{"id":47885,"date":"2013-09-23T08:00:59","date_gmt":"2013-09-23T14:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/renewsblog\/?p=47885"},"modified":"2021-03-16T10:11:00","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T16:11:00","slug":"2013-09-23-eviction-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/2013-09-23-eviction-costs","title":{"rendered":"Eviction Education: My Cost – $3403.99, Today’s Special – Free!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your mistakes are your tuition.<\/em>
\nEiji Toyoda<\/em><\/p>\n

Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder.<\/i>
\nMason Cooley<\/i><\/p>\n

If you are a landlord, no matter how well you screen for tenants, you will eventually have to go through an eviction. \u00a0When I started investing in real estate, it was 3 years before I had my first eviction. \u00a0Anyone who has gone through an eviction knows that it can be a painful, tricky and expensive process. \u00a0Therefore, it is important to make sure you understand the eviction process in your area before you need to. \u00a0If you don’t, your education will be expensive. \u00a0My eviction education cost me $3383.99, but if you act today, you can have it for the very low price of FREE!<\/p>\n

My lease has the following terminology related to rent.<\/p>\n

RENT, ADDED RENT:<\/b>\u00a0The rent payment for each month must be paid on the first day of each month to the landlord.\u00a0 The landlord need not give notice to pay the rent.\u00a0 Rent must be paid in full without deduction.\u00a0 The first month\u2019s rent is to be paid when the tenant signs this agreement.\u00a0 Rent checks returned for insufficient funds shall be subject to a $25.00 late service fee, in addition to a $20 returned check fee.\u00a0 The tenant(s) shall be responsible for the payment of a late charge of $50.00 for rent not paid on or before the 5th<\/sup>\u00a0day of the month for which the rent is due.\u00a0 Said late charge is deemed to be added rent payable by the tenant(s) to the landlord under the terms of the agreement.\u00a0 It is the tenant\u2019s responsibility to get the rent to the landlord on time.\u00a0 If the tenant(s) sends a check for the rent, it must be post-marked by the fifth day of the month in order to avoid being charged a late fee.\u00a0 The tenant(s) must send rent checks to the landlord at the above address.<\/em><\/p>\n

In case I need to take a tenant to court, it also has this clause.<\/p>\n

COSTS AND ATTORNEY FEES:<\/b>\u00a0Tenant(s) shall pay the actual amount of all reasonable costs and attorney\u2019s fees incurred by Landlord in connection with successful action to enforce the Landlord\u2019s rights under this agreement.<\/em><\/p>\n

Eviction Education Cost Breakdown<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Date<\/b><\/td>\nCost<\/b><\/td>\nActivity<\/b><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
September 5th<\/td>\n($730.00)<\/td>\nDid not receive tenant’s rent.\u00a0 She told my father she had an issue with her checking account.\u00a0 He gave her the benefit of the doubt, but each week she said she would have it, she had another excuse.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
October 5th<\/td>\n($730.00)<\/td>\nWe still had not received September rent and now did not receive October rent.\u00a0 Decided it was time to evict and posted 3 day notice on the tenants door.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
October 18th<\/td>\n$0.00<\/td>\nFinally had paperwork filled out for the court for the eviction.\u00a0 The court was only opened 1 day a week, so we had to wait until it was open to pick up the paperwork.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
October 24th<\/td>\n($20.00)<\/td>\nAfter taking a week to figure out how to fill out the paperwork and waiting for the court to be open, we finally filed the eviction paperwork with the court and received a court date of November 7th.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
October 26th<\/td>\n($50.00)<\/td>\nPaid Sheriff to serve eviction paperwork to tenant.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
November 5th<\/td>\n($730.00)<\/td>\nTenant did not pay November rent.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
November 7th<\/td>\n$680<\/td>\nTenant did not show up to court, so we received a verdict of $1480 (September Rent + October Rent + Late Fees + Court Fee).\u00a0 We are able to then keep the security deposit of $680.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
November 9th<\/td>\n($104.92)<\/td>\nSheriff served warrant to tenant.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
November 16th<\/td>\n($12.07)<\/td>\nTenant did not move out, so Sheriff removed tenant from property.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
November 17th<\/td>\n($327)<\/td>\nTenant leaves the property a mess and with damage.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
December 1st<\/td>\n($680)<\/td>\nBeing December, it is difficult to find renters and the apartment sits vacant.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
December 12th<\/td>\n($20.00)<\/td>\nWe go to small claims court for November rent + property damage.\u00a0 Tenant does not show up and we are awarded $1173.99.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
January 1st<\/td>\n$680<\/td>\nWe approve a tenant to rent the property, but they can’t move in until February 1st.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
February 1st<\/td>\n$0.00<\/td>\nNew tenant moves in!<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Total Cost<\/td>\n($3403.99)<\/td>\nFinal amount of money that we lost out on as a result of this tenant.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Even though we were awarded a total of $2653.99 from the courts, we have yet to collect a single dime. \u00a0The tenant does not have a job, so we cannot garnish their wages. \u00a0We had verdicts filed, but who knows if we will ever see that money.<\/p>\n

Lessons Learned<\/h2>\n

\u00a01. Don’t Delay Starting the Eviction<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>Evictions take time.\u00a0 The longer you wait, the more money you will lose.\u00a0 Much better to start the eviction and pay the $20 court fee and cancel it when the tenant pays (their $50 late fee covering the court cost) as compared to waiting and incurring most lost revenue.<\/p>\n

2. Understand the Eviction Process<\/strong><\/p>\n

We did not know how to do an eviction before we needed to.\u00a0 As a result, it took us longer to determine how to fill out paperwork.\u00a0 We also didn’t realize the court was only open one day a week, so it took us longer to get the paperwork filed.<\/p>\n

Related<\/strong>: <\/em>Evictions \u2013 Can You Do Them Yourself?<\/em>
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

3. An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tenant screening is important.\u00a0 We do a pretty good job of screening, but this experience reinforced the importance of that.\u00a0 We follow the basic process explained in Tenant Screening: The Ultimate Guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hopefully this story has helped save you some of the trouble and costs that we’ve spent on this eviction. Be sure to leave a comment below letting me know your worst eviction stories!<\/p>\n

Photo: Bart Everson<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Your mistakes are your tuition. Eiji Toyoda Procrastination makes easy things hard, hard things harder. Mason Cooley If you are a landlord, no matter how well you screen for tenants, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1302,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5183],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landlording"],"acf":[],"comment_count":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1302"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}