Hello Wisconsin!!!

[Thomas Lillevold]

Help!!!   My first Eviction

I recently purchased a property for a steal and quickly found out why I got it so cheap....I just inherited the tenant from hell along with this building.   He refuses to pay rent, he has not paid his utilities, of which the county is tacking on to my taxes.   He does not play well with others at all.    Its like he is living in some sort of fantasy world where he expects to get use of this building rent free.   I am completely perplexed at the mindset of this person. 

I believe the previous owner was a big part of this problem but cannot be sure...I only met him twice before the purchase and he briefly showed up at the closing.    He did not strike me as having a very good business sense and that was confirmed when I saw his leases....they were 3/4 of a page long, didnt collect any security deposits from any of the tenants, worst leases I have ever seen in my life, so I can imagine the screening process took about 2 seconds....Luckily for me 2 out of the 3 tenants have been very good.    

Has anyone ever had a situation like this before?....I have served the PAY RENT OR VACATE notice and sat down with an attorney today to serve the official eviction to this gem of a person.    I was going to handle this myself but its my first eviction since we began 8 years ago and I didnt want to handle my first eviction on my own for fears of missing something...i figured Ill learn a ton from my lawyer during this process that may come in handy...but I hope not.

Does anyone else have anything to add or advice for a first timer at the eviction process?

[Calvin Ozanick]

Thomas, investing in southern Wisconsin, we have dealt with a couple of evictions in our lower income areas. One of the things I came across is to not let it get out of hand. We stick by the standard of serving a 5 day notice once rent is considered late, and then following through with the eviction after the notice comes due. 

While it is never fun evicting someone, nor does it help our income, I find that making exceptions for other tenants or breaking procedure to help someone out only hurts in the long run. Tenants have an obligation to pay just like we have an obligation to take care of their unit. Once we came to this realization, it has made our development of further processes that much more important.