS can obtain for you on delivery.
Propose a remedy: Once you have documented the violation, your notice should include the remedy and the cure you are seeking. If the violation has resulted in property damage you can include any estimates you have obtained to repair the damage. You can offer the tenants the option to fix the violation but if the repairs require permits, this might not be a viable option.
Eviction might be your only option: One of your options to deal with the bad tenants might be an eviction. But this is your nuclear option if all other options have failed since the tennts might damage the property and also not cooperate.
Contact Us if you have any rentals in Los Gatos, Campbell, Saratoga and San Jose to discuss your options.