Tenant eviction after lease violation
Hi,
I have a two family home with a unit downstairs and another upstairs. I recently had new tenants occupy the 2nd floor unit and since then problems started. My long term downstairs tenants have had issue with the upstairs tenants yelling and fighting in the middle of the night causing a lot of disturbance to them. Police were involved a couple of times. Upon further research we found out that one of the persons upstairs had arrest history but nothing was shown in zillow background check.
Long story short, I sent a notice to vacate citing the disturbance and violation of lease (lease mentions no disturbance as one of the terms).
The tenants hired a lawyer and want to fight it out. I am looking for any suggestions for a good attorney who could represent me to fight eviction, any contacts will help.
Also, what background verification service is good which provides information of past arrests as well, Zillow service is not good.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks
I can't recommend an attorney, but it shouldn't be hard to find one with eviction experience and I think you have a good case. But that doesn't mean it will be easy.
No screening service is perfect. Some states do not have public records, so you can't always catch everything.
The other issue with background checks to be aware of is that you may not be able to disqualify someone based solely on an arrest; a conviction is another story. And generally, if it's older than 5 years, you could be stuck, depending on the charge and where you live. With that said, there is most likely a company in your area that can do background screenings for you for a fee. And as @Nathan Gesner mentioned, you can check local county court records or see if your local police or sheriff's department will do a check for you. I know here in CO, we sometimes use the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. They will do a quick criminal check online for around $5 and it gets the job done. Good luck.
Thanks for those suggestions. Also, how much does an eviction attorney charge in general, in my area, they are quoting around 350$ an hour and a monitory deposit of 1500.00$ to take up the case (This money will be used by the hour depending on the number of hours they spend on the case).
Thanks
Find one that offers a flat fee, or in stages. File $200, Court $500, Serve papers $200, etc.
Ask the tenants below to send you a written complaint. Document the upstairs behaviour in every way you can. Phone messages. Police reports. Go get 'em! Get moving fast. Attorneys suck, they're often in a day dream stupor.. Find an attorney and tell him to serve a vacate notice immediately. Make sure you know your local laws about evicting. Can you evict just for ONE lease violation? Or does your city require 20 violations within a year? I don't know, but you'd better know.
Be careful, you can't evict someone just because he USED to be a murderer or drug dealer.
Focus on the lease violations. Or if they lied on their application.
I called several tenant/landlord lawyers for their free consultations to ask their opinion and what I can win with and their fees. MA is difficult with a lot of tenant friendly laws. $250-350 were my quote ranges also with $2500-5000 retainer range. I did not want to go the eviction route as it could take several months and can be very costly, whereas some tenants are given free legal help.
I can give you 1-2 names of attorneys in the Worcester area (not sure where your property is located) if you send me a message! I have not personally used them, but I am a full time real estate agent and one of my most trusted real estate attorneys that I work with has given me their information and strongly recommended them for my investor clients.
Also going forward I wouldn't recommend using anything Zillow related at all... There is a service called SmartMove by Transunion you can use to screen future tenants. There is an option for the tenant to pay the $41.99 fee (in lieu of paying it yourself) and I have found that even just having to pay a fee will deter some of the "lower quality" tenants. It does background/criminal check, credit check, past eviction record check, and income verification as well as a part of the fee.