We are first time owners of local small MHP. My question is regarding the one tenant, claiming he lived there 30 yrs. He refuses to return a signed lease, which was due April 1st. In violation of a list of rules and regs. He received my first intent to evict notice with listed violations last week. , planning to do second inspection next week. He’s doing some to make it look like he’s putting forth effort but our primary issue with him is his attitude and refusal to sign the lease. Our gut feeling is that we don’t want to continue having to deal with the bully in the sandbox no matter how long he lived there. The two previous owners of the MHP did not enforce rules and regs, or inspections. Appreciate others input on this. Thanks
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Even if he doesn’t sign the lease he’s bound by its terms and rules. Make sure your rules are posted in your park. If you haven’t already, give him a deadline to fix the issues in the second notice. Tell him that if the issues aren’t corrected by the deadline you will start the eviction process. To show that you are serious and mean business state that: Per State law I am required to give you a 30 day (or whatever quantity of days) notice to Quit because you are in violation of park rules. If you don’t correct the issue in 30 days I will start the eviction process. Once I pay the fee to file for eviction, the eviction process will start and I will not be able to stop it. Approximately 10 days after filing you will be given a notice to appear in court by the bailiff. The notice will have a date to appear so that you can state you case. If you haven’t corrected the issues the judge will determine that you are in violation of the park rules and will ultimately give me the eviction. Once you have an eviction on your record it will never go away and you will have a difficult time finding another place to live. If you are evicted, the judge will give you approximately 2 weeks to move your belongings and your home. During this time you will still be required to pay your rent. Note that the cost to permit, tear down, transport, set up and inspect a newly installed home is approximately $7,000. I encourage you to correct the issues.
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As tmperrault states a signed lease is not necessary. Once you send out a lease to be signed and returned as soon as a tenant pays rent under a new lease term the lease is valid.
To begin the process to evict you need to know whether you are in a pro tenant or pro landlord state. Eather way you must document and have solid proof to evict. Make sure every tenant has the rules and enforce them equally for all. Easier said then done when dealing with good tenants.
Concentrate on major infractions and create a trail of documentation to support your eviction application. It can be expensive to lose a eviction application so make sure you have plenty of support including multiple warnings on file to place into evidance.
You must give your tenant plenty of rope to hang himself in order to successfully evict in most cases.
Thank you for your input. Rules are posted. Wanting to know from your experience, is it better to pursue eviction of a bully or work with them to get in compliance? I feel like he certainly has a long list of violations. Just not sure how long I want to deal with his attitude and his place looking like trailer trash. Thanks
Each landlord has different standards. You can expect to hear that collecting rent is easier than evicting.
I delt with the same type of tenant when I purchased my community. She intimidated all other tenants and did not maintain her lot to community standards. She associated with very undesirable indivules outside the community. Her reputation in the township was well knowen and feared by most. Trailer trash to the max and definatly not to my communities standards. Most tenants expressed to me that I was taking a personal risk challenging her. She was a challange.
It was a no brainer for me, I pursued eviction.
My jurisdiction is extreamly pro tenant. It took 3 years, ten trips to our Landlord Tenant board and about $3500 in cost. I was well versed in the process and did not require a lawyer.
Ultimatly successful and worth the effort and every dime. All residents expressed genuine gratitude.
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Since you just took over the park, before you do what I suggested above, have a conversation with the tenant about your goals with turning around the community and that the community would be a much nicer place if he followed the rules. Don’t worry about not getting the lease. If he is paying his rent, give him some time to correct the violations (if he isn’t paying his rent, evict him right away). Even consider offering to help him or pay for a dumpster for him to put his trash in. It’s cheaper for you to pay to have his lot cleaned than it is to evict, have a vacant home, find a new tenant, etc. If after a few months he still hasn’t taken care of things reconsider evicting him.
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It is nice to give people/tenants the benifit of the doubt and hope they will change their ways but in reality people like thie will never change. They have no reason to since they believe they control their environment and everyone around them.
When you try to work with them they will take advantage of you and ultimatly revert back to their old ways. For this reason trying to befriend them is counter productive.
With this type of personality you have two options, either make plans and prepare documentation to evict them or live with the reality that they are what they are and leave them alone.
Make the decission to evict, bang your head against a brick wall trying to change them or turn a blind eye and ignore them.
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If there is one think I’ve learned about bullys, it is you have to stand up to them. They thrive on their bullying intimidating people. So just like in school where bullies don’t pick on kids who punch back, as an adult you find bullies in business matters and social matters. My philosophy is to give it back the best defense being a good offense. And even in a tenant friendly state like NY, the tenants are bound by the rules as long as they are lawful, not capricious, served correctly and tenants treated equally.
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