What Do You Do If Your Tenant Disappears?

Have any of you had to deal with this kind of situation?

You let a house to a tenant, and s/he pays her rent on time. After a little while you notice that the tenant hasn't paid their rent. When you go over to find out why the rent is being paid, you find the door locked, neighbors tell you the tenant hasn't been seen for a while. One of my neighbors has this problem. A tenant has disappeared for six months and he can't be reached on the phone either.

Since that apartment could be making the owner some money, should the landlord break the door, move the tenants stuff somewhere and rent the apartment to another tenant? Or should he wait until the tenant returns and have pay whatever is owed by then?

 

Sure, he should enter and repossess it's property, after all the tenant is missing right, not paying, so totally lost the right to the property.

 

In that case, the tenant basically broke the housing contract (depending on the contract of course, but that's usually the case) so of course the owner has the right to do whatever he or she wants to

 

The landlord is totally within their rights to enter the home and sell the possessions to attempt to recoup the loss of 6 months worth of rent. Why on earth someone would let it go that long is beyond me though. For all the landlord knows the tenant is dead in the apartment and no one bothered to do a welfare check or anything. Seriously who just lets something like that go for 6 months?

 

NO GUYS! a landlord is not suppose to break in and enter the tenants abode, let's take this step by step..
1) When leasing a property, a contract comes into play..
2) in that contract, there SHOULD be some stipulation as to termination, usually, none paying of rent is a breach of the contract. It is at this point ( when one has failed to pay rent) that a landlord can ask for repossession of the property, and can go to court to have this enforced.
3) Obviously, if a tenant has stopped paying rent and has left the property, he has given up his right to it... in effect, he has terminated the contract.

The owner is now left to try to recover the money he is owed, he must first SUE for this, not sell the tenants possessions, the landlord may be in big trouble if he sells the tenants things, you only sell WHAT IS YOURS.
One you have documented proof of the tenants behavior and you go to court with this and you win. You just relax. It is at that point when the judgment is made that the court will order possession to be sold or w.e is to be done to get you your money back.
There's a lot more to this kind of situation but I'm not going to be too elaborate.

 

I do not think the tenants must do that. It is always good to have collected enough amount of deposit so that you can take care of your losses.

 

If the tenant was someone who paid their rent on time or even paid in advance, the landlord wouldn't be too worried about that person defaulting on payment because they've proved in the past to be trustworthy. I believe the reason why the landlord let it go for that long is because there always are some empty apartments in the apartment building so he could count this one as one of the empty ones if he wanted to.

 

I agree with Gelsemium all the way...put his/her goods on auction...pay the debt owed and free up the house for someone willing to rent out...simple as that!...gone are days when i was sympathetic

 

Before renting out your property, you should state in a rent contract that if your property is abandoned for a certain period of time without knowing the whereabouts of the renter and also without being able to communicate with them, you can actually just break into the property and starting renting it out to someone else. Technically, if they have already disappeared for six months and you have never heard from them ever, you already have the right to do so. However, check your contract first to make sure you are not exposing yourself to any legal dispute.

What I also know is that if a renter does not pay for a certain period of time, you definitely have the right as the owner to push them away of the property and rent it out to someone else.