I forget where I originally got this, but posting (reposting?) so others might benefit.

Ten Reasons Why Landlords Should Not Feel Guilty About Evictions

1. Always start evictions immediately. If the tenants need extra time, the court will give it to them.

2. You don't make a profit from evictions. You only cut your loses.

3. You've already supplied the "needy" tenant with free housing. You've done your charity work. Give someone else a chance.

4. If the tenant doesn't have a friend or relative to help him out, doesn't that say a lot about the tenant's character?

5. If someone asks you how you could put someone out on the street, ask them to pay the rent and you won't evict them.

6. The tenant has kept possession of your house and is stealing from you. He has stolen your home, utilities, and your services. The tenant is a thief. Do other businesses let your tenant go in and take from them?

7. Letting a tenant stay in your house who is not paying rent is like giving your tenant your debit card and telling him, "Feel free to spend. I like giving out money interest free without knowing I'll be paid back".

8. How would you feel if you worked all week and your employer said, “I don't have a paycheck for you?” Guess what, your tenant has just told you that! Do you work for nothing?

9. If you want to maintain your apartment or house and let the occupants live rent free, you should decide who the occupants will be, not your tenant. There are lots of people you may find more deserving.

10. Your tenant is taking money, time and energy from you, which you could use to provide for your family's needs. Picture yourself trying to tell your child that you could not buy him or her an item or send him or her to college because you had to pay a stranger's rent so the stranger could buy gifts for his or her child.

I have a few financial reasons that I don't jump the gun and evict I don't absolutely have to.

1) In my state and some others, no collection of ELT or vacancy rent. Only can get judgement for rent up to date I get possession back.

2) eviction during winter means the rent from new tenant would be about $100-$200 lower.

3) the usual turnover costs of painting, getting house in show condition, utilities (heating vacant house in dead of MI winter is easily $200-$300 a month)

4) time spent in court and attorney costs

If the tenant just consistently pays rent and late fees a week or two late, I have to balance that with these losses. If possible, I would much rather collect $100-$200 of late fees a month or negotiate with tenant cash-for-keys out of their deposit.

David/MI, we found that if we let the tenant get behind, they could never catch up. We might have had a few over the years, but the vast majority (back in the day when we didn't demand/expect it to be paid on time) just got further behind.

Always a hot topic on here. I've started adopting ZT recently and enforcing late fees. What I've found is that tenants will pay up. I had one just this month that said "I can pay you next Thursday or I guess I can borrow it from someone if you want?" That told me the training was working. The borrowing wasn't going to be from me this month! I got rent and late fees the next day!

Doogie, I hear you! Example from last week Friday (bi-weekly payer)...copied from my Google Voice Text message screen, names changed to 'TENANT' and 'ME'.

********************

TENANT: Good afternoon. I went to go pull money to pay my rent and for some reason only some of my check was in my account. I've spoke with my manager and my bank. Unfortunatley i do not have the full amount for the rent that is due. Is there any way i could pay everything on monday?? Im supposed to be getting my taxes back soon so my grandma is going to loan me the money until then and i am switching banks due to the multiple times money has came up missing in my account without an explanation. 1:49 PM

ME: What can you pay today? 1:51 PM

TENANT: I have $80 i can pay today 1:51 PM

ME: I would like to speak with the manager & bank so they can help us resolve this. Send me their name and phone, please. 2:08 PM

TENANT: I was just in the middle of letting you know i have the full $250 for you. I made sure i got it figured out. Ill be headed to get the money order and have it deposited before 5pm today! 2:15 PM

ME: Great, thanks for the update. 2:31 PM

TENANT: Its been paid 4:21 PM

ME: Thank you. Have a good weekend. 4:29 PM

Thanks for re-posting Sid,

This list really made me re-evaluate late payers years ago. I rarely have a late payer now. All I have to do at this point is watch the money come in.

David,

You are doing what's right for you, and that's what matters. But the "right or rich" thing assumes that the two terms are mutually exclusive. They are not.

Landlording is a business, and with business there will always be expenses. It is very possible to run a tight ship and be rich. Good screening and property management techniques are key to avoiding evictions. But if they happen, it's not the end of the world.

David, please elaborate on on the hows and what to watch fors of your systems.

I understand that expenses increase at turnover, but obviously you are referring to instances in which you avoid the turnover AND get paid. W

David, please elaborate on on the hows and what to watch fors of your systems.

I understand that expenses increase at turnover, but obviously you are referring to instances in which you avoid the turnover AND get paid. W

Sisco, I don't evict tenants who are consistently 1-2 weeks late on rent but still pay their rent and late fees in full. I have had around 7-8 tenants where this has happened and each tenant I would get $100 in late fees a month.

I would evict if have not paid by 3-4 weeks . My security deposit is 1.5 months so I have a buffer there. I have had only one tenant not able to pay their rent at all. They moved out at the end of the month, so one month rent missed. The deposit covered that and some misc cleaning and turnover costs.

My sheriff coughed up most of his rent this month after I offered to let him sign Pay or Quit for free or pay to have it served otherwise. I hesitate to evict late payers in winter not just because of utility costs but occupied houses do better. Water lines don't freeze if they are used and tenants really let you know when the heat goes out.

Its a crap shoot

I always give more lienency to long term tenants.

I have tenants who pay a late fee almost every month for years.

I'm sure that's equated to thousands of income over the years.

Newbie tenants get one warning then I go after them.

If I filed for every tenant that was a few days late I would become a FT court attender not a LL.

It's all about setting the expectations up front. I do my spiel as I show prospective tenants the place, and one of my points is "Pay the rent on or BEFORE the due date, there is no grace period."

Lots of interesting comments on this piece. It's no so much about filing eviction on day 1 that rent is late and spot-on (or not-so-spot-on) analogies. My take-away is exactly what the title says, "Ten Reasons Why Landlords Should Not Feel Guilty About Evictions".

Do you get to stay in a hotel before you give them your credit card?

Tell your tenant, you work then you get paid, cos the company has leverage.

Your mortgage on your houses is paid in arrears. At closing you pay some prorated interest but it's not for over a month later that the first payment is due.

I have leased cars and paid nothing when I drove the car off the lot other than the state registration and license fees. The first payment is due a month later.

You can eat at five star restaurants , steak, lobster , expensive booze, run up a four figure bill, and don't give them a credit card until after dessert.

Boy, David, you are like a dog with a bone. If you don't like the analogy, don't use it LOL! It works for me - I see the light bulb go on over their heads when I compare our rent to their pay checks.

Ahh....you are David, gas and water bills are paid in arrears because they need to know how much you have used before you are billed. If you were to use no gas or water your not billed. You may have leased a car with nothing due at signing but that is not the standard, at least in the North Eastern part of the country anywhere from $1000 to $2000 plus is due at signing. (Several months worth of lease payment), and if you fail to pay they repo the car, a security deposit is not going to cover all past due rent, eviction costs and any damages. Yes my first mortgage payment wasn’t due for about a month after closing, but I had to put money down. Banks (with some exceptions) do not do zero down mortgages. If I was to fail to pay my mortgage the bank keeps the money down and forecloses on the house in order to recoup their money (or at least in

No, there's nothing to go back and forth all day about.

Many water bills here have a fixed amount, you use nothing, you still billed 30-40 a month. But they billed in arrears.

Restaurant and bar tab, arrears.

You are collecting a security deposit in CERTIFIED FUNDS.

Then there's no reason to make the analogy. KISS. You agreed to pay rent on the first. The End.

Hey David, I am glad I have had the chance to meet you in person, so I know you can come across as a nice person. I hope you know I'm your friend and want you to have the best of success.

However, if you sometimes communicate with your residents in the same was you are doing in this one particular discussion, whereas you come across very confrontational and dogmatic, if I were one of your residents I'd probably be inclined to question some of the things you tell me as well. Simply because you almost provoke someone to respond, like I'm doing now when I really had no previous intention of adding any more.

Jeffrey, thanks for chiming in not once, not twice, but THREE times on this post. I am honored, truly.

The original goal of this post was--as clearly stated in the title of the piece I pasted--reasons why LLs should not feel guilty if they decide its time to evict. It's an encouragement in a world that often heaps guilt upon our shoulders for "kicking people out of their homes." As if it were our fault! Whether this or that analogy is 100% or 50% or 10% correct or not isn't the point. The point is that we use whatever (legal) strategy we can to help our residents understand and stick with their obligations, and when all else fails we should not feel guilty about insisting on our rights to enforce the lease agreement.

Me?

MY personal business stats show that renteres actually PAY when we stopped letting them slide. They just pay.

I fired our collections dept (Wifey). No more collection calls. We send the 3 day text then file. NO ONE is surprised.

We dropped from 4 evictions per month to 1 per month. (there's ALWAYS someone who plays the system.)

More personal business stats: on average the evicted res leaves a mess and repairs 3 times the amount of rent owed. Just yesterday, $1600 rent owed ($1000 per month plus eviction process time) cleaning a repairs $4300. (included a gallon of human feces dumped in the yard. Their heat was turned off for non-payment, the pipes froze and cracked, so no water for the toilets.)

#11 Unpaid rent is often the tip of the iceberg. Evict now before it gets worse.

#12 Letting them fall behind does NOT really help them. The director of our local Christian aide agency pleads with LLs to NOT let renters fall behind. The farther behind the less the agency can do to help them.

#13 Don't fall for the "At least I'm getting late fees" trap. They get farther behind then skip. We used to brag about the late fees we brought in. Then I compared it to the rent we lost in the same time period - an overall loss of $400,000 over 10 years.

#14 LLs are the financial shock absorber for the community, absorbing the deadbeats. MY local court records showed $3.5 million in unpaid rent and damages over one year in our town of 40,000.

ZT. It's simple - they pay.

Guilty? NEVER felt guilty aboutt an eviction.

Thank you Mr Landlord This list is some of the best biz advice we have ever received . And has been posted in my office for years .

I have reread it many many times and still refer to it whenever I get wishy washy over unpaid rents . I’m sure it helped save us from bankruptcy years back .

The list and other mr LL education inspired me to set up policies and procedures for late pays and stick to them . And not waiver from the policies because it’s not fair to waive fees and procedures for one tenant and not another and I’m sure not within fair housing guidelines.

Our rents are due the 3rd with a 3 day grace late if not received by the 6th late notices with a 10 day notice to pay or quit is included on the late statement. We file on the 20th if rent has not been received .

Our experience has been when someone gets more than 1 month behind its to difficult to catch up and the situation just gets worse .

We currently have a tenant we have filed on 2 times in 2019 and 6x in 2018. So far they have always paid up before the court ordered date to move out. Will they always ???? No way for us to know that so we continue to file as our policies state . This situation created me to update our lease with a $200 filing fee . Because it takes time away from rehabbing and repairs etc to file and then go sign dismissal papers when paid . Do I feel guilty not anymore ... Do I feel bad for them paying the extra fees ...

I wish them the best and hope they get whatever the problem is straightened out for their own benefit. But I can’t do that for them.

I don’t feel guilty for following our policies and running a business like the real business land-lording is . Thanks Sid for reposting and thanks to Mr LL

Jeff [CO]: "...Cash for keys is weak landlording and puts the tenants in charge."

Jeff, I strongly disagree with that statement. As you previously wrote, landlording is a business, and with a business, there always will be expenses. Maybe both your holding expense and court costs are relatively inexpensive, but in my area, these costs have gone up well in excess of 450% over the past 20 years! The legal advantage clearly lies in the tenant's corner.

However, that doesn't mean I cannot negotiate a deal to my advantage. A case in point: I previously had a single tenant who was always in arrears on an apartment where the rent was $1,000.00. In a few days after the latest nonpayment, I found out the tenant was unemployed. (This occurred on a Thursday.) Rather than fight out a long legal battle, I offered the tenant $300.00 if he would move his things out and return the keys by 5 PM next Tuesday ($100.00 down now, with the balance paid upon delivery of all the keys). He would tell me his decision the next day.