New Landlord Serving an Eviction During Covid-19

[Cameron Rees]

Hello BP,

I am desperate. I closed on a 4 unit house hack in September and it is my first rental property. I have never been so excited in my life to feel like I have accomplished something that I am hoping with help lead me to financial freedom in the future. My wife took some convincing to move but she is now seeing the benefits and we are living almost free, that is if tenants pay. Two tenants are amazing and genuinely seem like great people that I should never have a problem getting rent from. The third is a different story. He was late the very first month and last called me late, drunk. He said he was smelling a chemical smell from his heater. I went over there and didn't smell anything and gave him a new carbon monoxide and smoke detector to make sure it wasn't anything that would harm them. The tenant, stumbling his words, kept bringing up random issues with the property and kind of throwing them at me with no particular order or reasoning. This is after he just signed a lease with me and said there weren't any problems with the unit when I had asked him. Next he mentioned that he was planning on going to rehab the next day and wondered how rent was going to work since he was going to be gone for a period of time. I told him rent would still be due as normal. Eventually my wife and I went back over to our unit and went to bed. 

The next morning I had texted him asking if he could let me know his plan so I can figure out what I needed to do. No response. Since then I have called and he deleted his phone number and I have also messaged him on Facebook with no response as well with texts. I think he did go to rehab because I have not seen his car at all nor him. I have called the few lawyers that dabble in real estate and they basically said I can't do anything. I asked if him being absent from the unit made a difference and he said yes, but did not seem well educated on the subject and couldn't seem to tell me exactly what to do. One other problem is I never got a spare key to that unit when I bought it and had never made a new one in the month I've been here unfortunately.

Does anyone in Illinois know if I have and rights in order to get someone else in the unit? Am I out of luck? Any help is appreciated and I hope I have given enough Information.

Thanks,

Cameron

[Bjorn Ahlblad]

@Cameron Rees the current moratorium ends Nov 22 if I am not mistaken. It will likely be extended, also Judges are very fussy about procedures and paperwork. Very likely there will be free lawyers at the court to help the tenant.

You should either hire a lawyer for any eviction or see if you can get the tenant to take cash for keys; since he is going into rehab maybe he has friends or family to stay with? If you do cash for keys he gets no money until all his stuff is out, you do an inspection, he hands you the keys, and he signs an agreement that he is gone.