Collections Services in Fall River / New Bedford, MA

[Ryan Morrissey]

I am invested in 18 units in Fall River and New Bedford, MA which, for those are unfamiliar with the area, would be considered a c-class investment market in my opinion. Early lease terminations and evictions are fairly common and from my experience, happen at a 10-15% clip without batting an eyelash. By contrast I also have some property in Boston, MA where non-payment of rent is something that rarely happens and has never happened to me in 4 years of being a landlord there.

I have a couple questions to ask other landlords in that area (or similar “c-class” areas):

1.) Do you bother trying to chase evicted or terminated tenants for non-payment of rent? Or given the dynamics of the market and potential low likelihood of recovery, do you not even bother? What factors drive your decision to pursue collections versus leave it alone?

2.) For those who have experience with collections services in the area, is there anyone you would recommend working with for this? I have several cases where I’ve been burned for more than a couple grand and am looking to recover as much as possible

Thanks,

Ryan

[Ryan Morrissey]

@Gualter Amarelo thanks for the input, but that didn’t address my question. I’m looking for feedback on whether or not landlords use collections services to try and recover losses from former tenants who were either evicted or terminated their leases early. Do you bother with collections or just write it off as a loss? Are there certain situations when you decide to pursue damages vs. leave it alone? If you pursue damages, have you had any success?

The vacancy rate you’re referring to at 5-7% for a portfolio that’s been under your management for 7 years makes complete sense and is probably the average for a mature portfolio under sound management. My experience in year 1 has been 10-15% as a lot of poor quality tenants were in place at the properties I purchased and we have intentionally induced high turnover to clean house through evictions and rent raises, improving each of the units during the turnover. I have a separate post about identifying quality tenants in this market area which is another challenge I have right now as we’ve been turning over a bunch of units lately. Currently sitting with 5 vacancies and quality tenants have been hard to identify. When you say you could fill your units with “engineers” if you wanted, I’d love to hear more about what your sources are for identifying such quality tenants so quickly in this market area...but perhaps on that other post