problam to evict inherited tennants

[Ben Taub]

I bought a 2-unit property, and i am trying to get rid of the tenants that have not been paying since the bagging of covid, the old landlord was in court and lost for the ERAP assistance, now he finally got his ERAP, right after i bough it, they ask cash for keys $10,000 for each of the 2 units. (welcome to Newburgh NY) .....

i can easily rent out the units for 2100-2300 each

the property has multiple violations.

now my question is is it worth paying them? or going the other route, will the court require to first fix the violations before i start to count the 3 months that it takes eviction here from what i have heard?

the attorney of the old landlord was positive that i can just take over the case from the old landlord, (although nothing can be guaranteed that i will not need to start from scratch in Newburgh....) he charges $450 per hour, is a normal rate? if not do you have a better suggestion?

[Wesley Sherow]

Good morning Ben!

I am quite surprised by some of the prices in your post, since i'm familiar with the upstate market. A couple things that surprise me: 
- $10,000 cash for keys is absurd. At most i've seen $500-1,000. Don't exceed that. Cash for keys should be assessed against your expenses. If it would take you $500 in attorney fees and 2 months to evict someone, then theoretically you break even at about $4,500 - so MAYBE that's justified on the cash for keys route, but remember at the end of an eviciton you get a judement for the full amount, meaning it's worth it to a tenant to get $500 in cash and have their debt forgiven, or get out of their lease. It's not black and white. 
- $450 per hour is not a normal rate. I pay $550-600 for an eviction as a flat rate. It's not a complicated legal process and usually involves one in person meeting for the attorney with the court. And often good evicitons attorneys line up their evicitons back to back so they're doing 2-5 cases in the course of one hour. 

Questions: 
Is it worth paying them? $10,000? No.

Rent is always still due. It's likely the fixes you need to make you'd need to make regardless. If that's what holding up your payment, then go for it. 

Once ERAP makes a payment, the tenant still has to make rent payments AFTER they are approved and paid out from ERAP, so yes start the evictions process over from the immediate next missed payment. 

Unless Newburg is for some reason largely different from Albany, Troy, Cohoes which is my wheel house, it seems you're ill advised on this subject.