I have a tenant that signed a lease for a unit in a 4 plex. They signed as a single female, and the lease only allows provision for her and her dog to live in the unit. There is no provision to sublease the unit on the lease and anyone staying there more than 7 days is not allowed.
I was speaking with other residents of the building and they are telling me that a guy routinely lives there, along with his girlfriend and their kid. None of this was disclosed and the tenant is fully aware of this breaching the lease.
However on confronting the tenant with this, she is saying that they are staying there only when she is not in town and that its never for 7 days or more in length.
I personally know this is BS and although she is paying rent on time, and I’m not interested in disrupting that income flow, the fact is that if anything goes on with these other residents, I wear it.
So how do landlords find proof of longer term tenancy? Surely the burden of proof is on our shoulders? I can’t justify or afford to hire a PI to stake out the place and get this information, but are there any other forms of tricks that others might share that has worked for them in these situations?
Forget it! You can’t prove that someone else is living there. The tenant will always say that the person is just visiting. Take it to court? The tenant will just lie (commit perjury). That is a constant in court proceedings with tenants (just happened to me yesterday). This is a VERY FREQUENT event with rental properties. The key here is to not sign longer term leases. If you had signed a month-to-month lease, you could simply give the tenant a 30 day notice and kick them out.
Point taken. They are only on a 6 month lease, and there’s only 4 months left on it, so I’ll probably just not renew. I was thinking much the same way. As long as they pay rent, I don’t care but what I can’t stand is being taken advantage of by these tenants. Anyway we’ll see how this plays out over the next few months…