Landlord Question and Answer Forum

Tenant disposed of our property without our permission

We have two properties, a 130 year Victorian house and a guest house behind it. In the main house, we have a trouble tenant. She was late on payments and the bounced a check that was only paid after we posted a 3 Day Notice to Pay or Vacate. Since then, she's become extremely belligerent. The yard between the two houses had a lot of antique statuary (in fact, this yard was featured in Architectural Digest). We recently noticed many outdoor items were missing. Before we could even contact her, she sent an email, saying that a "microburst" occurred 10 days prior and our items were broken or carried away by the wind (of the 19 items gone, at least 6 were over 100 pounds). She went on about how she took on herself to clean everything up and had it hauled away. She did not itemize what was supposedly broken, but just sad "if it's missing, it was blown away". I called the neighbors who couldn't remember such a wind . I don't believe her for a moment. What can I do?

Call the police. Call your insurance Co. Hopefully you are friendly with a neighbor who will say they saw the stuff getting loaded up. Good relations with the other tennent I hope? Kiss everything else goodbye also, hope you have been in the house to inspect. Maybe it's still inside?

Posted by Doug F, MT on Tuesday, September 07, 2010