Kimberly, it's great to see you make the right decisions, with compassion!
Business is business! You don't have to be a hard butt however, you have to protect your business/assets.
When we bought our first apartment building, we wanted to completely renovate the property and bring in qualified tenants (it was ran like a boarding house). The only way to do this was to serve a 30 day non-renewal of lease on all the current tenants. As it was there was way too many people in each apartment!
I was struggled with the decision to serve because I felt I was being hard. When I would go out about twice a week to clean the property, I would get so frustrated with all the trash they would throw on the ground, I lost count of how many beer cans and bottles I would pick out of the flowerbed. How many time I cleaned the dumpster area because they didn't even bother to make it in the can. It was like they didn't even care. So, that made it a lot easier to serve.
While serving, some were crying, pleading and most were angry. (I kept reminding myself of how they were treating the property) I told them that this is only business, not personal, and that they can re-apply when we finished the renovations. None took us up after reading our criteria sheet.
Sometimes we have to make hard decision to protect and build our RE business.
