It's All About the Law

Legal Day! That's what today was all about.

My morning began by printing out 3-day eviction notices for four of my tenants. The first tenant is one of the deadbeats in my new 7-unit apartment building. Next, was an eviction notice for the tenants in one of my 3-bedroom houses, that is rented by students. They have lived in the house for 11 months and simply didn't pay the rent this month. The third eviction notice was for the tenant in one of the 3-bedroom houses we just bought, although this probably won't actually become an eviction. This tenant is moving out of state and promises to be out by this Saturday. Even if someone promises to be out, I always post the 3-day notice so that I can immediately evict them if they aren't gone. Finally, I printed an eviction notice for a tenant that will be paying the rent this Friday (along with a $50 late fee). Again, If the tenant doesn't pay this Friday as promised, I'll be able to start the eviction early next week.

After printing the eviction notices, I made a quick trip to the bank to deposit yesterday's rent collections. Since yesterday was the last day for my tenants to pay the rent without a late fee, I collected a BUNCH of rents yesterday, much of it in cash. I don't like to carry a bunch of cash around, so my goal is always to get it to the bank ASAP!

Following my trip to the bank, I headed to the courthouse for today's eviction proceedings. As you may recall from yesterday, the tenant that was being evicted today was a black guy, who is a flaming racist. What should have been a 10 minute eviction turned into a 45 minute fiasco in which the magistrate allowed the tenant to lie and perjure himself for 45 minutes. After the tenant got done with his 45 minute rant, the magistrate seemed confused. Fortunately, her ruling was a no-lose decision for me. She ruled that the tenant could stay if he payed all the back rent; the court costs; and my attorney's fees. He'll then get to stay until he misses the next rent payment, at which time I'll evict him again. If he doesn't pay, then the eviction will be granted tomorrow morning and he'll be set-out in a few days. In all the dozens of evictions I've done, I've never had a decision like this one! However, since I can't lose, I guess I'll consider it another victory. Knock on wood, I've never lost an eviction case.

Shortly after leaving the courtroom, I received a call from my other attorney, who is handling a former tenant's personal injury lawsuit against my LLC. You can read about this lawsuit in a previous blog entry, but to make a long story short, it was just an extortion attempt by a tenant that I evicted and a scumbag contingency lawyer. Once they received the reply from my lawyer and my countersuit, they decided that their little extortion attempt might not be such a good idea. Today they called my attorney offering to dismiss the lawsuit. I'll discuss this entire fiasco in a future blog entry, after the releases are signed by the plaintiff.

Finally, I went around to the properties of the tenants for whom I had printed the eviction notices this morning. I posted the eviction notices on their doors and took a picture of each notice on the door. After that, I was done for the day (before noon) and ready to take the rest of the day off! Whew! All this law makes a person tired!