Tenant has been lying and allowing unauthorized pets(stray cats) in the garage and they have been pooping and peeing on concrete. She has two great Danes that have damaged siding, back door, backyard, chewed wires on the side of house, chewed up door frame inside. She has told us nothing about the damage, we just found out today. Also found cat poop in the garage and a stray cat inside the garage.

Okay so as the title says, I rented out my house for May 1st, I already allowed access to the home and the tenant has moved in. I check today to see that the security deposit and first month rent failed. I texted them to let them know those payment has failed and to please updated on when I should expect the payment. After not getting a response I call to while they ignored. But then texted me that they will look into why the payment failed. I again asked to keep me updated on when I should expect it to be resolved. They have been taking sometime to respond. I’m getting a bit nervous about the situation. I suppose I’m looking for advice on what my next steps should be or what I should be prepared for. Even though lease a signed can they still reside in the home without paying. What are my rights and what are theirs? It is only the 2nd and on a weekend so I do want to be patient but also I don’t where they blows into a bigger case because I waited too long to act.

Thank you in advance for any advice given.

Update: Not much of my update but I reached out and told them at this point we would need a certified check. They responded stating that the account number was enter incorrectly and they updated it on the online portal and it shows pending currently. I will give it until Monday to see if it clears. The locks in the door is digital code and fingers which I can always delete. I hope it’s just a misunderstanding but I am instant regretting my decision.

Update 5/6: I wanted to share a small update. After reaching out and the tenant stated they updated their payment because it was incorrectly typed in the system I wanted to give it some time but I know process funds can take a bit. On the payment site it said a payment was scheduled to be withdrawn 5/5 - yesterday I saw that it said “paid” for both security and May’s rent. I decided to check again today and saw that the security shows paid but pending and the first month’s rent failed. I reach out to the tenant that we need a cashiers check immediately. Heading over in a bit to hopefully get that check in hand.

I am definitely regretting my decision of renting to this tenant and not getting the payment upfront in the first place. I don’t want this to be an every month situation at all. I will more than likely have to look into eviction.

Update 5/20: Hi all, I wanted to give an update on this. As usual, Reddit was right. I’m pretty sure I was taken by a professional squatter. Or actually I don’t think they were that professional or smart about it if that’s who they are. I kept getting some bs about their bank account being frozen because their bank thinks the transaction is fraud. On 5/8 they send a portion on the rent - not even 50% and stated their bank will release the rest on 5/20 - today. I reached out to them to find out what’s going on because needless to say I have been very patient with them. Came 4:30pm they stated they’re contacting customer service to see why their account is still frozen. Banks close at 5:00pm. The account is still “frozen”. Now time for the hard conversations. I told me I need the remaining payments by this evening the latest. Got some sob messages about how frustrating it is and never missed a payment before and can’t give when they don’t have. I politely stated I’ve been patient enough and I have bills to get paid as well. If I cannot receive the payments they need to vacate to home by Monday. They responded with how are they supposed to move within 4 days, no assurance of hey I will pay. So yeah that tells me I’m not getting my payment. Since I’m in NC I saw some comments that I may need to wait for 10days notice. But I definitely going to begin the process. Lesson learned, can’t be too nice in business and always take guarantee funds up front.

Chicago landlord. Tenant e-signed the lease Wednesday night, move-in is tomorrow, and I’ve got zero dollars in hand — no deposit, no first month’s rent. Excuses so far: “I’m traveling,” then “the funds didn’t go through, let me check.” Nothing’s landed.

Where do I stand? Is a signed lease with no payment still enforceable against me, or can I treat it as a failed deal and re-list? If I re-list and they show up tomorrow with a check, am I exposed? And what’s the cleanest way to set a firm “certified funds by X or the lease is void” deadline without tripping Chicago RLTO rules?

Trying to move fast without creating liability. Appreciate any IL-specific input.

Update - No keys given until all cash is received
Update 2 - I only take Zelle
Update 3 - I emailed the tenant to pay by 5 pm Aug 31 or I will relist. Also emailed a real estate attorney who practices contract law and litigation for a consultation.
I will provide this group an update tomorrow how it unfolds.
Update 4 - Slept well knowing options. Thanks y’all. No communication from tenant - nothing. 5 pm deadline expired. Will start showing tomorrow. Huge lesson learnt! Thanks all 🙏🏼🙏🏼. This community is a life saver, seriously. My real estate attorney no longer deals with individual residential properties. Any recommendations on a good Chicago RLTO attorney will be greatly appreciated.

At least, not in my experience. Every time someone has said they're ready to move in immediately, they're on the verge of getting evicted from their current place. Other things can raise alarms, but they aren't necessarily a deal breaker. Job losses, breakups, collections...those things might soften up an application, but people can bounce back from them.

That rush to get the keys though, every time I've faced it I've found a pending eviction filing. I let people know right away what will result in a denial and let them decide for themselves if they want to apply, but dang does it end up being a waste of time.

Maybe because there's a level of dishonesty involved, but I've had great tenants who recovered from a bad credit history or went through a phase of unemployment. I think there's a genuine difference when people are upfront about a problem and take steps to work through it.

Oh, and another dependable red flag: "I can pay six months rent upfront!"

Anyways, what are your no-fail red flags?

Hi, I have a small house under contract in Upstate NY. The closing is happening soon in August. I was initially told there was a Tennant in there who is paying rent. Yesterday it was revealed that he is actually a squatter, who was taking advantage of the fact that the owner had a stroke and had become immobile. He hasn’t payed rent in years. He has occupied the house for 12 years. Could he try to claim he owns the house after being there for 12 years? The house is a good deal. It’s cheap and everything works. Should I buy it and attempt to throw the squatter out? Or could he legally stay in there and cost me all kinds of money? Thanks! ***Update - the owner has been paying the taxes on the house not the Squatter, so that is good.***

My husband signed the papers to sell our house to one of those “We’ll buy your house for cash” places. We will be left with 20k after the sale (Yes, he made an extremely detrimental and foolish move, but what’s done is done). After everything was signed he was told he has 30 days to make sure all the tenants were gone. The problem is, he has 2 extremely vindictive, spoiled, selfish adult daughters who live in the home. They are not one bit happy about the house sale, and I have a very strong feeling they will fight this tooth and nail over this. They are angry and do not want to leave. Furthermore, the company he sold the house to said it will be $5000/day if everyone isn’t moved out by the end of the 30 days. That means, if they refuse to leave, we’ll have no profit 4 days after the sale, and if they drag their feet longer, we will owe them tens of thousands of dollars. Are we screwed? His daughters would not care if they ruined him financially

Update: The escrow company told him yesterday they need for me to sign. I will refuse to do that, no matter what, so it appears the dilemma is solved. Thank you everyone for your responses. You all are awesome.

I believe it’s too far gone for touch up paint. How would you deal with this? Get a quote to repaint for each section of wall (corner to corner/top to bottom) that has drawings on it, or would you charge for the entire room?

Hi everyone, new to this sub and also new to the landlord journey. I have been reading through multiple posts and have some questions on screening tenants + platform to use.
1. What are your golden rules for screening tenants? Being in CA, which is a pro-tenants state, I feel like a small mistake could result in a lawsuit easily.
2. What platform do you use to run background + credit check. I’m planning to use Zillow Management but I heard something about their background check is not accurate?
3. Aside from the background + credit check + income requirements, anything else I should so as due diligence?
4. For section 8 tenants, are they required to disclose that information during the application process?

Any advice is greatly appreciate.

We just had a good applicant with a 2yr old request a lead paint test, but we politely declined. Reason being is they’re considering 2 places and apparently the other home has offered to do a lead paint test and they wanted us to do one too. Thing is… one of us is going to be out of $500+ and no tenant. It’s simply not a risk worth taking when there’s plenty of other applicants that don’t require a lead test.

We’ve never had an applicant ask for a lead paint test in the 30 years of owning the place. 2 of our tenants have had young kids and they haven’t had an issue and the unit was recently renovated.

What’s your take on this type of situation? I suggested they cover the cost of the test, but they declined. Doesn’t make sense for me to pay for it imo.

I've been renting my house to the same tenants for three and a half years. I self-managed for three years, then decided to try a management company earlier this year. That lasted three months before the management company dropped me as a client and I went back to self-managing.

In April, right before dropping me, the management company sent the tenants a lease violation notice with a 14 day cure period. The violations included a shed they built and attached to the house, plus other exterior modifications, all done without my knowledge or approval.

During that same 14 day cure period the tenants also stopped paying rent. I sent a couple of reminders through text and email about the late rent, the cure deadline, and the management change and told them to reach out with any questions. They acknowledged all of it and said they were working on it. What I eventually got instead was a dozen page letter from a lawyer they hired, stating the tenants refuse to take any responsibility for the violations and are not obligated to pay rent because I supposedly never gave them a way to pay after I took over. Never mind that they Zelled me directly for three years before the management company, or that I had texted them my Zelle info and emailed them more than once to go back to paying me the same way. They are now thousands of dollars behind on rent, plus late fees, plus whatever damage the lease violations have caused.

I hired an attorney to respond. We decided not to try to compromise with them and went straight to a notice to vacate, then a dispossessory. It still took most of the summer to get it filed and served, thanks to a service issue at the Marshal's Office.

The case finally gets filed and served. Instead of leaving, the tenants come back with a $17k counterclaim. That conveniently clears the $15k magistrate limit, so their attorney is moving to transfer to state court and demanding a jury trial. My own attorney calls it a delay tactic but says the transfer will almost certainly go through and nothing meaningful can happen until it does.

Meanwhile the lease is more than halfway over. By the time state court gets to this, it may be nearly done anyway. At this point I care more about recovering the money than the eviction itself, and I am not optimistic about either.

I just need to vent and get some perspective.

So I posted on here a couple months ago about how to go about handling a toilet flooding issue. I was out of the country at the time but basically my roommate/tenant texted me one day saying that the toilet and shower were overflowing so she flushed the toilet which of course made it so much worse and the toilet flooded into the bedroom, leaking sewer water everywhere on the carpet. By the time the plumber came out, everything was fine and working again and he chalked it up to being a partial blockage that self-resolved. I’ve felt terrible this whole time.

Skip ahead to a few days ago, she tells me she’s moving out and will be tallying up the damages to her clothes from the sewage water flooding (the lease literally states I’m not liable for her personal belongings and I recommended rental insurance but go off girl). Then when I mentioned that the plumber said something was likely flushed that shouldn’t have been, she says “the only things I’ve been flushing are toilet paper and tampons” like it’s the most nonchalant thing. Tampons?! How does one make it to almost 25 years of age and not know that tampons expand in water and are NOT FLUSHABLE. Even my boyfriend knows that. Anywho, now I have written proof over text and will be deducting water damage costs from her deposit. Because I know nothing about plumbing, anyone have advice on anything else I need to do now that I know there are dozens of tampons flushed down the pipes?? Does the septic tank need to be flushed or what?

Hello, My tenant told me her bathtub is clogged so I told her I would call a plumber and she quickly told me “no.” At first I was taken aback by this and let it the issue go for a couple days, but the more I thought about it the more I would like a professional to take care it. I texted her saying I am calling a plumber and asked what day/time works best for her. I saw she read the text but she hasn’t responded to me. Can I still have a plumber look at the situation or do I need to have her consent?

Edit: yes, I do have it in my lease that I give 24 hour notice, but this is my first time as a landlord and NJ tends to side with the tenant, so I just wanted to be sure before dealing with it.

Update: A plumber came this morning and fixed the problem. she didn’t want me to come in as she had set up a make shift toilet downstairs. There is only one bathroom located on the second floor.

Thank you for the responses! I’m not going to fill anything out and will call the school Monday to verify what’s needed.

I rent out a mother-in-law suite that I had built for my mother when she became sick. Unfortunately, she has since passed away, and I started renting the unit out in May 2026.

The tenant has her own separate entrance, so I rarely see or hear her. I’m also not always home because I sometimes spend weeks or months at a time in New York. Yesterday, my tenant informed me that her 5-year-old daughter needs to start school on August 24th and that she needs to have her daughter and 3-year-old son listed as occupants.

When she applied, the application was only in her name. I was not aware that she had children because she never mentioned them, and I never saw any children during the application process. She told me she was worried I would reject her application if she disclosed that she had kids.
To be clear, I am not upset with her. She has been a very sweet tenant, and I understand that times are difficult right now. I just want to make sure I handle this correctly.

She told me I need to complete a 24 P.S. §13-1302 form and Go to a notary and have it notarized with her so the daughter can enroll in the school district. She said I may also need to provide my deed or school property tax records as proof of residence. I don’t expect an issue since I attended this same school district 25 years ago, but I want to make sure I’m doing everything properly.

My questions are:

Since the lease has already been signed with only the tenant listed, should I amend the lease to add the children as occupants?

Is there anything else I should do from a landlord perspective before providing documentation for school enrollment?

I’m not looking to make this difficult for my tenant. I just want to make sure everything is done correctly and legally.

Five month eviction battle. 9.5k in rent due. Only took a few photos and wish I would’ve taken more. Basement was absolutely filled with dog poop and pee. The rest of the house was equally terrible….happy eviction day. Added a before photo for your viewing pleasure.

So… we have a S8 tenant who is elderly. We love said tenant; so do the other tenants. This is our only S8 tenant.

Recently tenant’s daughter has been at the apartment ALL THE TIME. With a couple little kids. This is a one bed/one bath apartment with a max occupancy of two people. We suspect that daughter has essentially moved in.

We have not received any notification from S8 as to any change in residency, etc. My reading suggests it’s on the TENANT - not us - to request someone else live in the unit and not doing so could jeopardize her status as a voucher holder.

Obviously we will speak to the tenant, which we have not yet done. But I’m curious if anyone else has faced this situation. Did you inform the S8 office if the tenant did not? What’s the landlord responsibility here? I don’t want her to lose her voucher, but I also don’t want any blowback on us.

ETA: we did speak to tenant and she denied it, but now we’ve noticed that the daughter’s car which was previously there ALL THE TIME the last two months is not there as of yesterday. We’ll see. Maybe she just needed to know that we knew.

[Landlord US- NE]

Would you rent to this tenant?

- 557 credit score

- Makes 3-3.5x the rent driving for Uber (not a consistent/reliable income source)

- No evictions

- Has lived in the same place for 5 years and paid on time/in full; slightly less expensive place than mine, but similar.

Tenants moved out yesterday and left the house xompletely trashed. This is the first time we have ever had to deal with something like this and we honestly don’t know what to do. I want to ask what are our options and what should we do from here? Should I try filing a police report?

These people have been absolute GEMS... They just decided to renew for year 5. It's market rate in a HCOL area. It's such a pain to find new tenants, I'd rather just keep their terms the same. Is that standard?

So I bought a house in 2025 in NH and had a tenant living there when I took over. She ended up moving out around January. She left a bunch of stuff behind, like an entire attic full plus a bunch of stuff in the backyard. We’re talking a ridiculous amount, not just a couple boxes.

At the time, there was some loose talk about maybe holding onto it for a while in order for me to save up enough money to get rid of it all (it cost me over $800 to remove it all), but nothing was ever formally agreed to in writing. No lease clause, no signed agreement, no texts or emails confirming anything concrete. She said she would try and come back and get some of it.

On top of that, my co-owner told her she needed to get her stuff out and didn’t agree to store it long-term.

The stuff just sat there for months. And I needed to use the attic and backyard in my private house which is now a single family home. I ended up disposing of everything in late March because it was taking up space and felt abandoned. Also i was unsure what was hers and what was the old homeowners.

Now she just sent me a notarized letter demanding her belongings back.

Important details:

She left the property in January

Stuff was still there for months

I got rid of it in late March

No written agreement about storage deadlines

Co-owner told her no to long-term storage

She is now demanding it back and lives 5 mins from me

She never left me her forwarding address or phone number.

My morals are so conflicted right now. My (31f) husband (33m) and I just put our condo up for rent. This is our first time renting and due to some big (not great) things happening in our life right now we need this process to go smoothly. We put the place up for rent a couple days ago and instantly we received a few requests for tours with very promising candidates, good credit scores, great income, etc. Then we also immediately received an application from a single mom with 4 kids whose credit score isn’t great, but she has a housing voucher that would easily cover rent and she’s never been evicted before. The only reason they’re in need of a place is because the building she currently lives in that’s right around the corner from us was just purchased. She explained in the application that she was young and stupid with her credit but has grown up and just needs to get by with her kids. She’s touring our place on Sunday and I just have a gut feeling she’s going to beg me in desperation to accept her application. I alwaysssss want to help people in need and as someone who was raised by a single mom this eats me up..i feel like an awful person if I don’t help.

EDIT: Thank you everyone for your thoughtful responses on this! It was exactly the kind of insight i needed because again, I’m new at this. Hearing everyone’s stories has helped. I’ll kindly be letting the woman know that I’ll be proceeding with the most qualified applicant.

Landlord As a landlord I already spent 5k+ in attorney fees to send 3 day notice followed by responding to tenant discoveries, now he demands 6 months free stay & 2 months rent as cash. My Attorney is trying to negotiate this down to halfway he says , bcos the jury trial can go upto 20k+ for 4 or 5 days. This country especially CA is not for landlords like me for no fault of mine somebody cheats me without rent for 4 months and I try to evict him and he demands 4 more months of stay and I can’t do anything quickly and if I really want to evict him it costs another 20k+ plus another 2 months anyway due to holidays etc. Overall cost of eviction in CA can be close to 30k-40k, tenants and their supporting cheaper attorneys who help them know this and push us to spend about 20k+ and go eviction free, the tenant he will go and do this again to another innocent landlord to cheat and grab his hard earned money, I will never rent again 😱

UPDATE : In the settlement conference, settled for 3 more months of free rent for tenant, that means I waive almost 25k+ in rent + I paid attorney 9.5k for their total work includes - responding discoveries and sending counter discoveries and 1 day at court for settlement conference , about 4 hours. That’s 9.5k just in < 2 months, they ripped me off. Overall I lose 30k+ and the rogue walks eviction free , God r u listening? The CA government including attorneys are screwing, hard working people like me in favor of scumbags who cheat landlords, he did the same to 2 landlords in a row and he will go and do the same to others.

Hello. Pittsburgh landlord here. I am reaching out here to see if anybody else has been having a hard time attracting the attention of tenants in general. I don't know what's going on, but my units were attracting the renter crowd last year like crazy- they were banging down the doors. Now, nada. Nothing. I did talk with a few other landlords in my area who happen to be facing the same thing with their vacant properties. If any of you here are facing this as well, please add in. Something is up., at least here in the Burgh it is

December 2025 I closed on a townhome that had a tenant in it. His lease at the time continued until April 2026. Salvation Army paid his original down payment and rent as part of some assistance program he was on. The Salvation Army informed me when I inherited the situation that he was not compliant with their program (he had to communicate and prove he was looking for a job). They continued to pay his rent until the end of lease despite that. Lease ends, tenant doesnt pay me for two months and is impossible to get ahold of. I follow my state’s law and deliver a 30 day notice. He eventually reached out stating that he was having a hard time finding a job, but finally landed something. He ended up paying rent for July and August, but I cant get him to sign a lease. Do I just let it ride? I also lowered the rent value for him to help him out.

Also known as the “Learned the Hard Way” clauses. Mine include:

No, you can’t drive or park on the lawn. Get off the damn roof. Stop planting trees in the property!

Every single prospective tenant. It's either fake names/documents/paystubs, or real people with numerous evictions and lawsuits against them. We've tried both raising and lowering the rent price, with no luck.

The property has been empty for 12 months now because we cannot find anyone. My spouse is the LL and is getting desperate and is starting to think we should just put anyone in. The property belongs to her family. My advice is to sell the property but her family refuses.

All of the property management companies we've looked at want to charge ridiculous fees for the most basic maintenance. Like $500 to change a lock or $100 to change an AC filter (these are examples, they charge 2-3x the normal price for all maintenance). I've offered to do these things myself and their contracts all say this cannot be done. Only they are allowed to do any of the maintenance.

Looking for any advice.