We recently had a situation where we decided not to renew a lease with a troublesome tenant in one of our properties, and the situation has become somewhat ugly unfortunately, as the tenant has not taken kindly to having his family 'evicted' from his perspective.
We received a call from our bank a few days ago that the check for the last month's rent has been cancelled by the tenant, and my wife is of the opinion that we now have legal grounds to pursue legal action on the basis of fraud - I think the legalities she referred to are that we can now issue a request that the check be honored within 30 days, and that we can then follow the requisite legal course to take action over the matter should he refuse to do so, with a triple amount as penalty. Oddly enough, even though we've owned rental properties for 6 years this is the first time a tenant has actually bounced a check on us going out - we've had another tenant leave before owing money, but she never wrote us a dud check prior to breaking the lease and absconding.
It's kind of confusing for us, as we seem to have two angles to pursuing the individual. First via the check, and secondly through the more normal channel of seeking restitution for lost rent, damages to the property, cleaning, etc, which is a path we've successfully taken once before.
It doesn't seem logical to us why the tenant would have taken this line of thought, because had he honored the check on his way out, we would have had our month's rent and he in turn would have received his one-month deposit in return, less any charges for the aforementioned repairs and cleaning. Now he stands to lose considerably more - at least on paper - and ruin what was already a shaky financial record. Our one thought is that they may have done considerably more harm to the property than we discovered.
We received a call from our bank a few days ago that the check for the last month's rent has been cancelled by the tenant, and my wife is of the opinion that we now have legal grounds to pursue legal action on the basis of fraud - I think the legalities she referred to are that we can now issue a request that the check be honored within 30 days, and that we can then follow the requisite legal course to take action over the matter should he refuse to do so, with a triple amount as penalty. Oddly enough, even though we've owned rental properties for 6 years this is the first time a tenant has actually bounced a check on us going out - we've had another tenant leave before owing money, but she never wrote us a dud check prior to breaking the lease and absconding.
It's kind of confusing for us, as we seem to have two angles to pursuing the individual. First via the check, and secondly through the more normal channel of seeking restitution for lost rent, damages to the property, cleaning, etc, which is a path we've successfully taken once before.
It doesn't seem logical to us why the tenant would have taken this line of thought, because had he honored the check on his way out, we would have had our month's rent and he in turn would have received his one-month deposit in return, less any charges for the aforementioned repairs and cleaning. Now he stands to lose considerably more - at least on paper - and ruin what was already a shaky financial record. Our one thought is that they may have done considerably more harm to the property than we discovered.