When to Use an Attorney with an Incident with a Tenant

Attorney Michael Hynum discusses situations when a landlord should seriously consider seeking legal representation. For your convenience, the transcription for the video is included below.

When To Use an Attorney With An Incident With A Tenant

“Hi, I’m Mike Hynum with Hynum Law in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. If you’re like most landlords, you probably don’t have an attorney on retainer unless you have a huge amount of rental properties and it’s your full-time business. In such cases, it’s important to know when you should really consider getting an attorney involved on behalf of you in any kind of incident that you may have with a tenant.

Being Sued by a Tenant

For example, any time you get sued or have to go to court, you should consider whether you should contact an attorney. Another thing that you should do in conjunction with that is consider if there’s some kind of property damage or injury, whether you should make a claim to your insurance carrier so that you’re not later denied for coverage on a potential claim.

But if someone has property that’s damaged in one of your rental units because of something like: a water leak from a roof, or from a refrigerator upstairs, and you’re being sued – that would be a good time to consider contacting an attorney.

Same thing if someone gets injured on your property - falls down the steps, or perhaps gets an illness from something and is alleging that it came from something inside your rental property: good time to consider contacting an attorney.

Evicting a Tenant

If you’re evicting a tenant, many times landlords can do evictions on their own. However, if it’s your first eviction, or the tenant is fighting the eviction and has an attorney of their own, or they’re filing for bankruptcy, or there’s some other kind of special instance involved, or some kind of special circumstance, you should really consider hiring an attorney to assist you in those kinds of instances.

Selling Your Rental Property

Another time you may really consider hiring an attorney is if you are finding yourself in a situation where you have to sell your rental property. Any time you’re buying or selling a property, (yes you can use a real estate agent, and maybe even be able to do it yourself), but when you’re selling your real estate investment, - like a property, especially if it’s occupied, or you have some kind of a business entity like a corporation or LLC that holds the property - it creates issues that have to be dealt with not just from a legal instance but also with regard to taxes and possibly other things.

Find An Attorney

So, when you’re a landlord there are many times that you can handle things on your own. But there are also times when it is advisable to strongly consider hiring an attorney, and I hope those instances have been outlined and are helpful to you from this video today. If you have questions about anything in this video, or anything regarding being a landlord, please don’t hesitate to contact me or give me a call at (717) 801-1105. Mike Hynum, here at Hynum Law, in Harrisburg Pennsylvania. Thank you for watching.”