New Trick for breaking lease

I see that tenants are using new tricks in an attempt to break their leases. One that I've seen used more often recently is the County-Inspection scam.

The scam starts when the tenants wants to vacate the property before the end of the lease. They'll call the County for a property inspection in order to find county code violations with the home. This, they hope will allow them to vacate under a constructive eviction whereby the house is condemned and the tenant is allowed to break the lease without a financial penalty.

The only defense against this scam is to document that every reasonable tenant complaint has been addressed. I won a recent court case because the tenant was unable to show that any of the faults that the county inspector found had ever been sent to us. As the owner's agent, we were not held accountable for problems that were not known to us. I quickly countersued the tenant for destruction of the property. We won and the tenant lost his security deposit for the damage to the property.

Ray