Rentec Direct Blog

When Renters Cause Damage? My Real Life Story – Video

Kaycee Miller

Whether you’re leaning toward self-management or hiring a property manager, this real world example of extreme tenant-caused damage demonstrates the value of property management and having the resources to handle a rental emergency. Investor and landlord, Kaycee Miller offers her perspective about the value of hiring a property manager in this “Ask a Landlord” video.

What happens when long-term tenants suddenly cause major rental property damage? In this video, I share a real story from my own rental property and how a property manager stepped in to handle everything—from working with law enforcement and managing the eviction process, to coordinating cleanup, contractors, and insurance.

If you’ve ever wondered whether to self-manage or hire a property manager, this experience highlights the true value that professional management can bring, especially during unexpected situations.

Read more about the pros and cons of self-managing vs. hiring a property manager in my article: Should I Hire a Property Manager or Self-Manage My Rentals?

Key Takeaways

Whether you’re a landlord, investor, or considering your first rental property, this video will give you insight into the real challenges of property ownership—and why the right property manager can make all the difference.

When Renters Cause Damage: My Real Life Story – VIDEO

When Renters Cause Damage: My Real Life Story – VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Rental Property Emergency: The Call No Landlord Wants

Okay. Imagine getting a call from someone saying there’s been an issue at one of your rental properties. Don’t worry, no one’s been hurt, but the police are involved and your tenants have been arrested, and we’re going to figure out the next steps. 

This is exactly what happened to me one time, but because I was using a property manager, it was actually that property manager who gave us the call to let us know, “There’s an issue at your property, law enforcement is involved, but I have it handled.”

Why Hiring a Property Manager is Worth the Cost

This is my favorite example of a property manager being incredibly valuable to my rental property operations.

In this situation, we were actually going out of town to celebrate a milestone birthday. We had plans out of state and tickets to events and non-refundable excursions. We were already five hours into our drive when we got the call. And so to be able to continue on our trip knowing that we had a very trusted property manager handling everything back home, and that, you know, there wasn’t any immediate danger to our tenants, to the neighborhood and to our property that we could continue on and know that our property manager was taking care of everything.

So that’s why I always remind people, while a property manager might seem like an added expense, you never know when their real value is going to pay off and save the day.

You might be thinking, what’s the point of paying my property manager 10% of my rent every month, and I’ve had a long-term tenant, is this really worth it? Well, in this situation it was a long-term, rent-paying tenant as well. We were at the point of pretty passive management. But when the emergency arose, the amount of work that the property manager spent handling this situation well covered all of that percentage of rent up until that day and still we’re so grateful for how it was managed.

A Rental Property Emergency 

So I want to tell you a little bit about what actually happened and what the next steps were. So we own property in Oregon, and I want to be a little sensitive talking about this because it does deal with a health issue. And so I definitely want to be respectful of recognizing that it was a mental health issue that we were dealing with, but it did cause property damage and some violent behavior. So we had to act in order to protect the other residents of the neighborhood, protect our tenants, and protect the property.

Risks with Long-Term Tenants – Changes in Occupancy

And so we had a long-term tenant, 10 years of paying rent on time, everything was going great. It was a husband and wife. They had some other kids in their household. Everything was great. Well, unbeknownst to us, the couple had separated. The wife had moved down to a different state and it was just the father and an adult son living in the property at the time. When the original lease was signed, there were minor occupants associated with the lease, but, you know, 10 years later people grow up and can change. 

So it was a father and the adult son living in this property. The woman who had originally signed the lease was not involved anymore. And from what we have deduced from it, there was a psychotic episode that happened where a, um, both the father and son were experiencing some paranoia symptoms. They became pretty worried about their safety, and became violent, causing extreme rental property damage to the house.

Rental Property Damage: How Bad Can It Get?

So they ripped out light fixtures looking for wires. They went up into the ceiling or the attic space, the crawl spaces, pulling out insulation. They ripped the sink off the wall. They ripped the toilet off the wall, all because they were experiencing an episode where they thought that they were under surveillance, where they were at a danger and that they were looking in the house for cameras and surveillance equipment.

And what are some of the other things they did? They took, I think they were trying to get into the drywall. They had taken kitchen knives and were slicing the drywall, trying to break into different spots in the wall. They were taking shingles off the roof. 

As we understand it, from the neighbors, it was a very loud situation and that’s why the cops were called. The cops deemed that the tenants were being dangerous to themselves because there were weapons involved. So that’s when they were arrested and that’s when our property manager got the call from the police to be like, here’s, here’s the situation. You need to notify the homeowners. And that’s when our property manager called us.

Next Steps when Dealing with Tenant-Caused Rental Property Damage 

Our property manager worked with law enforcement, he worked with the tenants. 

So I believe this happened about eight years ago. I wrote a blog article about this probably closely after when it happened. I think it was talking about inspections and the value of property management at that time. So there might be more details in that article, but because it was a violent act and there’s danger to the tenants, and there’s intense rental property damage, we were able to serve a notice that said, you are going to get evicted because this is dangerous behavior.

And we tried to work with the tenants, find out what was going on. But then there was another episode where it was clear that these tenants were not going to be able to live safely in this house and be safe residents for the neighborhood. So our property manager worked with them to move forward with an eviction proceeding. I don’t believe that we actually had to go to court for eviction. I think they left voluntarily which was a nice bonus.

Cleanup, Asbestos, and Landlord Insurance Coverage

So then we had to go through the next step, which was the cleanup step. And there was so much damage to the house caused by these tenants. And I think they deemed that there was asbestos in the property because it was an older property. So then it became an involved process to move forward with removing the abandoned trash and repairing all the rental property damage. But our property manager handled it all.

He worked with contractors. We had to contact our insurance, our actual insurance covered a lot of, because we had the right landlord insurance policy, so they covered a lot of the repairs that happened. They also covered lost rent. Our insurance did at that time. So it was like everything worked out in the way that we had set up our rental management so that we had the right resources to help us in the situation.

Lessons for Landlords From a Rental Property Crisis

Our property manager understood Oregon law. He worked with law enforcement. He handled everything right to make sure that everything was handled appropriately and safely. But it is one of the most intense rental stories that we’ve personally ever had to deal with. We usually have really good rental renters. We really appreciate our renters for respecting the properties, following rules. But we really couldn’t have done this without our property manager who really showed us that he understood his job and he took care of us.

And so that’s when I say there’s so much value in property management for helping us manage our own rental properties in a way that is very passive. Some rental property investors like to be really involved. You know, they’re going to self-manage, they’re going to be their boots on the ground, they’re working with their tenants. They don’t mind going to court for evictions. They don’t mind serving those 72-hour notices to vacate. But for a rental property investor who wants to be really passive, working with a property manager, paying that 7-10% monthly of the rental income, that is where the value is.

Final Thoughts

So that’s something that you can always think about when you’re thinking about where’s my value in property management? And this story can be shared with a landlord and with property managers to show this is why you pay me to work with you and help you manage your rental properties.

My name is Kaycee Miller. I work with Rentec Direct property management software. As you can tell, I’m a landlord. I’m a real estate investor. I worked in the industry for over a decade and I’m always happy to share personal stories and advice about what it’s like to own rental property and manage them and work with your tenants and have great landlord tenant relationships.

Come and visit me on the Rentec Direct Blog and like, and subscribe for more videos about what it’s like to be a landlord and to provide great property management services.

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