# As a landlord How best to prove damages in dollar amount?



## Causalien (Apr 4, 2009)

So I am near the end of a long process of eviction. Will need to potentially go to small claims court. 
So I have a question for other landlords who've been through this. How can you prove how much damage was done? I plan on immediately put the house on the market once the tenants move out and sell it as a tear down. So I will not have time to hire anybody to effect the repairs. 
Can I just use the price of every item that's broken? If so, do I use the price as a new item or do I guess a used item price. Do I call a handyman over and ask for an estimate of all the repair cost?


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

Well, quick and easy take photos, compare to before photos, get a quote from multiple contractors.

Basically, in court, you need to prove the damages were done (pictures), and have a reasonable idea of the costs to repair (quotes) to its previous state minus regular wear and tear.


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## naysmitj (Sep 16, 2014)

Not sure I understand, if you are selling as a tear down, why repair anything? Then again why waste time and money suing?


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

Just because a place is a tear down, doesn't give tenants the right to trash a place. Potentually, parts of the house may have been repurposed on a different property or sold. If they were damaged by the tenant, that ability is lost.


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## naysmitj (Sep 16, 2014)

You may be right but my point is, given the facts, wasting time and money suing people who live in a dump that you are tearing down, you are not likely to get any money even if you do get a judgement.


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

Heck, even if it wasn't a dump, you are not likely to get money from them even if you do get a judgement.


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## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

naysmitj said:


> Not sure I understand, if you are selling as a tear down, why repair anything?


I don't see anything in the post saying repairs will be made ... just that there is or is assumed to be damage.




naysmitj said:


> Then again why waste time and money suing?


If the tenant can pay damages, it will add to the profits. Whether the judgement/expenses to the the judgement and whether any cash is paid is a different question.


Cheers


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## Berubeland (Sep 6, 2009)

To get a judgement you have to prove damage, it's taking about a year to get to small claims. You will need 3 quotes and a receipt from the contractor that repaired the damage. If you don't repair it... you haven't incurred any expense have you?


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## LongShorts (Feb 18, 2016)

I had something similar. As I didn't have any "before" photos of the specific damage done by my arse hole tenants, the only thing I was able to do was get a judgement for the owed rent plus filing fee to get them evicted. They wouldn't allow any damage claims without proof that the damaged parts of the property were not that way before the tenants moved in. I ended up filing the judgement in small claims court to garnish their wages, only to find out you can't garnish social assistance (they conveniently left their employment after they were evicted)....sooooo after 3 years of headaches and countless court appearances that went nowhere, I've sent my judgement to a collection agency who will get 30% of anything they successfully collect from the twits. If nothing else, they harass them constantly and at least give them the constant reminder that they will have to pay it eventually.

If I can suggest anything, it's to secure the judgement against them for any money owed, send it to a collection agency to deal with and move on with your life.


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## Causalien (Apr 4, 2009)

To put things in perspective, I would not have contemplated selling if not for the damages. It rendered the house unlivable. So it is large enough to waste 1 year of my life going to court. I am selling, because the current market is willing to take on a tear down and only considers the land value. If you want me to go to the extremes. To keep living in the house, I will have to tear it down and rebuild at the current going rate of $250 per square foot.

Of course I would like to claim the house value that I have to mark down on the sale, but that might be harder than to prove the damages. So, I'd like to see how I can prove it this way. If I remember correctly, hiring a corporate lawyer costed $30 000 a pop on a similar dollar amount of corporate loss. So that is not a possibility as the cost will just dwarf everything. 

I had the good luck of taking a video Walk through of the place before the tenant moved in. I thought I was being paranoid at the time.

Recovery of the damages is a high probability. I have done a credit check on the tenant and know of their financial assets. They are not dirt poor. I know this two together sounds counter intuitive, but believe me on this. There's a lot more to the story that I cannot reveal.


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## naysmitj (Sep 16, 2014)

Well, good luck to you.


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## Mukhang pera (Feb 26, 2016)

A bit of a novel situation. 

Ordinarily, the measure of your loss would be the cost of remediating the damage. Although sometimes you will be confronted in court with a "betterment" argument. Eg., the tenant kicked in a door. You replace it at a cost of $400, not including labor. The tenant can show that the old door was cracked and worn before he kicked it in. The court will not likely award $400, but something of a depreciated value.

Here, there is no plan to remediate. So what is the measure of damages? What is the quantum of the L/L's loss? A neat question. The cost of repairs seems a bit artificial where they are not undertaken or intended to be. But, it seems there is a loss because the L/L says he is forced to sell by reason of the damage. 

The law says that one who has suffered loss at the hands of another must act reasonably. The law also recognizes a duty to "mitigate" one's loss. Eg., if the tenant knocks a hole in the roof and rain is entering the premises and doing damage, the L/L must act with some alacrity to effect repairs to keep the damage from continuing. He cannot stand by, letting the place flood, saying it's all the tenant's fault and he must pay for damage that could reasonably have been avoided.

Here, without knowing more, it is difficult to say whether deciding to sell for land value is acting reasonably in mitigation of one's loss. I would certainly use before and after video as evidence and I would get a few estimates of the cost of repairing what the court would likely find as damage caused by the tenant. That would be a starting point in quantifying the loss. I would also get opinions from a couple of realtors as to the value of the property with the house on it in undamaged condition and its value in damaged condition. The difference might be an appropriate measure of damages. I would probably plead my claim for damages using different quantification methods in the alternative.

There is also the issue of loss of rental income. I'd look at that. My repair estimates would include time to effect repairs. That is time off the market. Selling raises other considerations. Is there a loss of revenue that can be for the tenant's account until sale proceeds are in hand? What would be the effect of selling into a rising or falling market? Many interesting angles.

I do not know where Causalien is or what is the monetary jurisdiction of the Small Claims Court there. Here in BC it is $25,000. It sounds like this claim could go that high, or higher. If higher, I'd have proof of the excess, waive it, and stay in Provincial Court. Too costly and cumbersome to go to Supreme Court, at least for a non-lawyer.

Most of all Causalien, have fun. Small Claims Court can be quite entertaining and the downside risk of proceeding there is negligible.


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## Causalien (Apr 4, 2009)

Mukhang pera said:


> A bit of a novel situation.
> 
> Ordinarily, the measure of your loss would be the cost of remediating the damage. Although sometimes you will be confronted in court with a "betterment" argument. Eg., the tenant kicked in a door. You replace it at a cost of $400, not including labor. The tenant can show that the old door was cracked and worn before he kicked it in. The court will not likely award $400, but something of a depreciated value.
> 
> ...


Thanks. 

The court room is something that I need to get experience of. Just like the whole real estate thing. I have now experienced all the ins and out of real estate so in the future I can go back in when I deem appropriate.

I am not sure if I am going to claim loss of rental income. In USA, I believe that to prove it, I have to prove that it remains unoccupied for the period that I want to claim. Which, by the look of the current market, is probably 0 since the property will be sold within a day. Also from what I understand, it is actually harder to claim the damage deposit than it is to directly go to small claims court to claim the excessive damage as I can start that right away. Go figure.

For the damages, there are dog poop and pees on the first floor everywhere. It reeks and the whole floor needs replacement. I don't know if I need to hire someone to chemically scrub the concrete under the floor or something. Several holes in the wall. Both front and back doors are kicked in, locks removed and non functional. Several broken windows. All large appliances broken. Numerous other non civil matters that cannot be mentioned, one of which used to be a no go for home buyers in the old days and lower the value of the home, but in the current environment of "no inspection" buys. It no longer matters.

I record all my inspections and have vocal confirmation from the tenants that they did the damages. Video walk through and pictures as well as a detailed journal of events. From what I understand. BC's recording law is one party consent.

In USA, health insurance will pay you out on your claims provided that you assign them the right to sue the other party. If home inspection companies in Canada can do that as well, it'll remove all my headache. 

The blessing out of all of this is that I now gained numerous contacts in all fields related that I can use later in life.


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## Just a Guy (Mar 27, 2012)

He does have a point that your province will make a big difference. BC, Ontario and Manitoba are very tenant friendly provinces, where the landlord frequently gets shafted despite having a solid claim.

The Cbc did a story on one guy called Orion and his family who routinely moved into places in BC, bounced every cheque he wrote, trashed every place where he lived, and had to be removed at the landlord's expense after living and using the system to stay for over six months. His average expense to the landlord was over $25k in damages which he was never required to repay, even though he had a long history of repeatedly doing these things.

So, even if you have a case, you may not win anything and will be throwing more good money after bad.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2013/01/18/bc-badtenant.html


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## Causalien (Apr 4, 2009)

Just a Guy said:


> He does have a point that your province will make a big difference. BC, Ontario and Manitoba are very tenant friendly provinces, where the landlord frequently gets shafted despite having a solid claim.
> 
> The Cbc did a story on one guy called Orion and his family who routinely moved into places in BC, bounced every cheque he wrote, trashed every place where he lived, and had to be removed at the landlord's expense after living and using the system to stay for over six months. His average expense to the landlord was over $25k in damages which he was never required to repay, even though he had a long history of repeatedly doing these things.
> 
> ...



I believe the major difference between Orion and my tenant is that Orion has no assets that allows landlords to go after. 

But it is consistent with the environment in BC right now. Petty crime is rampant because there's no enforcement. The burden is always on the wronged to prove and the proof require excessive amount of effort and time. I wouldn't have a case if I wasn't already on the edge because of another matter with a previous tenant. For this one, I decided to use excessive ODD style record keeping. It used to be 1 day a week of effort, but now it has become 3 days a week effort while the legal preparation is underway.

You know what the first thing that greeted me in Vancouver was? Getting my CC info got stolen in a gas station. Little did I know that is a forewarning of the general state of things in Vancouver.

At the cafe I go to often. There are repeat offenders who comes in and steal everyday and there's nothing they can do about it. The police would throw them out (if police was called) and they'd show up again next week. Security guard cannot lay a hand on them and neither can the employees. Sometimes, I dream of a manlier times where we can just punch a thief.


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