Monday 3 March 2014

3 Biggest Mistakes You Can Make with Abandoned Rentals



It is now the 5th of the month and you are going through your rent collections for your Phoenix rental properties and notice one payment is missing.  "That's odd", you think to your self - this tenant is never late plus you just spoke to them two weeks ago about an HOA violation and it seemed as if they were going to bring the property into HOA compliance.

You wait another day to see if the rent comes in.  You receive nothing so you call and text but there is no answer so you try again and in day or two and now their phone is no longer in service.  So, you assume they are gone, go to the property and make mistake #1 - you enter the property without proper notice and change the locks.  If your tenant is still living there you have now opened yourself up to litigation.  Even if you think the tenant has abandoned you still must go through the proper procedures of posting notice and waiting the legal time frame before taking back possession.  

After you change the locks you walk through the property and see some of the tenant items still in the home so you decide to package them up and take them to the dumpster - after all they didn't pay rent so the least they can do is clean up after themselves.  Well, you've just committed mistake #2 & 3 - AFTER you get legal possession of the property back you must store the tenant items for the legal time frame and then sell all possessions and apply any monies to the tenant's outstanding balance.


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