Hi everyone,
I'm a landlord and own a home in Danbury, Ct. While educated, I'm a relatively new landlord and not familiar with the detail of attorney processes and evictions..
My home is rented to a tenant who originally planned on buying the house last year but we learned in December that she wont be able to for a long time, much longer than i was told when we all agreed to her lease option arrangement. When the purchase agreement lapsed, her attorney(admittedly) failed to ask mine for a mortgage contingency extension so my attorney pushed for me to keep the money.
Since the lease-option agreement ran out, my tenant transitioned as agreed to a month-to-month rental. She was to rent the home and allow showings of new buyers as needed.
There have been issues with those showings since day 1. My tenant has stopped paying any new rent till my attorney gave her all her deposit monies back.
My attorney finally worked with her attny and made a 'verbal' agreement that her purchase deposit be used for rent monies. I had encouraged this be put in writing and after about a month he did send it to her last week. However, by then we had been talking about eviction and he included language in the letter saying that she'd pay some of his fees and agree to not argue a 'notice to quit' - once received, my tenant completed denied that she made a verbal agreement a month ago. my attny was very heated when he heard this and urged me to agree to let him do his job.
i agreed and told me that he filed a notice to quit.. overlapping that action was my tenant reaching out to me and she and I came to agree to new terms for her receiving some money back upon leaving the home in June
I have two big questions, among others..
1) Regarding my attorney's actions, should i be able to receive "my" money from my attorney who supposedly has it all seperate within an escrow account? my attny is adamant that he needs my tenant to sign something saying that she agrees to use the funds as rent and will not sue or disagree with an eviction. this seems odd to me that I am not able to receive the funds and i worry that he has comingled them. (i've learned recently that apparently he's done that before). At this point I have not received any rental monies since January.
2) if a 'notice to quit' was given to my tenant, can that be undone or stopped? If I wanted to hold off on an eviction process, what is the best next step? (I was told that my filing of a 'notice' will actually leave that on my tenant's permanent record, thus preventing her renting elsewhere?) If I just hold off on the actual eviction, would that effectively remove any negative aspects of a 'notice' being given?
At this point I do not want to get dragged into a fight with my tenant and even another one with own attorney.. i'm willing to lose some money and walk away from the mess to put it behind us all because our family has several other big issues we are working through.
Sorry if I included too much in the above, I welcome any feedback/insights - thank you!
I'm a landlord and own a home in Danbury, Ct. While educated, I'm a relatively new landlord and not familiar with the detail of attorney processes and evictions..
My home is rented to a tenant who originally planned on buying the house last year but we learned in December that she wont be able to for a long time, much longer than i was told when we all agreed to her lease option arrangement. When the purchase agreement lapsed, her attorney(admittedly) failed to ask mine for a mortgage contingency extension so my attorney pushed for me to keep the money.
Since the lease-option agreement ran out, my tenant transitioned as agreed to a month-to-month rental. She was to rent the home and allow showings of new buyers as needed.
There have been issues with those showings since day 1. My tenant has stopped paying any new rent till my attorney gave her all her deposit monies back.
My attorney finally worked with her attny and made a 'verbal' agreement that her purchase deposit be used for rent monies. I had encouraged this be put in writing and after about a month he did send it to her last week. However, by then we had been talking about eviction and he included language in the letter saying that she'd pay some of his fees and agree to not argue a 'notice to quit' - once received, my tenant completed denied that she made a verbal agreement a month ago. my attny was very heated when he heard this and urged me to agree to let him do his job.
i agreed and told me that he filed a notice to quit.. overlapping that action was my tenant reaching out to me and she and I came to agree to new terms for her receiving some money back upon leaving the home in June
I have two big questions, among others..
1) Regarding my attorney's actions, should i be able to receive "my" money from my attorney who supposedly has it all seperate within an escrow account? my attny is adamant that he needs my tenant to sign something saying that she agrees to use the funds as rent and will not sue or disagree with an eviction. this seems odd to me that I am not able to receive the funds and i worry that he has comingled them. (i've learned recently that apparently he's done that before). At this point I have not received any rental monies since January.
2) if a 'notice to quit' was given to my tenant, can that be undone or stopped? If I wanted to hold off on an eviction process, what is the best next step? (I was told that my filing of a 'notice' will actually leave that on my tenant's permanent record, thus preventing her renting elsewhere?) If I just hold off on the actual eviction, would that effectively remove any negative aspects of a 'notice' being given?
At this point I do not want to get dragged into a fight with my tenant and even another one with own attorney.. i'm willing to lose some money and walk away from the mess to put it behind us all because our family has several other big issues we are working through.
Sorry if I included too much in the above, I welcome any feedback/insights - thank you!
