All Forum Posts by: Jim Bryant

So the hits keep on coming for me, although my other boats are sailing nicely.

My tenant was a guy who had a wife (not sure if actually married) and a kid.  I rented to him and I guess the kid and wife came around more often.  Despite my screening, he was a bit of a pain, but nothing super serious and he paid the rent.  Well, well he informed us that he will no longer rent from us and will be a guest of the county on unspecified charges.  Ok, no problem, it's as good of a reason as any to break a lease.

However, his wife, who is not on the lease, sustained an injury and required surgery.  She claimed it was due to the outside light being non-op.  We were not informed of the issue until after the fall.  When I went into the property to clean up and prepare for a new renter, I discovered that this lady is legally active, both as the suer and the suee.  

I received a letter today from an injury lawyer who wants the name of my insurance company.  I realize that no one can/should provide legal advice on this forum, I just wanted to ask if anyone had experience being sued by a non-tenant.  I see many have been sued by tenants, usually sour grapes, but I think this is somewhat unique.

I gather that I should contact the insurance company and inform them, which I plan to do tomorrow.

So, as some of you may know, I managed to win my eviction hearing and the judge ordered the tenant to pay.

Has anyone tried to collect on these judgements?  I called some collection agencies and they basically admitted that for the amount of the judgement, they aren't willing to do much more than call and harass him for a while.   A deadbeat renter can easily parry a few annoying phone calls. 

I'm thinking about just taking him to small claims court, can that be done?  I imagine I can get his wages garnished or maybe collect from his tax return.  

I know most people are going to tell me not to bother, which is fine, but that's not really my question.  

Ok everyone, finally have a conclusion to the story.  I went to court yesterday and I got mostly everything I wanted.  The hearing still took 30 minutes and he wanted to really concentrate on the accidental water charge, that we refunded and wanted to go into the math discrepancies, which amounted to about 40 dollars.  

I kept trying to steer the conversation back to the fact that he hadn't paid me rent for 4 months.   The judge had doubts about the veracity of the website I was using to collect the rent (I gave him a print out of the payments and non-payments from the website) and thought we should have driven to unlock the door for the tenant when he locked himself out (3 hours) instead of telling him that was his issue and he should call a locksmith.

In the end the judge asked him how much he thought he owed us and he did his calculations in the courtroom, not having this prepared.  He told the judge he owed us said $361! That isn't even 1 month's rent.  The judge asked him how he arrived at those figures and he didn't really have an answer other than we owed him $800 dollars for "lost wages".  He told us his hourly wage (when he hilariously tried to charge us money for him doing math to correct our "mistakes"), and so that $800 represented a 40-hour work week.  The judge scoffed at this and told him that he needed to file a motion for this, but he hadn't and when the tenant asked how to file it, he answered "I'm not your legal counsel".

The judge asked him where he will go if he gets evicted and the tenant answered that he will live in his car. He pathetically explained that he has no significant other, family (remarking,"I'm not like that") or really friends.  The part he didn't mention is that he drove there in a BMW and I think he also has a second car, a Jeep Cherokee.  

This display didn't help, he was ordered to vacate in 5 days and ordered to pay 2.5k, almost the total amount I requested.  

This kid is really dumb, I would have let him go months ago, or even have taken a smaller amount of money if he just left.  Now he has an eviction on his record and large debt.

I know that's long, but I thought some of you might appreciate the absurdity of it all.

Anyone ever collect these settlements?  Can I just sell it off to a collection agency.

@Steve K.  Up near the Quad Cities in Mercer County.

@Bud Gaffney You really think I need one?   I'd hate to add more expense to this whole deal.  

So, here's how it turned out:

He showed up completely unprepared to back up any of his claims.  He was asked why he filed no answer to the complaint and if he had any witnesses or evidence to back up him claims.   The tenant replied that he had evidence and witnesses, but not with him.  So, after 30 minutes of going over the information of the case, the judge decided he should have a chance to defend himself, and I have to go to court again in 3 weeks. 

So, I drove three hours and he gets three more weeks of my hospitality.

I think the judge felt sorry for him, as he is young and seems like a lost puppy.  It's also really cold outside as well, which he mentioned that "we don't want anyone dying of exposure".  The judge asked if we had negotiated and I said I had offered him the opportunity to just leave, which he declined.

Anyway, he has set aside a whole hour for the hearing, so I can only imagine what a pain it will be.  I was hoping that the tenant would reach out wanting to negotiate, since I only really want him out and don't think I'll actually get money from him.

Haha, no I wasn't that slack in my screening.  He is a younger guy and didn't have bad credit or any evictions that he needed to explain away.  

Very early in the tenancy he made reference to a divorce that made money tight, when talking about an electric bill.  He never referred to it again.  After we gave him additional time to come up with the money (a mistake I know), he said he COULD pay, but that it would only be in cash (not in the lease) and we would have to come pick it up.  

I'm looking forward to a real show in the courtroom with this guy.  He's got all sorts of calculations and reasons.  

Appreciate the help folks, I'll be going to court on Thursday.  I'll let you know how it turns out.

So, I've got a difficult tenant.

The main point is that he hasn't paid rent since September.  When he missed his rent payment we gave him a notice to quit, he accused us of "entering his property without 24-hour notice", although I only knocked on his door and when he answered, handed him the notice.  He said he would have the rent for the next two months on 27 Sep, stupidly, I told him I would give him this time.  When the date came he said he wasn't going to submit it by the online app (stipulated in the lease) but would have it in cash and that we could come pick it up (we live 3 hours away).  We said this was unacceptable and he said it was on us.

We then had the sheriff serve him the eviction complaint.  The court date was set or 5 December.

That's all the main stuff, this is some of the examples of issues we've had with him:

He has been difficult for most of the 10 months we rented to him.  Getting a dog (against the lease), saying it was an ESA, dragged his feet getting the paperwork to us.  We refunded his 200 dollar pet deposit (Illinois has put ESAs on par with working animals, so we had to refund it), although he says we did not (we do have proof of this).   We gave him an old lease that said he didn't have to pay water (we newly split the utilities in the unit) and he noticed we charged him for water and then we refunded him (although he continued to send us pics of his napkin math that says we didn't refund him enough).   He doesn't pick up his dog waste and when we told him about it (before we evicted him) he said the grass is too long (I cut it every two weeks).  

//End extra details

I say all that to illustrate how much he seems to thrive on conflict.  Obviously, he was in the right with the utilities and we refunded him everything he was owed (plus an additional 57 dollars for his inconvenience and to shut him up).  

So, what usually happens in an eviction case?  I've got him dead to rights for non-payment, but I know he's going to make it extra annoying.  What's the worst case scenario?  What's the most likely scenario?  

I am bringing print outs of the payment website as well as both leases, with the troublesome excerpts highlighted in case the judge is interested in that episode.  I also have the text logs, since I stopped talking to him on the phone so that we would have a record of his communication with us concerning the rent.  

Thanks for all the advice!  In the end they worked it out amongst themselves.  Of course, there is a good chance this will flare up again and I'll need to put your advice into practice!

I have a couple renting one of my units.  They are both on the lease and have been together for years but are now breaking up.  The female wants the guy to leave and to be kicked off the lease (the lease is now month to month).  She says that he isn't paying his share anymore.  

We can't prove anything from our angle and she is always the one who calls us.  The guy seems to have some sort of anxiety, as he got really upset when we moved them out for two days to fix something with the house to satisfy the county (at our expense, of course).  She said that he won't talk to us on the phone, but since she's the conduit, she could be full of it.  

The couple have been good renters and have not caused any problems.  I was reading up on what to do with a roommate who refuses to pay their share and one of the steps is to go to the landlord.  But, I don't feel like we should get involved in any of this and simply continue to collect rent and tell them to work it out amongst themselves, since we can't prove anything one way or the other.

Anyone have any thoughts on the subject, or experience?