Give people second chances
It started in 2003 when I bought my first rental home. Over the years I had as many as three of them (I’m not a tycoon). Now, we are left with only one. The latter is several hundred miles away.
In many ways, I count my lucky stars and say a prayer of gratitude that this is the first time I’ve had a problem in all these years.
Basically, the tenants felt that they no longer had a need to pay their rent. So we had to evict them. It’s a pain in the butt. The tenant can work in the system and live rent free while the paperwork goes through bureaucrats.
Approximately a month passed between the filing and the court date. Our attorney handled the entire matter. I don’t blame him for covering all the angles, but he surprised me when he asked me to appear. His reasoning is that in case the tenant came up with a few lines of BS, he would be there to refute everything.
I made the long trip the day before the short date. At least I was able to catch up with my parents, brother and his son the night before. (The chicken cutlets were great for mom!) The next day I met with my lawyer and we headed to the “landlord-tenant dispute” room. It all took about ten minutes. They called our case number. They shouted the names of the defendants. Unanswered. That’s it – you get your judgment and right of possession after a few days.
Another “kicker” and the lessons learned…
Once you get your judgment and right of possession, there is a chance that you are not done with your headache yet. He had to find out if the dead tenants were gone or if they planned to stay up until the bitter end when the Sheriff would close the door. The idea I had was to contact someone who had given me information about a month after they stopped paying. This source (who I should have kept in touch with) told me that the tenants had been out since early August. What a nice extra low blow! My real estate agent could have been looking for a new tenant for two more months. Oh well, live and learn!
A couple of lessons…
1. I realized, even though it was a pain in the ass to deal with an indolent tenant, that I was lucky.
Luck because for nine years I have always had good tenants. Many people get scared when an obstacle or problem presents itself and they give up. But I won’t give up on residential real estate. Although there’s a chance you’ll get screwed over, the long-term benefits outweigh the problems as long as you do your homework. The truth is that if you are not experiencing problems and obstacles, you are not doing much.
2. People don’t change I guess.
Was I foolish for allowing a tenant on our property to have been evicted in the past? Maybe. But the truth is, people go through hard times and that doesn’t really represent who they are. Naturally, once the judgment we obtained against them shows up on your credit report, your next landlord can easily see a pattern. Give people a second chance, some will change, some won’t, either way you can move on.