Eviction: Final trial coming up
Hi BiggerPockets community,
I currently own a two-family property in Jersey City, New Jersey. In one of the units, I have been dealing with a non-paying tenants for about a year and a half.
The final trial is coming up July 27th, 2022 and I want to make sure I have my bases covered so that I can properly evict this person and move on from this stressful chapter of my life.
This tenant, as of June 2022, owes me rent from July 2021. She technically stopped paying rent February 2021 but was given five months of rental assistance from the NJDCA rental assistance program. I expressed to her the importance of paying the rent and not expecting rental assistance programs to pay the rent for you. But she continued to not pay.
At this moment she owes me $16,300.
Here is the math:
1 month of rent is $1,500. She owes me 12 months of rent so that equals to $18,000. She has made two payments of $1,000 each in February and one this month(surprising given that eviction trial is coming up). So that brings the total to $16,000.
Late fees are $50. Due to the laws, I could not charge late fees for last year's rent but I can charge them for this year. That is 6 months of late totaling $300.
SO she owes me $16,300.
Its more than likely that another $1550 will be added to the balance next month which would put her at $17,850. That is a lot of money!
Given she has made those payments, does that complicate things? Can the judge say that she is acting in "good will" can let her stay?
Going into the final trial, what should I bring to court so that I can ultimately be prepared to defend my case.
I really want this person out of my property, she lacks basic communication skills, she is highly disrespectful, and she breaks the lease all of the time by having an insane amount of people there.