It’s the first of the month and your tenant’s rent is due. You finally filled the vacancy and have a new promising tenant in the property but the check fails to arrive.
You call your renter and hear an excuse about how they were busy this week — but the check should be in the mail.
A few more days come and go, and the tenant gives another excuse about how tough this month has been. They promise you won’t have to worry about rent in future months, and ask for another day or two.
Unfortunately, the story never ends there.
You end up failing to collect rent, and eventually have to go through the time-consuming eviction process. Your job performance and family life are significantly affected, thanks to one tenant who manages to suck up all your time.
The final straw? After you finally evict the tenant, you find they’ve destroyed your unit and you’ve accrued another $25,000 in remodeling costs.
It might sound extreme, but this scenario is all too common. And it’s why many of our clients come to us. After working with thousands of tenants, we’ve created and revised a process that keeps our clients happy and evictions at an all time low.
Leap DFW’s Tenant Eviction Process
We make sure our tenants know we’re serious from the very beginning — when they sign the leasing contract. The lease will simply say rent is due on the 1st, and it’s late on the 4th. And then we enforce it.
When is it time to evict a tenant?
Because everyone knows the expectation upfront, we have a very aggressive approach to rent collection. On the 4th of the month, we pull the names of everyone who has not paid rent. We use that list to draft a three-day notice to vacate. The wording is strong, but that’s the point. It get’s the tenants attention and tells them they have three days to pay in full. No exceptions.
We keep it simple and straightforward. And when the phone starts ringing with excuses, there are no extensions. We politely remind them, “Your situation is none of our business, we’re just asking you to honor the lease agreement you signed.”
Who handles the legal process?
After we send the certified notice to vacate, the tenant has 72 hours to pay in full. If that doesn’t happen, we file the eviction at the courthouse. The court date is usually scheduled about two weeks out, and we will be there to represent the owner. The tenant may or may not show up, but we will always be there to act on behalf of our client and present the case.
The initial court date is just the beginning of a lengthy legal process. It can be exhausting for clients, so we save them a lot of time and pain by handling each step. Paying the constable to warn the tenant, listening to the tenant’s excuses, rekeying the property, obtaining possession and marketing — we handle it all.
Because of the extensive screening process we use, it is very, very rare for us to evict one of our tenants. In the unusual case that it does happen, it’s handled for no charge. We also offer this service to other property managers, and for a nominal fee, we save them the pain of handling an eviction.
No excuses.
It’s easy to say, but in the “real world,” property management companies will keep on listening to excuses. We don’t. There are no negotiations. We’re certainly not rude to tenants, but we are professional.
Our tenants know the agreement. And if we’re handling an eviction for another property manager, we ensure their tenants know we mean business. After a notice goes out, they had better take our warnings seriously or they’ll need to find another roof over their head right away.
The tenant eviction process is not easy. To avoid the process altogether, we follow diligent and consistent practices to protect our clients. Our effective enforcement of these policies provides our clients with great tenants who pay on time.
Interested in learning more about the tenant eviction services we provide? Contact us today for a FREE consultation
