Tenant Owes 6700$ in Unpaid Rent

[Mat K.]

Greetings and thanks for reading !

I’ve got a major decision to make about a tenant who hasn’t been cooperative about paying rent during COVID-19 /much of 2020.

He currently owes 6700$ from back rent and just gave me notice about wanting to leave. I sense his doing that to skip town and leave me with an unpaid rent bill. I’m a small time landlord and I’ve tried to be reasonable with him all of last year during The pandemic. Our agreement was he pays as much as he can and Up to half of the 1020 a month as regularly due! Unfortunately he missed 3 months and barely made payments the other months.

Since we live in Texas and due to the moratorium in place and no evictions I was limited about options and I sense he took advantage of that . I’d sent him many areas he could apply for help and asked for documentation he was struggling with rent to document but he didn’t follow up with the request and to document he was having trouble or met the requirements for aid.

Regardless, what got to me was a statement he made that he was able to start making payments after catching up with his credit card debt. Which was puzzling as it seemed he was focusing more on that instead of making rent as due !

Recently, he mentioned he will be leaving and wanted to see if he could only pay 3200 and I could take off 2 months worth of rent and keep the 500$ deposit . Basically trying to see if I would take the bait.

I was firm and told him i could not do that as it would be unfair to the other tenants who paid rent somehow. Also mentioned I could take off the security deposit depending on damages if he moves out, and can give him an 18 month extension to pay rent free. I’ve already taken off close to 100$ late fee which he owed in addition to all of this. Really trying to empathize with him. I believe in giving him a break since he has a family and we’re all going through tough times hoping he would redeem himself when things got better but he doesn’t seem like I can trust his words.

Is there any general advice anyone can give to solve this problem more amicably or would I have to end up in small claims court to recoup all lost rents ?

Thanks for your time again

Mat

[Greg H.]

This is an answer for Texas.  I absolutely as a landlord would take that deal as the reality is you will most likely get nothing if you do not because:

-Do to our homestead protections, judgements against individuals are very very difficult to collect(being optimistic).  Take a look at the list of exempt property sometime that cannot be touch.  A person can literally own a million dollar home free and clear and you cannot touch it

-Texas does not allow garnishment of wages for a judgement so that avenue of collection is out

-You can get a judgement and hope or even use a collection agency who will take 50% or so if they are successful

OR you can take the money now and move on and get a new tenant.  Realistically this is the only route