Video Summary

How do you get rid of an unwanted tenant?  Well, you turn to the Landlord-Tenant Act, and the easiest way is if they haven’t paid the rent, you provide them with a three-day notice as to the amount of unpaid rent, and the notice gives them three days to pay the rent or vacate.

If they pay you the rent within the three days, you must accept it.  If they do not pay it within the three days, well, then you can then file an eviction action to have them removed, and do not have to accept the rent after the three days expires.  The three days are counted, if you served a three-day notice on a Monday, the three days are not up until Friday. They’ve got three full days in which to pay the rent.

You say, “Well, I just don’t want them in there.”  Well, if they are a month-to-month tenant, meaning they don’t have a lease, then you can give them a 15-day notice prior to when the rent is due, and terminating their month-to-month tenancy, and then if they don’t move out you can file an action to evict them.

Let me caution you about self-help. You can’t go over there and do repairs and remove the front door. You can’t turn off the power, and if you do any of these shenanigans, well, then they can sue you as the landlord and get three times the amount of rent as damages.  So you don’t want to do that!

You can also give a tenant a seven-day notice if they’re violating some term of the lease or doing some kind of conduct as far as damaging the property or not complying with the certain ordinances, and that gives them seven days to come in compliance, and if they don’t, you can then file an eviction action. This is a little more difficult ‘cause you have to prove first that they were not in compliance with the lease provision, usually, and then have to show also that they never corrected it, which is a problem if you have to go to court to evict them.  So the easiest way, if they don’t pay the rent, is to give them a three-day notice.

And everybody wants to know, well, about how much do evictions cost?  And usually I would say you need to budget between $1,000.00 and $1,200.00 in order to see about getting a tenant out, and that’s in the event that there’s not a whole lot of hearings that you have to go to, and it’s not the eviction from hell.

So if you have some tenant problems, and you need a lawyer to help you with an eviction action, well, give me a call at 727-847-2288.

Video Summary

What can a tenant do if a landlord refused to repair the property? Well, the Landlord-Tenant Statute provides that you can give the landlord a seven-day notice to repair the property, and if they don’t, well, then you’re in a position to terminate your lease and vacate.

What I have found in talking with many tenants is they just want them to fix the property.  They really don’t want to move out or can’t afford to move out and probably the landlord would be tickled to death if the tenant moved out, but the remedy that you have is to give a notice to the landlord that he’s got seven days in which to repair the problem and if they don’t, well, then you’re in a position of terminating the lease.

I have done this for some of my tenants in apartment complexes and although they’ve done it properly in my opinion, the apartment complex still has turned over this matter to collection agencies and turned them over to credit bureaus, which you can then contest, but that’s about the only remedy you have, and so if you have some problems, well, you can give me a call at 727-847-2288.

Video Summary

What is a lease option?  Well, I like to rephrase that clause, and I’ll explain later that saying.  It should be a lease with an option to purchase.  It’s utilized whenever you want someone to purchase some property; however, they don’t have a lot of money to put down on the property, and they’re not able to obtain financing to purchase property for cash, yet they want to move into the property.  So what you do is you enter into a lease to lease them the property for a certain period of time, and then you attach to that an option to purchase.  Well, what does the option do?

It sets the price of a certain dollar amount so during the option period, which usually coincides with the lease term, the tenant is in a position to purchase the property for that amount.  So you have someone that is recovering from a foreclosure that needs some additional time to get their credit back up so they can go get a bank loan is one circumstance.  Other circumstances would be if they’re looking for the down payment to come as a result of a lawsuit settlement, or there are any number of scenarios wherein the parties do not have a sufficient down payment to be able to purchase the property.  And if you have a mortgage on the property, you’re not in a position to take back a mortgage, or if you did, it would be a wraparound mortgage.

Now one of the advantages over a lease with the option to purchase versus a sale of the property under an agreement per deed or a deed in mortgage is that the foreclosure process takes about a year to accomplish, and is very expensive.  It will probably cost in the neighborhood of $3,500.00 to $5,000.00 to foreclose.  Whereas with a lease with an option to purchase, you’re looking at an eviction action, which would take approximately 30 to 45 days in which to get rid of the tenant if they failed to make the payments.

Now the term “lease option” is a problem if you combine the lease payments with the option payments.  Then it can be considered an agreement for deed, and you can be required to foreclose those.  So it’s very important that if you’re going to enter into a lease with an option to purchase that you specify or keep the option separate from the lease.  Although it would be contained in the lease, it needs to be very clear that they are two separate rights: one is tenancy, and the other is the option to purchase.

So if you’re interested in selling your property under a lease with an option to purchase, well, give me a call at 727-847-2288.  If you’re going to enter into a lease with an option to purchase, and you’re concerned about the landlord, I suggest you give me a call, and it might do well to do a title search to make sure that the property isn’t in foreclosure; that the mortgage on the property does not exceed the purchase price.  So that once you’re in a position to purchase the property, you know that the seller will be in a position to sell it to you.

So if you have questions, give me a call at 847-2288.

Thank you.

Video Summary

Does a final judgment of divorce convey real property?  It can convey real property; however you have to have express language that the judgment serves as a conveyance.  In particular when we have these final judgments that are done by the parties rarely do they provide for the judgment to serve as a conveyance of the property to the one particular spouse who’s supposed to receive it.

Some of the final judgments I see prepared by divorce counsel they say that the other party is to execute a deed conveying the real property.  So the proper language that needs to be incorporated in a final judgment of a divorce is that the judgment serves as a conveyance to real property from one spouse to the other. So if you want the final judgment to convey real property to one spouse, to the other you need to pay particular attention to the wording in the final judgment.

There is language that can be used in deeds whereby a spouse conveys their interest to the other spouse. If there’s a mortgage on the property ordinarily they would require documentary stamps.  However, if it is their homestead property and it is being conveyed pursuant to a marital settlement agreement and divorce proceeding then the Department of Revenue does not require the documentary stamp be placed on the conveyance.

If, however, we have more property than just the home then other property that is conveyed from one spouse to the other, pursuant to a marital settlement agreement, would require documentary stamps on the transfer based upon one-half of the unpaid balance of the mortgage that encumbers it.  If there’s no mortgage on the property then there would not be any documentary stamps.

So if you are getting divorced and you want the final judgment of divorce to convey the real property from one spouse to the other you need to pay particular attention to the judgment that is entered.  And it is a great idea to provide for that so that there is not a problem with judgments attaching to the spouse who is supposed to convey the property, their interest after their divorced or preexisting judgments.

So if you need some help with that well give me a call at 727-847-2288.

Video Summary

What happens to past due property tax when I short sell the home? Well that’s a fairly easy one. It’s when you short sell your home the property taxes are paid out of closing money and it reduces the amount that your lender receives or agrees to take in satisfaction of their lien and hopefully releases you from any liability on the loan. So those taxes are paid just like any other closing, when you close on your property and sell it to someone else. The back due taxes are paid, since they’re a lien against the real property rather than your personal obligation. So they are all taken care of and it is only up to you to negotiate with your lender that they’ll take the net proceeds less the payment of the real property taxes in satisfaction of the mortgage.

So if you have any questions, well give me a call at 727-847-2288.