I collected every penny of an almost $4700 judgement
When I was first starting out as a landlord and before I really made any effort to educate myself I of course made some mistakes. One was letting a tenant fall three months behind on rent before they ultimately left (and thankfully they left willingly without my having to evict them). This had been a tenant who had lived in my property for almost three years without issues before one of them lost their job. Communication had been very open the whole time and we agreed that when they were able to secure employment we would work out a repayment schedule. They kept in regular contact, let me know their start date, and even suggested a payment schedule that would work for them based on their new salary. Roughly a week before monthly payments were supposed to start was the last time I ever heard from them. That was almost three years ago.
Fast forward to now. Through process servers, small claims court, wage garnishment (four separate employers as they repeatedly changed jobs) as of yesterday I am only owed less than $200. I admit I jumped the gun on my victory speech but unless they change jobs once again I'll be made whole by the end of this month. I also learned early on that I was competing with four other creditors who also have an active judgement against them. Four.
Before the inevitable "hire property management" response comes believe me I've learned this and many other lessons since then. While I'm sure I'll end up back in court at some point with another tenant I will never willingly allow someone to fall behind like that again. Not even one month. This was a good experience believe it or not. It's what convinced me to treat this like a business and to seek out more of an education. That and being made whole are why I consider a series of mistakes to have ultimately led to success.