There are certain things that you should do now to prepare for your eventual ownership of the property:

- Have an attorney review the lease, and spell out your specific responsibilities. Have him look for any provisions that would allow you to cancel the lease.

- Contact the state where the property is located and find out the process for evictions of residential tenants. Be prepared to execute a notice of eviction at the earliest possible opportunity.

- Maintain the property in occordance with your responibilities, but remember that being a tenant does not obligate you to be a 24 hour service for any issue with the house. Unless the situation is life threatening or make the property uninhabiltable, be as slow about repairs as you can.

- Replair instead of replace. You may have an obligation to maintain certain components – furnance, appliances, plumbing, etc, but you are likely only obligated to maintain them in working order – even if they work poorly. (Your tenant is not entitled to a new, energy efficient furnance because energy costs are high.)

- Do not give up any rights under the lease – i.e. do not take partial payments, demand any and all fees provided for under the lease, do not make consessions that may limit your rights or change the terms of the lease as they apply to you (if the lease says no pets, do not allow them …. if the lease says no smoking, don’t concede to a smoker, if the lease allows visits to ensure that the tenant is maintaining the property, by all means, appear for every inspection and serve notice of violations. If the rent is late, serve notice the first day of delinquency.

This may sound harsh, but your mother and her tenant are adults who agreed to what was written in the lease. Each party is expected to do certain things, and proof of those expectations is the written and executed lease. If either party disagreed with what the lease contained, they should not have signed and executed it. There is no obligation to do any more than the expectations that were written down.

Maintaining a profitable rental is almost impossible from a long distance (sometimes very difficult when it is near you). Your goal should be to rid the property of the tenant at the earliest opportunity, while strictly maintaining your obligations under the lease.

The only other thing that you can do, if you are really locked in is to offer compensation for the tenant to give up her rights under the lease and move out.