I'm Not Renewing a Lease - What if Tenant Refuses to Leave?

Question

HI Everyone,

In short, what happens when you decide to not renew a tenant's lease, give proper notice, and they refuse to leave?

More detail: Having trouble finding this in the VRLTA, but I have a tough situation. Tenant has refused to pay me since February. Coincidentally, the eviction moratorium prevented me from getting them out of my property. They remained employed throughout the pandemic. I'm working with my lawyer to re-schedule our court date that was cancelled by the city (was scheduled for 6/15) where I was hoping to get my writ of possession. But now I potentially face a new problem. The lease expires in November, and I believe that it may take that long, if not longer, to fully go through the eviction process to get them out of my house. Some of my colleagues are being rescheduled to as late as September for the same types of cases. What do I do if the tenant simply refuses to leave when the lease expires? I fully intend to go through the eviction process as both a back-up plan and as a public service, because the community needs to know via court records that this person does not pay their bills. Appreciate any experience you've had where your leases have expired but tenants have refused to leave. How does this work in Richmond?

Sudhanshu Singha · Answer

@Michael A. There is some good news for you! The article below states that eviction hearings will resume on June 29th and that the city of Richmond will spend $6 million for rental assistance. At least once the hearings get started the backlog will start to get smaller since the last thing a landlord wants to happen is for evictions to finally get started and then find out his rescheduled court date is 5-6 months away due to a backlog in eviction cases.

With the type of tenant you have it would probably make sense to just take your losses and evict as soon as possible instead of trying to recoup some of your losses with the rental assistance mentioned in the article. The reason I say this is because most likely there is going to be some strings attached to the rental assistance money preventing you from evicting your tenant in the future.

https://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/virginias-supreme-court-lifts-freeze-on-evictions-stoney-pledges-cares-act-funds-to-address-issue

Edward Liu · Answer

This is special times and extremely difficult to evict anyone (almost impossible to evict in some cities), with no end in sight.   I heard eviction court dates constantly get pushed back.

We are really at mercy of the tenants.  I have a tenant who works in the hospital (never lost his job) and refuse to pay since March.   Only thing the property manager can do is 'encourage' him to pay and be nice to him, but be a nuisance.  To get my property manager off his back, he is starting to pay half of the rent since June.  It is better than nothing.   The tenant currently owes me over $5k in back rent, which I treat as lost cause.   At least the property is cash positive even with his situation.

I hate to give you the bad news.  Likely you will lose more money by trying to evict him as eviction might not occur until next year.   Try the option of offering some cash (forgive previous rent) and get him out.   I know every state is different, so you have to judge based on your local court system and government.

Justin Pierce · Answer

Michael, you're doing exactly the right thing.  It's just a tough situation right now. You just have to go through the eviction process.  You could offer cash for keys but I hate to see that happen.  They've already gotten months of free rent and if you do cash for keys it will be very hard to get any of that money back.  Make sure you get a judgement and report that to the credit bureaus.

One thing you might look into is one of the relief loans, especially if they pass another relief package.  You could probably qualify for an EIDL loan due to this situation.

Wesley W. · Answer

That's called a holdover tenant, and you must evict them.  You would bring a court action against them called a "holdover eviction" (as opposed to an eviction for non-payment).  At least that's how it works here in NY, and I wouldn't expect VA to be any different.  As a future investor in Richmond, I'd like to know if the local customs differ.

Sorry for the not-really-an answer....