Something that differentiates us from our competitors, and from most property management companies even outside of our markets, is how quickly we file evictions when a tenant hasn’t paid. When we take over accounts from other management companies, we frequently see that those companies aren’t even charging a late fee until after the 5th, and in many cases not filing eviction until a full month after the rent was due. Quite frankly, this is insane, and it is not in a landlord’s best interest in our view.
Most leases have a security deposit of one month’s rent. That means if everything goes south and the tenant stops paying, you have only one month to get rid of that tenant before it starts costing you money out of your own pocket. And that’s before you take into account the attorneys’ fees and court costs for an eviction, which can easily exceed $1k if you’re an individual landlord, and even with the deep discounts we receive from our attorneys still usually cost around $500. So in reality, you already start the game with less than a month of leeway before your own wallet starts to get hit. Why on earth would you give the tenant a full month of free rent before filing the eviction? Well, we don’t.
When we’re managing a property, the rent is due on the 1st, there’s a late fee if the rent isn’t paid by the 2nd, and we’re filing eviction on the 8th (or the next business day). If a tenant pays half the rent before the 8th, we will usually give them some extra time to pay the rest, but that’s the only leeway we give. Sob stories don’t pay mortgages, so it doesn’t matter to us what the reason is that the tenant hasn’t paid. Either they pay, or they have to go.
We make this policy very clear to the tenant upfront so that they know that they have to pay on time or face an eviction on their record. For this reason, combined with our screening criteria, we have relatively few evictions.
If you want someone on your side making sure that your tenants are paying on time, give us a call about managing your property.
