Bulldozers and Bundles of Sticks

In the local news, a landlord allegedly used a  front end loader to evict tenants from a mobile home.

Angry landlord crushed mobile home while tenants fled, deputies report

Attempted murder charges filed over eviction rage.

Bulldozer Eviction Arrest Orange County

As he put it, “Miller told a deputy, “This is my property and I will bulldoze the whole … place,” ”

The problem with this is, leaving aside his trying to knock down the mobile home while people were still in it, even though it might be his property, once he leased it, he couldn’t do whatever he wanted with it. By leasing it, he gave up some of his rights in the property for the duration of the lease.

In this country, property ownership has been described as “A Bundle of Sticks”.  Wikipedia Bundle of Rights

This bundle of sticks include the right to occupy the property, exclude other people from the property, use the property to raise crops or mine the land.  But, once someone leases property, the tenant receives at least some of those sticks, for however long the lease lasts.  Specifically, the tenant gets the right to occupy the property and, subject to certain exceptions, to exclude others, including, under most circumstances, the landlord.  Had the landlord not leased the property, he probably could have knocked the mobile home down (assuming no one was actually inside it at the time) so long as he got a permit to do so.

Obviously, this is an extreme example of “What Not to Do” if you are a landlord.  But there are other, much more common, No-No’s that landlords commit all the time.  Next time, we look at other things that landlords do that can get them in trouble in Florida

 

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