Eviction on record before actually evicted question.

[Jay P.]

Hi All,

I started an eviction on a tenant of mine who has not paid since Feb.

The situation went to a "pre-trial" where a court order was formed where the rent/utilities would be paid by the tenant and he would let us in to sell the property and show the property for him to stay until June 2017 - all this had to be done by April 15th. (Court order was set on March 31 2017)

The tenant since then has not paid utilities nor the rent and decided to not let us in to sell the property.

It turns out he did this since he had found another place to live. That deal fell through and now he wants to pay and co-operate etc. I guess he felt like he could walk away without paying for anything since he found another place.

My attorney put in a motion for judgement since he reneged on the court order and the hearing is set for May 3rd 2017.

My question is:

Even though he has NOT been evicted (yet) is the fact that I started eviction proceedings is this on his record and this could have scared off the other (smarter than me) landlord?

I know some of you have been following my story for a while - I just hope he doesn't pay by end of money and he is evicted.

Even if he pays his rent can he be removed for not paying his huge utility bills?

Thank you 

[Eric Worral]

@Jay P. When you start the process the tenant now has a civil new filing on record. For all intents and purposes it is a judgment with $0 attached to it. The reason for $0 is you will not know what the total is that they owe until the eviction is realized and you can tally past rent and damages.

So, yes, your record will appear in a civil record search. However, not every screening company searches for civil records. If they're only searching the national eviction databases this record will likely not show up because the eviction has not been finalized.  However, you're correct, a savvy landlord who does their due diligence should find this warning and realize what is happening. 

So it's a crap shoot if that record will show up and it depends on what screening service they use to do a background check. Typically instant services are just using the national eviction database where services like ours ping multiple databases to get more information.

I hope that helps to clarify.