What am I to do legally?

[OhioEric]

I have a situation. I own a duplex and the upstairs renter just came over and paid her rent. She also informed us that the downstairs renters (1 year lease) have been moving their stuff out over the past week, and are now moved out I guess. They did not contact us in any way to inform us of this. She also said that they left some belongings around outside and I saw their van over there as well, (maybe letting it get repossessed?).

I tried to call them with all of the phone#s I had and nextel numbers as well, they are all not in service. There are many hints that they have decided to run away from all people owed money to.

Anyway, I haven't seen the inside, and am scared to see what condition it was left in, but without any way to contact them, what can I do? I really need to know what condition the property is in.

Thanks for your response.

Also, while I doubt they would recieve any security deposit back, if they would, how would I send a settlement statement to them without any idea of where they are?

[ohiolandlord]

First you must determine if the tenant has abandoned the premises. Here is some language from http://www.ohiolandlordtenant.com/abandon.html

Ohio Courts have defined abandonment as the absolute unequivocal relinquishment of a right or status without regard to self or any other person. It is a virtual throwing away without regard as to who may take over or carry on. It is a total discarding of what existed or went before; and evidence thereof must be direct, affirmative or reasonably beget the exclusive inference of throwing away. Hamilton v. Harville (1989), 63 Ohio App.3d 27.

Thus to simply rely upon a clause in a lease that an apartment will be considered abandoned after the tenant has not been seen for two weeks is unwise. If a tenant is current on his rent, if the tenant's personal items are still at the rented premises, if items of value or sentimental value remain behind, this is strong evidence that the tenant was simply away and may be returning.

If you determine that the tenant has abandoned the premises then you can enter the premises.

If you feel that this is an emergency then you can enter the premises without notice. If it is not, then post a 24 hr notice to enter. We have such a notice as part of our complete landlord's kit at - http://www.ohiolandlordtenant.com/index.html

As far as the security deposit - you would send an itemization to their last known address which may be that apartment. They could have forwarded their mail somewhere else. We have a sample itemization here - http://www.ohiolandlordtenant.com/index.html

Finally, if you had a better rental application - you could have collected more information to locate the tenants at the beginning.

http://www.ohiolandlordtenant.com/rental_application.html

[albundy36]

From my experience, what landlord person posted is pretty much right and some you have to give 24 hour notice to inspect and hope dee bums don't stop you from enetering the unit. If it looks like they left for the most part and are behind on rent, screw em throw out the remaining crap and change the locks stat. Sure they could bring a case against you, but doubtfull they would win or even have the money or inteligence to file such.

As for having a better rental application, you can grab all the info you want, but usually most dead beats give old info or useless info moreless forwarding adress..And yeah, yeah, yeah should do this and that, problem is if your renting in the bottoms or hiltop area in Columbus, Ohio, your not apt to get much for decent clientel and tis hard to be very picky..

[ohiolandlord]

"As for having a better rental application, you can grab all the info you want, but usually most dead beats give old info or useless info moreless forwarding adress"

It's up to the landlord to check the information. If it is useless info then don't rent to them.