Learn how to collect rent and deal with the eviction process without a lawyer

Collecting rent is one of those situations where I have to use some rules of thumb, some feelings, some hunches to try to figure out if it’s time to go and do the eviction or we try to work with the tenant and see if they can get caught. Maybe it’s a temporary problem. We can make a weekly or monthly payment plan and maybe we can get them to pay again.

In the same way, if I don’t think it’s going to happen, we have to go to eviction quickly. There is no point in waiting and spending two or three months waiting for something that is not going to happen. That requires some intuition and experience.

Know the rules for eviction

We will talk about the eviction process. Again, just like rules and regulations, you need to outsmart your tenants. You have to know the rules better than they do, because if you don’t, I guarantee you will be taken advantage of. They will tell you things that are not accurate and if you accept them, you will end up being their spearhead.

Now each state can be a little different and I recommend you go Google and look up your state and landlord regulations and study them cover to cover. Knowing the rules and then enforcing them is the most important thing in terms of collecting rent.

Should you use an attorney for evictions? You guys can do better than a lawyer. They will do almost nothing for you except the fact that they are attorneys and they will charge you $250-300 an hour.

I can probably beat any lawyer in this area and I can do it for $50 an hour for my clients, probably a sixth of what they would pay a lawyer.

How to retain tenants

How to work with tenants and try to encourage them to stay as tenants, making sure you’re working out issues with them in a friendly and professional way so they’re like, “Hey, yeah, I want to stay another year, two years, three years I’ll do it.” to be”.

If you delay doing maintenance, you drag yourself, you try to find excuses not to do it every time they call you, you don’t return their calls, they have a little trickle here and there, you don’t. fix it, do you think they are going to stay that second year after the lease is up? I do not think.

Again, you want to keep at it. You want to work inside trying to keep tenants as long as possible. Also, we have little things in our lease that encourage tenants to sign a new one year lease. They can go month to month but there are some penalties I wouldn’t call it that but just some things in that lease that make it more onerous for them instead of coming back to me and saying “I’d rather have a new lease one year lease that goes month to month.

We probably have 75-80% of our tenants coming back for a new one year lease instead of staying month to month. It is difficult for you as landlords and owners to manage if you do not know beyond 30 days if your tenant is staying or leaving. It’s much nicer to have a one-year lease and know that for the next 12 months you’ll at least get rent, so we’ll talk about that.