How do I go about the collections process?

[Dillon Black]

Hello everyone, I have a situation I am looking for some insight/advice on.

I own a rental property here in Indiana near where I live, the tenant stopped paying, my management company filed for eviction and eventually got them out, I lost out on several months rent, legal fees and some damages. Several months later, we successfully get a judgement on the previous tenant for $5,000. It appears the attorney sent it to collections; however, I am not familiar with this process, anyway, that was in September and I have not received a single payment from them.

Using the judgement can I get my ex-tenant’s employer to garnish their wages to pay me back?

If so, how?

What have you guys done in this situation?

Thanks in advance!

[David Hedges]

in my experience, your not likely to ever see that money. 

collecting starts with the eviction, after the eviction you have another court date to file a judgement for damages, unpaid rent, and any other items. 

once you have the judgement, it's up to you to figure out where the tenant moved, you'll need it if you plan to go back to court. The Lake County court puts it on you to locate them for court notices. 

If you choose to keep going back to court chasing after non-payment, plan to spend a day each time you go. You'll need their current address to deliver notification of the court date. You can also hire a skip tracer to locate the tenant. When you get to court, expect to hear some excuse for why the need a payment plan or some other way to not pay anything now. After the court date, don't expect any payment. 

I've only ever had 2 people pay in in going through all this, 1 in full, 1 only partial. The one that paid in full, was a section 8 tenant. If they did not pay they would have been pulled off the section 8 program. The one that had partial payment, I had chased after them for over a year, and the bench warrant they had out for them. I've never seen the court go after wage garnishments for this, at least not in Lake County court. It may be possible though, I expect that you would need to spend more time there though. 

If you hand it off to a collection agent, you may lose a percentage of the debt, but they do all the work. I still wouldn't expect to see that money ever again though. 

For me, the primary goal is to get the bad tenant out so that I can get a better tenant in. I've lost far more than what you list here due to the mistake of not getting them out quickly in the past. Anymore, my opinion is, don't waste your time chasing after the judgements, just get them out as quickly as possible once you realize you have a bad tenant