In the midst of a painful tenant eviction avoid it if you can

[Jane S.]

These tenants were habitually late and always complaining about not having money to pay rent or repairs as required by their lease. So I hired an attorney because this is my first eviction and the timing was all wrong, the attorney left the US for 2 weeks and the court hearing was yesterday, took 4 hours because the city systems were all malfunctioning and Magistrate wasn't able to see our paperwork. Tenants claimed they paid for repairs but had no proof and provided no hard copy docs, just messy notes on a printout of an email. 

The Magistrate asked if we wanted to settle and tenants said very clearly yes. The Magistrate wrote up a trial settlement that required tenants to pay December rent by 3pm yesterday to which they said “We dont have the money” and my atty said “You wanted to pay December rent where is that money?” Tenants didnt answer. 

Settlement also required them to forgo the security deposit which they fought for but lost on that. I dont have to provide any accounting although tenants tried to tell me how to allocate the repairs. The house looks like the start of a Hoard.

The settlement also suppressed the case so tenants wouldn't have eviction on their records. I am un-suppressing it because …

Guess what they didnt pay so now they are in default and don't have to perform any of the settlement requirements and a writ of restitution will be served on them SOON I hope. That gives them another 10 days to vacate but meanwhile they can do a lot of damage to my property and the sheriff is now part of the situation.

If you can avoid evicting my advice is there is very little help you can get from the law, no matter where you live. These tenants were OK until halfway through their 2nd year (I extended their lease—also big mistake)

I now understand, anyone wanting to rent my house will put on a good show of how reliable and honest they are and how they admire me, until we sign the lease. Then they will let their hatred of me show, little by little by defaulting on the lease and trotting out their list of excuses.

I dont know if this will ever be over without $1000s lost.