Beware of tenants that become your friends when you are the landlord. I would like to warn other people who might end up in the same situation as I did, I rented my apartment out to a couple the Zink family with two children, they seemed very nice for two and a half years then I made my plans to move out of state and sell my property which they were still renting the downstairs apartment from me it was fine for one month after i left then the realastate lady that i hired called to tell me that all hell had broke loose with these tenants, first they turned on the furnance with no water in it and caused it to burn when he realized that it was causing a fire he broke into the empty upstairs apartment by kicking the door apart and shut down the thermostate then notifyed the fire dept to come because the furnance had mulfunctioned. Then he proceeded to steal the door knobs off the back door for his personal use and the light bulbs from all the sockets. When we were notifyed the next day of these events we called and had an adjuster and a new furnace put right in that wea the beginning of our troubles. The next thing we knew was he had moved the thermostate down into his apartment so he could have total control with the heat which we pay for. They also gave the realastate lady such a hard time that she quit being our agent, the next thing we knew was we received a letter from the board of health stating that the zink family had filed a complant that the house was unfit to live in and that they were not going to pay any rent till the items were fixed well we statted to fix the problems as soon as we received them, a new furnance, claimed there was aspestos so we had a contracter check that for us which did have a litte so we had that removed right awayfor 625.00 when we thought everything was done we had another letter fromthe board of health telling us that there were more items to be done. And we started to do what was on that list because we were not receiving any rent from these people. We were told that they did not have to pay rent if we did not do the repairs so this went on for 6 months. He even had a fight with our maintance men and called the police when they were getting close to finishing doing the repairs so we could collect the rent. But every lawyer we called told us that there was nothing we could do because the state of Massachuetts is more for the tennants and not the landlords so we gave up because after spending 5,000.00 for repairs and being told we could not even get a cent of our money for the rent they owe. WEll they finally moved out on there own and of course they left the place a mess with garbage and dog mess broken windows paint on garage walls, and big holes in all the walls, and the fixtures for the lights torn out of the ceilings, but we cannot get a penny from them and i would like for other people to be able to have a way to find out about these type of people before it is to late for them and they end up losing lots of money to people that will do anything they can just to live rent free. So please advise other owners to somehow do a credit check and get a referance from more than one person before you rent to anyone because they will give you relatives as a referance. And beware of people that become friendly with you they have other motives than friendship...
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