An Expensive Lesson to Learn

We learned a very expensive and valuable lesson this fall.  Do not rent to someone you don't know unless you get references no matter what kind of story they tell you.

In all my years of being a landlady I had never had tenants as bad as my previous ones.  We took them to court, filed an eviction notice through the court. .    I was told after the case was over and they were finally out ,our local law enforcement had dealt with them before.  I am sure they knew they could away with not paying for the damage or the unpaid rent not even the court cost's they are suppose to reimburse us on.  They knew how to delay court proceedings.

And so they damaged our property, punched holes in the walls and the interior doors which are hard to find these days as the house was built in 1976 and most hardware stores don't carry those type of doors. We think the damage to the walls and doors were done after they were served the eviction notice via the court system.

The eviction process was in its self a learning experience, as I have never had to evict any one. Once they were evicted and knew they had to move out they still stayed there, so we had to have the sheriff's department with the help of a few inmates move them out. They knew how to work the system !!   They basically didn't have to shell out money to make the move, you know renting a U-Haul to transport your belongings from one place to another.  

In the end they're out nothing !

  Here's a sampling of what we had to face. Starting with the outside. One of the yards was used for dumping.

No grass only weeds                             Weeds thrived in the yard

And now for the inside

Living room

Family Room   

Bedroom

Another Bedroom

Kitchen

Bathroom

I have many more pictures but I think this is enough to show what we had to clean and repair.  All the carpets were filthy showing lots of spots from dogs brought in that weren't on the lease. Besides the obvious there were lots of other things they did, like take the garage door opener, do damage to some siding on the house, messed with the electricity, ruined the refrigerator, I could go on and on. .... This will never happen to us again !!