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No, I understand the point of Florida. By way of asking for clarification of Ken’s post I thought that was clear. Perhaps not. There are tenants rights in Florida. I’m not sure what he’s referring to with snowbirds?
You can’t have the issue be about tenants rights or a lease if you want to get them out. It has to be about safety in your home. Here in Boston if you call the police because you may be unsafe with a person in your home the police must come right away. If they think you are correct they will ask that person to leave immediately while they are still there. Too many times when they haven’t someone has been murdered. Usually it’s a spouse. Now they are very strict on it.
I had a guest who the police removed. A mother and daughter. They got into an argument. The daughter called the police. They came and realized that it was really a lot of nothing, they didn’t even go upstairs to talk to me. They explained that because of the nature of the call they had to ask the mother to leave. They stayed until she left. I slept through the whole thing, never knew what happened until the next day. The police in Boston do not take any chances with safety. They err on the side of safety. The do not want to read in the papers there’s been some violence because they did not take a complaint seriously.
So you just have to make it a safety issue and not a rental issue. The police will come and remove the person. Have a restraining order ready to go.
If you call the police and report that you feel unsafe in your home when you are in fact attempting to get law enforcement to unwittingly assist you in an illegal eviction; you will face charges of filing a false police report. You are giving reckless “advise”. I hope that nobody follows your advise and gets in trouble.
Does anybody know how all this works in Britain? Both England and Scotland please.
Correct me but I don’t think it’s city-level local in the UK, like in the US.
Snowbird!
People who spend the winter in Florida but live usually in the cold Northeast. Lots of them in NY. So they have summer in both places. So they are migrating birds fleeing the snow. Voilà!
Snowbird – is someone from one of the “cold, wet, white” northern states
(New York, and other New England States) or Canada, who come south to spend
one to three months of the winter in the sunny, tropical state of Florida.
Snowboard – is a kind of wide, short ski used primarily by younger winter
sports enthusiasts
A couple of your statements triggered a memory of a conversation we had with a fellow LTR landlord a while back. You stated, “…people have to leave. And they are going to one way or another. One way or another they are going out the door.”
The fellow landlord we were talking with owns a fair amount of apt. rentals, as we do, and we were asking him how he handles evicting tenants for non-payment of rent. He said he first went through the court system but only once and it cost him $5K in attorneys fees. Now he goes over and confronts the tenant and says to them, “Get your stuff and get the he** out now.” If they start being belligerent, he tells them, “You have two options, you can either go out the door or out the window.” So far, they have immediately packed and left.
I guess it helps that he is about 6’6", has a formidable clipped accent (Israeli) and a deep voice. He says he’s not worried about them going after him because deadbeats can’t find attorneys to sign up with them. It works for him!
We had one eviction that we took through the court. It cost nearly $5K and we decided it would be the first and last if at all possible. With the five (or 6) tenants we booted since, I accomplish it by just writing to them and letting them know how things will get successively worse and how voluntarily vacating will have the best outcome. It works for us!
I think Duane has no idea what would really happen if he got someone who refused to leave. It’s a fantasy to think the police can just be called and the overstaying guest will be dragged out. You gave that person permission to be there. They may even be able to prove their residency by showing that they are having mail delivered or have their stuff there. The police will do NOTHING. They don’t intervene in civil matters.
Ellen is right. Don’t chance it. If you want them to stay longer, get paid rough Air but have them sign a standard lease. Have them put down more of a deposit. Your Airbnb agreement won’t help you if they want to overstay. If you try to say in court that you have an Airbnb guest and they have overstayed, the judge might say, ,
" Air what? Or Air who?"
We know what we are talking about here. We spent months trying to help a member of this forum with an overstaying guest. She was in Boston too I believe. The nightmare she endured was horrendous.
From my experience, it is pretty easy to get a guest to leave if a total stranger (i.e. the next guest arriving) is there to help you get the first guest out.
I think the main reason for this is psychological. The first guest, who might be reluctant to leave, most likely established a sort of “relationship” with you during the time he was staying in your house, but he doesn’t have any relationship with the new guest, so chances are he will accept the new guest’s right to move in.
You are exactly correct. Squatters or deadbeats have no resources to defend themselves. That’s why they are doing what they are doing. There’s also likely a reason they have no place to live. They likely have a monkey on their back of somekind. Drugs for example. These people will always take the path of least resistance. Once they find life is going to get harder for them on a daily basis they reassess their strategy.
Well yes I do. I did it once. If it goes anything like how it worked when I helped my sister get rid of deadbeat tenants I sure do. I don’t recall the exact legal details, the attorney handled that. So this might change the recollection of the event but I think we got a restraining order. I don’t think we called the police on an emergency. It was served and they had to get out immediately. I suppose that qualifies as a form of being dragged out. They avoided being dragged by walking out.
In my situation, with a guest room in my house, I would never get involved in leases or deposits or any of the rental stuff. I suppose if you have property that you rent it’s a different story.
Nobody should do anything they’re not comfortable with and that they don’t feel safe about. That’s the most important thing. For me it’s simple…they’re going out and I can explain it in a way that will resonate with them. They will “get it”. They can recite their legal rights, they can even recite the Bible. But they will do it from the street.
You may have family members that can help. Perhaps they are police officers and that would be excellent. Or a friendly attorney who can help. Or just some friends who will back you up. Here in Boston that’s life in the big city. You can’t hesitate when someone tries to punk you, as they call it. It’s not going to get better by playing their game. You have to turn the table on them.
This is what I do. I’m NOT recommending anyone else do this.
But did your sister have Airbnb guests?? That’s different than regular tenants!!
And if you had to get an attorney to do an eviction then I rest my case, no pun intended.
And everything else you suggest… get a friend to drag them out, listen to them demand their rights …is illegal! Or insinuate they are deadbeats who are too stupid with no resources who don’t know what they are doing…that they can never get one over on you??
I’m done here. You just go ahead and rent to long term guests.
We had to evict a LTR too. We’re in California. We started with the nasty letter from our attorney (Cost: $200) with a 60-day notice to vacate. The renter was belligerent. There was a second lease infraction (smoking dope in our no-smoking property) which resulted in another attorney letter ($200 more). At the end of month 1 of the 60 days we offered him $500 for “moving expenses” if he left by the 15th of the second month. He took the deal and left. Total cost: $900.
I had a business acquaintance who had an apartment building in sketchy part of town. I asked him how he handled evictions. No problem, he said. Only talk in person. No letters, texting, or phone calls.
He sent in his “maintenance” team to “repair” the front door of the apartment. Actually, they removed it, took it with them and disappeared.
Probably helped that he had a heavy Russian accent.
As it happens, in the greater Boston area, tenants have far more rights than landlords. What has not been tested in the state courts is, is an AirBNB agreement a lease? I don’t want to be the person who tests this.
There are so many instances here where the courts have not allowed eviction– pregnant women, families with children, during the winter months when the outside temperature is really cold, etc. This is less of a problem these days since the city is awash with cash.
The real point is we all have a level of risk that we are comfortable with. @duanemitchell is comfortable with longer term rentals since he believes that the visas and short term goals of his guests fit within his business plan. If I recall correctly, he also serves homemade food to his guests which is absolutely contrary to local laws. Without inspections, ServeSafe certification, etc, he is not allowed to serve food for money in his house. And yes, Inspectional services considers offering breakfast as part of a listing as serving food for money. Again, it is a risk he can live with. Who is going to complain? A guest who wanted rye instead of whole wheat? Someone who doesn’t like the quality of his coffee roast?
Me? I am not comfortable with longer term guests. I do worry about someone moving in too much, not as much for legal reasons, but for “take over my house” ones. I also make food for my guests. Why? I like to feed people. Guests love having a customized breakfast in their rooms. Just last week, I made Almojábanas for a guest from Columbia. It made him so very happy, he even took the extras on the plane with him to have with his horrid American Airlines coffee. And, I was able to taste something different for me.
As long as we understand the risks, the choices that we each make are individual. There is no one answer for all of us.
What do you mean? Squatting means they don’t pay at all. We have a member of this forum whose Air guest booked for three months and stopped paying after one. Knew how to work the eviction process, especially because she had a daughter, and stayed in this poor woman’s house for months without paying a cent, while ALL amenities had to be provided or the eviction would have to start all over again.
