I have a little old Grandma that has been with me for the past 12 or so years. Her daughter moved in during Covid because she came down with it rather badly. It happens as she was in her early 70's. I just added the daughter to the lease after doing an abbreviated screening on her. The daughter, whom is about 40 has been ever since and they have been happy with that arrangement.

Well trouble in paradise can and will exist if you wait enough, I suppose. That grandma has asked if i had anything smaller than this large 3 BR. My go to answer was based on the desire to live cheaper - that wasn't the case.

The grandmother explained that she loves having her daughter there. And even though she loves her grand-daughter, she doesn't appreciate the grand daughters , on again off again drama relationship with her BF that she brings when "occasional" couch surfs in the spare bedroom. Again, I went to my canned answer - The landlord isn't responsible for your grandchild's relationship, but if she is suppose to be living here she needs to be on the lease.

Grandma then begged me - please NO! The grand daughter can visit, just not stay. Hence the desire for a place smaller than a 3 BR. I did have to smile on my end of the phone when hearing that answer. Someone in their 70's isn't going to understand things in the same manner as someone who is 50 years younger.

As I was going through this in my mind, I realized that the tenant was asking me to solve one of her problems by making it a housing problem. But I also saw a rather broad category in our industry where there isn't much we can do. We can define the difference between a guest and a tenant. The tenant can tell us the difference between a guest and a pest. Around my house it is typically about 4 days, but my lease says it is two weeks in a year's time of a single guest.

So my thought provoking question for the day, is how do you Prevent a guest from becoming a resident. Since we don't inspect the house every two weeks, that two week standard is tough to monitor. If you are counting on the tenant for in between inspection monitoring - they may tell you, but only after it is too late.

I know I am guilty of treating my long term residents differently than I do more recent ones. Maybe that is wrong, but that is something that I know I do

Untested as of yet but I changed my lease to state no guests staying longer than three days. Also says any guests causing issues is considered a violation of the lease and the Tenant can be evicted for it.

Grandma can't control the kid. It isn't the LLs problem until the kid decides to be there full time.

Why is it that mom doesn't tell the kid what's what? Seems the family needs to settle this before the mean old landlord has to step in and follow the lease.

In this case I would suspect that the kid will follow and couch surf on the actual couch if they move to a smaller place.

Hmm.... an interesting one.

I don't really have the answer, but have a couple questions / thoughts to ponder.....

Would you normally / otherwise allow her (grandma, or another tenant) to move into a smaller unit, if you had one available to suit their needs? Like you thought at first it was financial - and maybe you would like to retain a good, long-term tenant?

If your policy is "yes", if it was just her, then how can it be "no" since the daughter is also a legal resident? Or maybe it's not the daughter who is the problem in this case, but the G-daughter & Boyfriend. I'm just thinking of consistent SOP here, and the potential for accusations against you.

As folks always say here: you don't want to let her problem become your problem, but............you now have a "heads up" that there is a problem brewing. I'm thinking Grandma is probably about at the end of her rope after some years of this, after daughter moved in when she was ill. It didn't start yesterday, and for the sake of argument, I'll assume she has spoken to them about it and they ignore her.

So, it looks like there may be a couple choices here. (I'm curious if they are month-to-month or when the lease ends.)

1. Sort of accept it as "your problem" now, since you now are aware that you have 1 1/2 or 2 unauthorized residents. Ignorance was bliss, but now you know -so perhaps you want to address it now by sending notice to cure the extra residents, doing inspections, starting a paper trail, etc. for eventual removal. Encourage a call to the police if this "drama" is physical or threatening.

> Going down this path may very well mean that they all need to leave eventually, assuming Grandma can't cure the violation and get g-daughter & BF to leave (probably can't). But, at least it may be somewhat in your control as to how things proceed. Maybe before the "drama" (whatever that means) turns into dead or assaulted grandma.

2. Do you have a smaller vacancy? Would you want to end the current rental agreement and make a new one with just grandma & mom? That's the same as you have now, only in a smaller place. Who is to say that would stop g-daughter & BF from still crashing there? Only now they would all be more on top of each other. I think the "solution" she is thinking of may not really be a solution at all. That could still turn into something bad like dead or assaulted Grandma.

3. Do nothing except what you normally do - collect rent, do maintenance checks periodically. If you happen to notice the same guy there every time you go over, you "could" start the cure or quit process based on your own experience rather than hearsay.

4. Tell her that this is not the type of situation where you can really do anything effective to help her. However, there are professionals in certain agencies who may be able to offer assistance, such as:

> The city or county's elder abuse or senior care people, agency for the aging - whatever it is called there.

> The police

> A lawyer

> A family therapist or clergy

5. Maybe you can hire Ken to drive down and grab the kid by the collar & throw him out into the street with a few choice suggestions as to where he can go & what he can do (JK - sort of ; )

No matter what you do, or don't do, I don't see this ending well. Sorry you have it to deal with.

I also can't help but wonder if a GF/BF relationship that causes drama won't also cause property damage.

As far as your actual question, "How do you Prevent a guest from becoming a resident?", I don't know. I've had it happen before, but it worked out without court when they all moved out soon after my discovery, for another reason.

Good luck!

Property is in order. Tenant is paid up and the last walk through, there was nothing unusual - the usual drippy faucet, change the air filter and toilet flapper. So the tenant isn't really going bad as per say.

In fact, when I think about it, if my step son needed a place to stay - he would be welcome here. So can I fault her from having her grandchild there when there is an issue with BF at her own house? This is part of what a family does. But when that crosses that invisible line action is required.

I guess grandma is looking towards me to be that hammer instead of herself. I get that and understand that. My question remains - what steps are YOU TAKING to enforce a standard - ANY STANDARD, where your lease says one thing but your actions are other wise.

Send her a written notice that guests are only allowed to stay for **days and that the granddaughter and the boyfriend must not stay more than **days or you will file for an eviction for the violation of the lease.

That will give grandma a real reason to tell the granddaughter that she has to find her own place and that the boyfriend can no longer stay over.

Does the place need rehabbing again yet, or is it still in good enough shape to just freshen up when vacant?

That might make the difference?

I also agree with Oregon Woodsmoke in that it won't make any difference which house the grandmother lives in.

A few notes here:

1) BF isn't spending the night there. This is where the grand daughter goes to leave the fighting at her own house.

2) The tenant has been there for 12 years. It is absolutely time to place the property into phase maintenance. But the property isn't beat up to speak of. Those hardwood floors need resurfaced, something that really can't happen when someone is there.

NOW THE KEY WORD EVERY POSTER HAS DANCED AROUND IS PREVENTING.

I suppose the best thing you can do to PREVENT someone from breaking any part of the rental agreement is THOROUGH SCREENING. Past behavior indicated future behavior. At least it can minimize the risk.

However, once an agreement is signed, anyone can for any reason decide to break it.

I DON'T think there IS any way to get inside another person's mind to know what they may do if their circumstances change - to PREVENT them from breaking a contract.

You can only catch some of the "symptoms" - things you can see & measure - of the underlying "disease", and take actions to minimize/ "treat" them before it becomes out of control/ "deadly". (medical metaphor)

So, if you see a hole in the wall - symptom,

You take action to repair & bill them and issued cure notice - treatment, before

The whole house is destroyed - death.

There is no way to prevent lease violations that occur after the lease is signed and the tenant has moved in. Careful screening can keep out the people who intend to immediately violate the lease, undeclared pets, undeclared smoking, undeclared residents, bad payment history, history of sneaking friends in...

But good tenants can go bad. Divorce, illness, loss of job, new bad habits, new bad friends or partners. Life happens and stuff sometimes changes, and not for the better, for the tenants.

All the landlord can do is watch for it and deal with it when it happens. Have a good lease that covers all the crazy changes that might happen, Hope your local judges are not social engineering, keep on top of things the best that you can.

RayRay,

My prevention- My lease is clear: no more than 14 days in a 365 day period.

But in the end I see a family problem. I would ask her and daughter to work this out because I don't want to lose them as a resident over a disagreement with a young adult.

Maybe even send a letter to scare away the granddaughter - stop allowing these visitors to avoid eviction, but first reassure the good res you won't evict, the letter is just to help her get rid of granddaughter.

Had a tenant with a felon son who kept getting out of jail and going back and moving into his mother's garage - against her will. She ASKED us to kick him out the first time - we said No Ma'am that's on you but tell him you will both be evicted if he doesn't leave - I sent an email to that effect so she could show it to him.

But it happened two more times, and the last time his DAD (EX-husband) was there too! She was just a wimpy woman who could not stave off the abusive men in her life. We ended up telling her to leave and she did, and she still talks nicely about us online. The ex-husband, though, actually threatened to sue us and/or report us to code enforcement (he knew them all and thought he was a big dog with the county people. Well we know them all too and said so. He backed off quickly, apologizing profusely hoping to save her home. It didn't work.)