Effectively suing a tenant after eviction

[James McGovern]

What are the best practices for suing a tenant for expenses related to eviction and recovery of costs to clean up after them when they leave a mess?

[Greg Scott]

You simply take them to small claims court.

In many cases the hard part is finding them.  Most tenants that get evicted don't have USPS forward their mail.  Finding where they moved to to serve them notice can be tough.

After you serve them, you can take all your evidence to court and ask the judge for a money judgement.  There is usually only a small chance the tenant even shows up, so it is usually a one-sided argument favoring the landlord.

The next hard part is collecting.  Our properties are in Indiana where the laws are more supportive of landlords.  We only get collections from about 10-20% of the people for which we've gotten a judgement and we get a judgement against everyone we evict.  We owned a small apartment in Michigan for four years, but had exactly $0 recovered from judgements there.