LANDLORD-TENANT DISPUTES ARTICLES
Remedies When Tenants Refuse Access to Show Home to Prospective Buyers
Question: We own a rental home in Tempe which we have rented to three ASU students. Our listing broker is trying to sell the home for us. The problem is that our tenants refuse to allow our listing broker to show the home. Our listing broker emails the required 48-hour notice to all three tenants, with a specific time for showing the home to prospective buyers. The tenants, however, will only allow showings between 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. on weekends. Our listing broker says that this limited time period of only four hours on weekends to show the home…
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Recourse for Unknown Tenants
Question: We recently purchased an investment home in the San Tan Valley for $425,000 cash. When our real estate agent showed us the home, this home had some furniture in the living room and in two of the bedrooms. Our real estate agent said that he thought that was furniture left behind by the last owner. Two days later we signed the purchase contract to buy the home. After escrow closed, and we had the keys, we went to the home with two contractors to start the repairs to the home. To our surprise, there was a family of four…
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Lease Renewal Allowed Even With Late Notice of Renewal
Question: Nearly five years ago we signed a lease for a 2,500 square foot office suite in a north Scottsdale office building. The five-year lease included an option to renew the lease for another five years, with six months’ notice prior to the expiration of the five-year lease. If the five-year lease is renewed, the only modification of the five-year lease would be a consumer price index (“CPI”) increase in the monthly rent. We want to stay in our office suite for another five years, especially with only a CPI increase in the monthly rent. Therefore, eight months before our lease…
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Dangerous Mold? Give Landlord 5 Days to Act
Question: Last September we signed a one-year lease for a home in Goodyear. The landlord lives in California and has a local property manager. There was a big storm two months ago and our roof leaked, mainly in the third bedroom that was apparently part of a major remodeling project by the California owner three years ago. There is now mold throughout the home. Three weeks ago, the property manager did an inspection, and she said that she would have contractors out to inspect the roof, and that she would then get bids to repair the roof and the mold…
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What if You’re Unlawfully Locked Out of the Office?
Question: We lease office space in a Peoria office building for our insurance business. Under our lease we have five business days to pay our monthly lease payment. After five calendar days (including a weekend), but only three business days, the property manager “locked us out” of our office space because she has always wanted to get a higher-paying tenant in our office space. At an angry meeting later that morning, the property manager apologized to us for her mistake, and let us back into our office space. The landlord even sent over a dozen red roses to our office. Although…
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Evicting Short-Term Renters Who Stay Too Long
Question: We have been renting our Scottsdale rental home as a short-term rental home since 2019 with no problems. Our last short-term renter of ten days, however, was a problem because our short-term renter refused to move out after 10 days. We argued with this short-term renter, but we eventually paid him $500 to move out just before our next short-term renter. We are now concerned about move-out problems with future short-term renters. Some of our short-term renters for bachelor/bachelorette parties are only three days over a weekend. What if they want to continue to party for another few days,…
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Breach of Lease Requires Landlord to Mitigate Damages
Question: We signed a one-year lease for a Scottsdale condominium for $2,800 a month. The lease was from April 1, 2020, to April 1, 2021. Last week we signed a purchase contract to buy a Chandler home. The close of escrow on the Chandler home will be January 31, 2021. We have notified our landlord that we will be moving out of our Scottsdale condominium on January 31, 2021. The landlord was not happy, however, and said that we are still liable for the $2,800 a month rent for the last two months of our lease. Our understanding is that,…
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Judgments with Proper Paperwork can be Renewed Forever
Question: We own a rental home near downtown Scottsdale. The son of a well-known celebrity signed a lease for a year. After two months we received phone calls from our neighbors complaining about the noise and trash in the streets. We then inspected the home and found significant damage, including large holes in the wall, and a broken staircase. We immediately canceled the lease, and the son moved to Chandler. We now have a default judgment against the son for $19,500 in back rent and damages to our rental home. Although the son had good income working as a bartender…
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