Evictions - some attitude adjustment?

[Ihe O.]

So your tenant is 5 days late or whatever and you are a business not a charity, time to crank up the only remedy in your arsenal, it's off to the courthouse to file eviction.

Evictions - I've had a few - they both took 4-5 months from start to finish during which time no rent was collected. One was a holdover who refused to vacate after an acquisition and was thrown out by the sheriff the other stopped paying and sat in the house until eviction day and then left peacefully before the sheriff showed up.

But of course it is going to take  ages to get a date for an eviction case,  the system is clogged up with filings from landlords against tenants who are "5" days or whatever late and who are in effect abusing the eviction process to get their tenant to pay. 

Yes I said abusing the eviction process, because the remedy in an eviction case is not the unpaid rent, it is the removal of the tenant. So the people that  genuinely need to get a tenant out have to wait ages and lose lots of money because of the volume of frivolous eviction suits brought by landlords who are really trying to get paid.

Does that attitude work for the betterment of all, or are landlords by aggregate of their behavior actually shooting themselves in the foot.

Here is an analogy for you. Suppose there were a limited number of doctors in your locality and everybody asked to see one whenever they had a headache. What would be the collective effect on the health of the community as a whole.

[Corby Goade]

I agree with @Marc Winter, cash for keys is often a reasonable solution for both parties. I have only had a few evictions, but I have honestly found it very effective to over communicate with those tenants about the process and my intentions. What I usually do is come up with a plan and series of deadlines for them to meet to avoid eviction and tell them that if they miss any of those deadlines, I have to evict. I make it clear that this is not my preference and if I am forced to evict, that is a choice that they have made, not me. It's worked really well, and the handful of times I've had to evict tenants, they've actually apologized to me for "making" me evict them and causing me stress and have left without me paying them cash or having to go through the formal eviction process. Obviously that won't always be the case, but it can work.