I have a 4 bed room house rented to a tenant family. Recent discovery found the tenant’s sister and brother-in-law moved in as tenant, it was not previously agreed to. I object to this and planning to hire a lawyer if they do not move out.
What else would you do?
Ugh, good luck. I hope you find a lawyer willing to help. My parents have several rental properties and have gotten very discouraged. It’s hard to find an attorney to take on cases like this. It’s not worth it to them. Very frustrating when you have on the law on your side but it doesn’t matter! (We had a situation where a neighbor hired a timber harvester to cut down trees on his lot, and the guy “accidentally” cut down trees on about 20 of OUR acres!! The worst part was that he was irresponsible and left the place a wasteland. An attorney said it wouldn’t be worth it to hire him, so the guy got away with it. :()
You may need a competent attorney licensed in your state who handles landlord/tenant disputes.
Have your rental agreement handy.
Good luck.
First thing is to look at the original lease and its wording.
Is sub-let part of it? Not addressed?
Are you being harmed in some way? (Or just mad?)
Rent being payed?
How long is the lease for? Month to month? Yearly? What are your state’s laws?
Can you talk to original renters to find out how this transpired?
Is there a contract stating only one family unit allowed?
If this is not addressed in the lease, I would just wait until the lease is up, and not renew.
“Are you being harmed in some way? (Or just mad?)”
More people in the house = more wear and tear. That is a given.
You seem to own quite a few rentals, and some tenants cause you headaches; I recommend getting a lawyer with whom you can have an on-going client relationship for these kinds of things.
I would try to find out what is going on and consider giving these people a break, depending on the circumstances. Are they giving shelter to family members in financial distress? Is this intended to be a temporary arrangement? Do they pay the rent on time? Are they taking decent care of the property? Is there a limit on how many cars can be parked there?
Are you actually being harmed?
How much longer is the lease? If it ends soon, it may end before the attorney can evict, if you are planning to evict as evictions can take time and may actually allow tenants to stay in a property LONGER while the process proceeds.
Consolation, economic harm is harm, too. For example, if the septic is designed to handle 2 people for 2 years before needing pumping, adding 2 more folks will require a call to the pumping co in a year. More $$. There is a reason landlords restrict occupancy or add a clause that if an additional person stays longer than x days, the tenants will need to pay extra rent to cover that person.
Septic systems are designed to the number of bathrooms, not the number of occupants. Sure, if the tenants started a daycare with 15 kids or something, that would be excessive wear and tear on the septic system. But it’s hard for me to imagine that 2 adults would cause an issue. What if the tenants adopted two kids while renting?
I realize that the septic suggestion is just an example, and I agree that economic harm is harm–that’s actually what I meant when I asked if the OP was being harmed. Whether this constitutes harm is not clear from what we know right now. Maybe the presence and financial contribution of the additional family members is enabling them to continue to pay the rent, which might actually benefit the OP because he avoids re-rental costs.
If they are subletting illegally, it sounds like not renewing their lease would be a lot more cost effective and probably quicker than trying to evict them.
More people = more wear and tear. In op’s case, the number of dwellers doubled! It definitely calls for a higher rent.
[OT - septic systems are tied to the number of BEDROOMS and square footage, not bathrooms, because the septic is designed to handle a certain number of occupants (assumed to be directly proportional to # of bedrooms), not toilets. 
(I know that because our house was built from scratch).]
You’re right, it’s the number of bedrooms. Duh. Having a senior moment. In any case, what I was driving at is that a 4-br house is not designed for 2 people. But who knows: they might have kids, too.
I don’t blame the OP for being concerned, I just think it is worth looking into the situation before resorting to eviction.
Have you talked to the tenants? Ask if they are willing to renegotiate the lease, pay more, put the other names on the lease. Is this allowed by the housing codes? It may not be possible to allow that many on the lease (don’t know how many kids live there too).
Everything doesn’t have to be handled in court. Talk to them.
Talk to the tenants on the lease and find out the circumstances before exploding.
Just a very recent story–friend had a big house rented to a family of four–which expanded to a very extended family of about 10. (or maybe more).
She railed against that for good reason obviously but hubbie was of the mind “they are paying rent”. And what are the alternatives?
Deep, DEEP breath.
Final outcome was the tenants kept decent care of the premises, paid rent on time and all was right with the world.
It was definitely NOT the best of scenarios but they had paying tenants and the property was maintained.
I think we need to find out more information. My LAST course of action would be to go through a lawyer, not the first, though perhaps you have already done everything else?
First thing, what does the contract say? Our contracts say other adults can only stay there for a certain period of time without our permission (maybe 14 days, don’t remember exactly), otherwise, the only adults allowed there are those who have signed the contract. If your contract doesn’t address this, I don’t think you have a leg to stand on, but it probably does.
Have you talked to the tenants? What do they say about this? I see no reason to be angry, just to handle it professionally. If the contract doesn’t allow this, and they refuse to address it, give them notice. If you are forced to evict them, the that’s when you deal with a lawyer, in my opinion. I wouldn’t say anything if my tenants had someone move in, but we have a good relationship with them all, and it wouldn’t be a big deal to us. Now if they were trashing the place, a different deal.
We did learn a lesson with our first tenant. On the contract, we put Mr and Mrs so and so, and “family” (since he said another family member would move in, but wasn’t there to sign). Well, they moved 20 family members into that three bedroom condo. And we had no basis to complain, because we hadn’t put it in the contract. Actually, they were fine, a Thai family that was neat and quiet, and they really weren’t a problem, except for the fact that after two months they gave us notice and broke the contract. Grandma in California was ill, so they all had to move to be near her. Different culture for sure, screw the kids that had just started at a new school the third time that year, and move all those generations of family once again, for the oldest generation. We felt really bad for those kids.
We have three rental properties ( three more than I want actually ) We ran into nightmare tenants a few years ago, and one of the many issues we had were that they brought in an extra person to Iive in the home , which violated the lease agreement. Since they stopped paying rent in the first place , this was the nail in the coffin. I filed to evict them, and they didn’t show up in course , so we won automatically.
We use just the standard residential lease form you can purchase at Staples and there was a spot to stipulate how many people can live there and also how long a visitor can stay too.
It’s really hard to find decent and qualified renters in our area, so it is a constant source of stress to weed out potential problem tenants, despite background checks and references.
We have two apartments over one of our business locations. The building is close to 100 years old , and was renovated from the ground up , but that doesn’t make up for the lack of closet / storage space and also lack of parking.
we have tenants that pay the rent on time, but have annoyed us over some petty problems . One of the problems we have ( and I admit, I did not stipulate in the lease ) is that they are all heavy chain smokers. There aren’t carpets , but it will still take some work to get the stink and mess out and the other tenant complains that the smoke smell comes into her apt…with the warm weather coming, this will become a bigger issue and I suspect it will affect our business too. I do not want to renew the lease with them because of this
We own a tiny investment property that our daughter rents from us. It’s in a great area for rentals and we could probably get lots of interest and a decent rent for it after she moves out, so it will be tempting. But these and other landlord horror stories really put me off, and I think I’d rather just sell it when the time comes!
We have had a rentals for decades. If you are a good property manager OR hire a good one, it can be a nice stream of income and fairly headache free. Mostly, we have been happier hiring a good property manager that charged us 7% and keeps things running smoothly. He fixes things up and raised the rent when there is a vacancy. It also tends to keep up with inflation better than some other investments.
For years I have managed a place for friends. We have had few issues, mostly because it is a popular area, that attracts couples or singles who want to stay for a while. Keeping the rent high and the place in the sort of shape to attract those who want a quality place to live has been helpful.
To the OP, that did happen to me, once. The main tenant was traveling for business a lot, and I encountered an unknown man when I entered for a repair at a point. He said he was renting from the guy on the lease. In time, I came to appreciate him for being more present and helpful than the lease holder, who gave notice shortly after, regardless. But I had planned to ask him to renegotiate the lease, and have both parties sign as equals, if they both planned to stay. Otherwise, charging for damages after tenancy might have become difficult.