Well it's not the first of the month yet, for all you know rent could get paid!
If that doesn't happen, does the tenant have family/friends who can arrange for his things to be moved?
One more advantage of making your tenants set up auto-payments: When they go away for murder, you keep getting paid until their bank account is drained.
I know this was mostly a joke but I would not do this. LL has a duty to mitigate (find another tenant). If LL finds another tenant, he should only deduct the costs of finding the new tenant (or if there is a decline in rent, the difference).
You shouldn't just drain somebody's account, murder suspect or otherwise.
Agreed, they are likely going to need to money to pay for their lawyer etc, and won't be able to earn an income in the meantime.
Even (alleged) murderers have family and friends that could move out their belongings and settle up their affairs while the court case and prison sentence is carried out.
But this is dependant on the landlord knowing there is a problem in the first place, given that tenants usually have the right to "peaceful enjoyment" of the property without being 'harassed' by the owner. If rent is paid on direct debits, and no inspections of the property have been made for a while, it's entirely possible a landlord may be unaware of something like this.
Yeah, that's a good point. We don't know at this point whether the tenant WANTS to keep renting the property or not. So presumably the landlord could just keep deducting rent until informed otherwise.
The ethical thing to do though would be to try to get in touch with the tenant and find out if they are planning to keep paying rent and return to the property. If they intend to keep paying, no issue. If they want to abandon the lease, LL can still charge rent while looking for a new tenant.
However, I'm guessing there's a 99% chance the tenant has zero plans to pay rent and that's why LL is getting the advice from the police about declaring the property abandonded. I have no knowledge of the rules of the particular jurisdiction (and am far too lazy to look this up to answer a question an anonymous internet board anyways) so I can't vouch for that.
I will say that LL would be well advised to (1) look up the law in their jurisdiction and (2) try to contact the tenant (through family / friends) to avoid miscommunication. Also, generally speaking sending a thoughtful written letter before taking any major actions and providing contact information in that letter is always helpful. Whether that decision is keep charging rent or find a new tenant or whatever, keeping a record that tried to inform the tenant via written notice and heard nothing would I think be helpful. Backup for your files in case there is ever an issue.
