Any ideas for how to deal with tenants that owe money without court?

[Ian M.]

As I'm sure many/most everyone here has had happen - I just had a tenant leave in the middle of the night last night with no warning etc (at least according to the other tenants - my management company is still trying to verify). He just had his lease renew (less than 2 weeks ago) so he still technically owes another year's worth of rent money. As I run my rentals like a business, generally I don't think it makes financial sense to take a tenant to court to sue for these costs as most times when something like this happens, they don't exactly leave a forwarding address to deliver the notice in the first place in addition to the fact that after I pay the management company to take them to court (or my attorney to sue), even if i "win" they are not going to have money to pay it - blood from a stone. (Incidentally, if any of you have had a different experience on the whole and think it is worth it to go to court, I am all ears on that as well). Assuming that it doesn't make sense to go to court though, does anyone know of another way to effectively ding these tenants for not living up to their legal obligations (lease)? Its not just on principle (though that is compelling too, as I as the landlord am required to live up to my end of the deal, but as a responsible adult believe I should anyway), but its also because I don't want to hose the next landlord by not having something on record. Also, I don't want to send a message to other tenants in the building (or other potential tenants in my farm area) that I am soft and they can get away with this going forward. This is the second time in a year that this happened. I screen my tenants very carefully, in fact, this guy was truly a model tenant up until a few hours ago so this may just be the way it is. I can, and will, chalk this up to a cost of doing business, particularly because its starting busy season for tenants now, but does anyone know of a fairly simple way of adding something like this to a tenants credit report without the pain and financial expense of a legal finding? I was reading a BP post earlier on a different topic where I think @William Bannister mentioned something to that effect so William if you could expand on how you do that, along with others, I would be grateful. Much appreciated.