Sell A House: What To Do If Tenants Don’t Cooperate?

I’m Selling My Real Estate Investment Property!

Most real estate investors will purchase a property with the knowledge that they will eventually sell it.  Being that it is a rental property, most people will put tenants into the property and start collecting rent.  Once they have found another investment that they would like better, it makes sense that the real estate owners would go ahead and list their property for sale, however, now that there are tenants in the property, you will have to schedule showings around their schedule and that can sometimes cause some problems in the sale of the property. So how do you sell a house with tenants?

I Have An Accepted Contract, How Do I Show My Property?

As a landlord, you may not know the rules around showing an investment property.  Generally, they are pretty simple because most landlords will put in their contracts that they need to gain access to the property within 24 hours given the proper notice, and that the tenants must comply with any inspections for the sale of the property.  Even though this SHOULD be done, a lot of real estate investors do not know this and do not look at their contracts and might not even have this clause in their contracts.  

In this scenario, my first recommendation is to speak to a property management company.  At Synergy, we have in our leases that the tenant must comply with all showings of the property for sale, and they must allow access to the rental property with correct notice being given.  Once this happens, generally, we should be able to serve a notice to the tenant letting them know that we will be in the property on a given date and time, and if they are not present then we are allowed to let ourselves in.  

I Don’t Have That Clause In My Lease Contracts!

In the case that these clauses are not in your lease contract for your investment property, it can be a little harder if the Tenant doesn’t want to work with you to let you in.  In that case then you will have to hope that you can work out a schedule with the Tenant to show the rental, or if you cannot then you will have to hope the Buyer is okay with purchasing the investment sight unseen, which investment buyers will rarely do.  

In one case, we even had to go so far as to evict the tenant because they would keep scheduling showings and then cancelling the showings last minute and even when buyers went by the property at the time they were given they were denied access.  This is why it can pay to have a property management company manage your rental property, especially if you don’t live in Bakersfield!

If you are looking for real estate investment property, we have done many deals, and continue to do many deals that return our Clients a net return of 6%, 8% or even double digits on their real estate.  If you are interested in real estate investing in Bakersfield, feel free to reach out to Synergy Real Estate and Property Management.  

We provide our real estate investing clients a one-stop shop service where you can be sure that you are buying a quality investment property, and having that property managed in order to preserve your initial investment capital. 

Until Next Time, 

Sanjeev (Sunny) Advani
President
661-770-7382
sunny@re-synergy.com
3400 Panama Lane Ste J
Bakersfield, CA 93313
Lic 02012941
Lic 01869863