What else can I say, the F word basically defines the
day. I had just settled into my chair at
the office when my phone rang, it was Karen calling. Strange, I just talked with her when I was
driving to work, as she is currently out of town.
“Did you hear about what was going on at our house in Georgia?” she asked. A bad feeling quickly settled into my stomach. She
continued, “Neighbor X said the police were at the house last night.” Then the day
took a turn for the worse. F…
I quickly went to the local paper’s website and… “You’ve got
to be F’n kidding me” I said to myself.
Evidently, I didn’t say it to myself; instead, I said it loud enough for the entire
office to hear. I spent the next hour or
two on the phone with neighbors, the local police and the insurance
company. Evidently our tenant was
housing more than just herself and her two kids... F…
The local police thought that the other item that was being
kept in the house was important enough to execute a “no knock” warrant on
Monday night. In case you were
wondering, “No knock” means just what it says: One swift application of force and a crew of
armed officers swarmed into the house leaving a mangled door in their
wake. I don’t imagine they said “housekeeping”
(use a high pitched voice) as they entered the house. Who is responsible for repairing that damaged
door you might wonder? That would be us,
the property owner. Evidently, once a
warrant is in hand, the police can do whatever they want. F…
The big surprise that I found after all of my phone calls? Our tenant was not arrested. They have only arrested her boyfriend and his
“business partner.” A lot of their
"merchandise" and other accessories were removed from our house and two other
houses in town that were raided, but she is still there. F…
Now we are left with a tenant that we don’t really want in
our nice little house in it’s quiet little neighborhood. What do we do now? I read through the lease that the tenant signed
and (fortunately) it does state that the tenant (or an acquaintances of the
tenant) cannot use the property for illegal activities. In our happy little peachy world, that is a
rule that is pretty F’n easy to follow.
EVIDENTLY NOT. I am going to go out on a limb and say that if the police
felt it was worth bashing in the front door for, then I can surely deem it as
an illegal activity. They don’t typically come
knocking just to say “hello.” Now we have
justification for beginning the eviction process. F…
Before I get into
eviction, I just wanted to point out that eviction wasn’t something that we really
thought we would have to deal with when we decided to rent the house. “What are the odds that it would go so wrong
that we would have to kick someone out?” we thought. All we wanted was someone who wouldn’t trash
the place and would give us enough money so that we could pay that mortgage
each month. It sounded simple enough,
but evidently that house isn’t in Mayberry.
Now all I can say is F…
Since it is the holiday season, I am imagining the eviction process
going something like this, “Merry F’n Christmas, now give me enough money to
fix the door, gather all your $%&# and get your sorry @$$ out of our house.” However, that would be too easy and twistedly
rewarding for me (FYI: according to
spell check, twistedly is a new, but I think appropriately used word). Instead, eviction is a drawn out process that
is definitely geared towards protecting the renter. F…
I would say that this case is pretty straight forward: You did something that was a clear violation of
our lease agreement and the police damaged our house to gain access to it. Therefore, you need to get the F out of our
house. Unfortunately, it isn’t that
simple and now we have to start jumping through legal hoops so we don’t get
sued. That would just be our luck, getting
sued for trying to throw out a single mom and her kids during Christmas time. F…
Step one: Ask the
tenant to leave. Problem A: we live 12 hours away and she wouldn’t answer
the phone calls, text messages or emails that I sent today. I guess that I can’t say that I’m surprised
that she isn’t answering. Would
you? Perhaps she didn’t think that we
would find out about the police knocking in the door? We are
12 hours away, after all. Now we get to
do our part to try to keep the USPS afloat.
Hello certified mail; please let me know when she gets this letter.
Step two: If she
doesn’t move out on her own after that letter (everyone, please pray that she
does), then we have to start submitting paper work to the Magistrate
Court. Just the thought of that makes me
think one thought: F…
Step three: The court
reviews that paperwork, hopefully agrees with us (Police activity = lease
violation) and then issues a notice to the tenant.
Step four: We wait
for a specified period of time for the tenant to respond. If she doesn’t respond, then it goes to step
5. If she responds and wants to try to
stay in the house, then we go to court. F…
Step five: Pay the
sheriff’s department to supervise a crew to remove all the tenant’s belongings
from the house, placing them in a specified location in the front yard.
I’m sure that the neighbors will love that.
There has to be a specific number of people assigned to this task and it
has to be completed in 2 hours or less.
The sheriff is basically there to keep the peace. Sounds like fun, right? I say F…
Step six:
Decide if we are going to A: try renting the house again (what are the
odds of it going bad twice?!) or B: put it
back up for sale, no reasonable offer refused.
I am leaning towards plan B and, unfortunately, I am pretty sure Karen
is leaning towards plan A. F...
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