Enforcing writ for eviction

[Srayan Guhathakurta]

Hello, in January 2022 my attorney and I had signed a CR-2A agreement with my non-paying tenant and their attorney - which essentially states that the tenant will vacate the property on or by 4/30/22; if not I can immediately enforce the stipulation of writ (the writ came with the CR-2A).

My question is - 
1. Since I am only three weeks away from the move-out date, how can I effectively get a pulse on whether the tenant plans to actually vacate on 4/30 or not ? I have not put my home on the market yet since I do not want to go through an additional headache of having to deal with issues with the potential future tenant in case my current deadbeat tenant does not move out timely.

2. My property is in King county, WA and if anyone recently went through an eviction and could speak about the process since it involves the King County Sheriff's department, that would be great. Any gotcha's that I should look out for? The King County Sheriff's webpage states that they can take up to 40 days to enforce the writ owing to staffing issues.

3. Anything I can do in this time window between now and 4/30 to better prepare myself should the tenant not move out on 4/30?

4. The CR-2A agreement was signed by an attorney from the Housing Justice Project as well (since my tenant got free legal representation). Does this put some responsibility on the tenant's attorney too?

[Nathan Gesner]

Doesn't it warm your heart to know you pay your taxes, obey the laws, and the government fails to do what you've paid them for?

You can't get a pulse on the tenant. They can lie to you right up until the day of termination and then suddenly claim they were unable to find a moving truck, or friends to help, or a place to go, or they caught COVID, or whatever. Just let it play out.

If they refuse to leave, you will send the writ to the Sheriff and get on their waiting list. Your tenant can play it out for another 30 - 40 days, or maybe you'll get lucky and the deputy will show up in a week. Once the writ is in the Sheriff's hands, your Tenant doesn't have much going in their favor because they (a) probably don't know there's a 40-day backlog, and (b) don't know what day/time the Sheriff will show up. There's no advantage to them sticking around because they run the risk of being thrown on the street with all their belongings and nowhere to go.

Just let it play out and go from there.