Hello, I'm a Texas landlord, who was renting out a home to a tenant. The tenant broke the lease and moved out of the premises on Sunday Nov. 9, 2008. What should I do before I can legally rent the premises out again? What steps should I take to ensure the tenant cannot come back with claims against me? Thanks.

Well, I will tell you the legal process that I use in this situation. I use an abandonment notice. You post in on the inside of the front door, and it says that if you do not hear from the tenant within 48 hours of the posting of the notice you will consider this property abandoned and will proceed with storage/disposal of any belongings left behind, taking back possession of the unit, and re-rental of the unit. Once that 48 hours passes I mail (to their last know address) a copy of that notice and a letter stating that because they did not reply to that notice that was posted on the inside of their front door that I have re-gained possession of the property, what I've done with their remaining belongings (use your judgement depending on what they left and how crappy it is), and how much they owe me to date.

I should add, that this process is outlined in my lease, which is a Texas Apartment Assoc. lease. It's 100% in line with all TX laws, so you should have no trouble doing this even if it's not specifically in your lease. The Apartment Assoc. is great. I highly recommend membership in that or some other sort of group for education as well as access to their forms, leases and experts!

What did the people leave, if anything? Did they tell you or notify you in some way that they were bailing out, or did they just leave?

They left behind everything that they owned. They never told the landlord they were moving and I know this for a favt because I have the same landlord. They just up and left.

This is from 2007 - are you the same person who asked the question? How do you have info about this situation?

Otherwise - what a big coincidence that you came upon this post!

No I am not the same person who asked the question but it did kind of help me.