All Forum Posts by: Travis Geary

I have a problem tenant that I'm trying to get out of my property. She's already put me behind several thousand dollars in rents, late fees, and damages. The lease ends on 31 May. Since I know where she works, I'd like to go after her for judgement and garnish her wages once she's out, but she's certainly not going to give me her new address. Any reliable ideas how to serve a former tenant when you don't have an address? I've heard that some private investigators or others can find addresses, but I don't want to throw a ton of money at this if the odds are against me.

Alternatively, another thought that I had was to give her notice that we are terminating her lease about a week early due to her breach of the no pets policy. If we do that, I don't think she'll actually move out before the end of the month, in which case, I will have a good address for the Sherriff to serve her a summons when filing for unlawful detainer. If I do that, I should just be able to add a request for judgement onto the unlawful detainer when I file. Thoughts?

@Account Closed I had never heard of including a notice to quit in the lease. I don't think that is legal in VA, but I will have to run it by my attorney when I edit my lease. Am I understanding you correctly that you collect the 1st and last month's rent along with the security deposit? I've never heard of getting the last month's rent at the start of the lease.

@Ned Carey I wasn't real clear. If I require rent in advance, it would be pre-payment. For example, on March 25th the tenant would be required to pay me rent for the period from April 1 through April 30. So, although the eviction process isn't any shorter, I would be able to start the process (if need be) on the 26th and thereby reduce the total amount of back-due rent once the tenant is evicted. I would have less risk when dealing with a judgement-proof tenant, and the security deposit would be more likely to cover the total amount due.

Has anybody here ever heard of requiring rent to be paid before the first of the month?

I'm thinking about doing this to shave a few days off the eviction process when necessary.

As a new landlord in the process of evicting a problem tenant right now (my first tenant), the need of having a rental process from start to finish has become abundantly clear to me. As I put together my rental process for finding the next tenant, tenant screening is my first priority. However, even with good screening habits, the occasional bad apple will inevitably slip through. That said, I want to have a ready solution for speedy evictions at hand if needed.

Requiring April rent on, say the 25th of Marh, seems like an easy way of shaving 5 or 6 days off of the eviction process. Since my SFR is in a higher price range, I'm also planning on requiring tenants to pay via Dwolla, as referenced here: http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2014/02/26/how-to-automate-rent-collections-dwolla/. This would require them to have a bank account (seems like a good screening requirement given my rental property), and the automated payment option should mitigate problems of tenants forgetting due to the odd rent due date.

Any thoughts? I'm in VA if any fellow Virginians want to chime in... particularly about the legality of this. I haven't found anything in the code myself that prevents it.

@Dawn Anastasi At this point I think this is just short-payment. This woman works 2 jobs and to date she has only payed $750 of her own money toward rent (since December). As I said, I offered to help her find a more affordable place, release her from the contract, help her move, and expedite the return of her security deposit if she would just move, but she refused.

@Bob Hines The thing is that she never paid in full from last month, and I am filing for eviction based on the amount she is in arrears. On the Summons I have included the amount she is in arrears + all rent due until Date of Judgment. As such, I don't know whether serving her another Pay or Quit will interfere with the Summons that I just filed.

@Aly L in VA after serving the Pay or Quit notice, the next step in the eviction process is to file a Summons for Unlawful Detainer, which sets a return date for court. I'm kind of surprised, but it sounds like the eviction process in NJ is streamlined. Is NJ landlord friendly? VA is supposedly landlord friendly, but if a tenant misses a payment, I'm looking at a minimum of a month and a half to have the tenant removed. If the tenant contests and the sheriff is slow in serving them notice, it seems like it'll be more like 4 months.

Thank you all for your input.

I am a new landlord, and last week I filed my first Summons for Unlawful Detainer (I'm here in VA, which I've heard is landlord friendly). Here is my question. Now March 3rd, rent is late (again). Do I need to file a second Notice to Pay or Quit, or will that get in the way of my current Summons for Unlawful Detainer?

Here is the backstory:

I didn't do my due diligence in getting this tenant. Tenant has been consistently late in paying rent every month since starting the lease, and she's not even been paying with her own money (charities have been helping her out). Last month she paid everything but $9.11 (I think as a test of what I would do). I was going to let it slide, but since I thought there was very little chance of her continuing to pay (even late) I wanted to get her out before March got here. I offered to help her find a more affordable place, expedite her SD refund (which was paid for her by a local charity), help her move, and release her from the contract.

When she said she wasn't going to take my offer, I filed a Summons for Unlawful Detainer, figuring this was a pretty good indicator of what the future held. That was on Thursday, February 27. Come March, she is late again with her rent, and she hasn't even bothered to contact me. Since I already have a Summons in process (court date on March 21), do I still need to serve her another 5-day Pay or Quit Notice? Will serving her another notice mess me up when I appear before the Judge for the Summons for Unlawful Detainer?

Even if your not from VA, any insight would be helpful.

Thank you all for your quick responses. Very helpful.

@Jacob Coates I did go and speak with her face-to-face in January. At that time, I was very clear about expectations and we managed to work out a solution where I received January rents (late of course). That said, she hasn't been nearly as responsive to my communications in February. She says she can't hear me on the phone because it's broken (ironically, though, she can hear all of my voice messages). I also want to be careful not to cross the boundary of what a judge might consider as harassment.

@Gerald K. we have a 15 month lease (wanted the lease to terminate in the Spring) so we still have another year ahead of us. We would need a reason to terminate, and even then, I'm afraid the judge might grant her the right to stay in the property until the end of the school year when she gives him her sob story.

@Jason McGuire cGuire I agree that $9.11 isn't worth filing for eviction over. I just thought it might give me a head start on eviction since this woman likely won't be able to pay March rent, and she is virtually judgement proof so I won't be able to collect back-due rent if I let it accrue. Like Patrick said, I am worried that tenant-friendly judge would shoot me down in court for starting eviction over $9.11 even if she is late on March rent and has never paid on time.

@Patrick L. I've thought about your suggestion of a mutual termination of the lease. This may be especially attractive to her given that the security deposit didn't come from her (it came from the shelter that placed her). Also, she has already indicated via text that she plans to move out in June after the school year finishes because I'm such a "negative" individual (threatening eviction and all). Any suggestions on how to make such an offer if she won't take my calls? I don't really want to put this in writing for fear of how a judge may perceive it, given that she almost paid due on February rent.

@Troy Fisher Excellent idea. I was worried about the precedent. I will definitely be doing this. Any suggestions if she refuses to sign for a certified letter?

@Andrea M. Thanks for the advice. Very helpful to be coming from somebody in VA, too. If you can evict after two late payments in VA, does that mean I can accept a second late payment and then evict, or do I have to forgo eviction if I accept payment? Any experiences with evicting based on partial payment of rent? Did the judge have any problems with that?

@Wade Sikkink I couldn't agree more about being firm. Like you said, I think she is just testing the limits to see what I will do by leaving $9.11 unpaid. Did you need to get a "Release of Rights to Possession" form signed when your tenant vacated? Is that even necessary after posting a "Pay or Vacate Notice"?

@Aly L That is a good idea to bring someone along. I'll do that if I can arrange a meeting.

Thank you all for the help, I'm very grateful. Has anybody here had nightmare scenarios in which a judge did find in favor of an unruly, judgement-proof tenant with back-due rent?

My wife and I purchased our first rental in August of last year, and suffice it to say this has been quite the learning experience with many newbie investor mistakes made along the way. Right now we are dealing with our first tenant, and we sure chose a winner. We are trying to decide whether to try a cash-for-keys approach or go through the much-dreaded eviction process to get rid of her. There are some wrinkles, so any ideas from more experienced investors will help.

The bottom line is that we need to be rid of this tenant because we don't think she can continue to pay (even late). One-third of the income she reported was alimony, which I have found out she is no longer receiving, putting her well below our income requirements. On top of that she has not yet made a single payment on time. Saturday was the first payment she has made with her own money since renting to her in December, having relied on the government and charities so far. This time it took a "5-day pay or quit notice" to get her to pay the $759.11 that the government wasn't willing to cover. Even so, after multiple notices, she still only paid $750, leaving us $9.11 short.

Since she is almost paid up until the end of February, I have considered a cash-for-keys offer giving her time to get out by the end of the month (obviously no cash until she's gone). However, negotiating such an offer or even a meeting will be difficult because she won't take my calls (says her phone is broken), and I would prefer not to put such an offer in writing. Conversely, I have considered continuing with the eviction since she is still $9.11 in arrears; however, I am worried that a judge would balk at an eviction for that amount, especially when she is a single mom with kids (though, I'm sure she will be late on March rent by the time we meet in court). That said, I can't simply let her get away with intentionally testing the limits at every turn and paying anything other than the FULL rent due, especially when we have been very generous in working with her to this point, and I know we'll have to do an eviction later in the year if we don't resolve the problem now.

Any suggestions? Would a judge balk at an eviction for such a small amount, especially when the amount in arrears is from utilities/late fees (we are in VA, which is supposedly landlord-friendly)?

How would you approach cash-for-keys, particularly when the tenant isn't responsive to communications?

Thanks for sharing your experience and advice.

@Tamara R. thank you for the warm welcome.

We bought in the Centreville area. That property seemed prime for growth.

Have you been in REI for long?

@Sean Moen

My wife and I had a very similar experience at our seminar a few weeks ago. We found that the information provided and, more importantly, the structure with which it was presented was well worth the $299. That said, just like you, we knew that no amount of hand-holding or additional training would get us out the door to actually implement these tactics in REI if we wouldn't act on what we already learned that weekend.

We may attend some of their advanced training in the future once we have proven that we have the dedication to make use of it, more experience to better understand what we learn, and more money to throw at education. That said, for the short term we want to save the capital that we do have to get started in investing right now.

I'm glad to see others have received the same benefit that we did!

@Garrison Johnson

Your post here was very necessary. BP is a great resource that I happened to stumble upon when researching Rich Dad seminars (to see whether they were a scam or not). That was before we attended the seminar but after we had paid for it. I found almost 100% criticism (very strong criticism) of the Rich Dad program on BP. As a result, I was dead set against the seminar before I even attended it. I planned to attend just so I could exercise the money back guarantee. However, after attending I was convinced of its value from a point of skepticism, which makes me even more comfortable with our decision. That said, your balanced post has provided a much-needed counter balance to what I find to be an overly critical tone regarding Rich Dad here on BP. I'm thankful that I found BP and that they "slowed my pulse," as Sean put it, so I could be more confident in my decision, but this post was much-needed. Thanks again.

@Brian C. thanks for the information. I've taken your advice, and I'm continuing to network here on BP, as well as eat up as much material as I can get my hands on. I've already made some great connections.

@Jessica Swingle thanks for the info on CAZA. I'll check out their group and see about attending during the December meeting. It sounds like the type of group I'm looking for to get into the game. Do you know how much their dues are?