This is probably where I need to say, do what the landlord says, not what he does!
I have to confess, I’m breaking my own rules. Now I guess in the big picture that’s not a huge issue, but when it comes to a tenant owing me a ton of money and me suddenly finding myself sucked into the Eviction Spiral, it gets a bit serious.
After all, I’m supposed to be the expert, yet I’m making the same mistake I tell you not too and I guess I better tell the entire tale. So let me take you down the garden path….
This actually dates all the way back to December with one of my weekly rental tenants. He’s a very clean neat individual, but a) he doesn’t speak very much english and b) he owes me money.
As we zip back a few months to the beginning of December as typically happens to many of my rooming house tenants they vacate around mid month and head back to where their families are located. It’s typical as many of the construction projects close down early before Christmas and many of the workers get to enjoy a two or three week break and trades folks are who I cater too.
So this is something I tend to see every year, then in January they start coming back, rooms fill up and it’s business as usual. Now my nice clean non-english speaking fellow named Michel had no one to go home to. No family around, nothing, so he intended to stay at my property over the break. the only issue being, he had no income coming in to pay for the room. (This is where the hypocrite part comes into play!)
As I weigh my options I have a few things to consider a) he’s a good guy, b) he’s been good about paying in his past history and c) I have a bunch of vacancies anyway and if I kick him out or he leaves I still won’t be collecting rent for that room and I don’t know what the next guy will be like and how many weeks before there could be a next guy.
So I did the easy thing, I let him stay.
Fast Forward to January
I just happen to live in an oil based economy region so as January rolls around many of the projects have moved to a hold status due to the uncertainty of oil prices and the viability of some of these projects going forward if oil stays low.
Instead of starting work at the beginning of January, it turns into mid January, then late January and finally the beginning of February before he finally lands a job. the good news is, he gets paid a lot per hour, so it own’t take too long to get caught up. (Now I don’t want you to read anything into this, but I’m talking about getting caught up in February and here it is March when I’m writing this…)
Anyway, according to my rules, I should have cut bait and recast already. instead I go with my gut and give him more time. This is the part where YOU need to do what I say and not what I’m currently doing with this guy.
Now Fast Forward to Late February
Now we’re in the last week of February and I get a text update from him (he uses French to English conversion to send me texts, sometimes it is very very confusing). This set of texts though is quite clear. He will have $2,000 for me on Saturday the 28th (yes, I let a weekly tenant rack up an outstanding balance of over $2,000, please find me a wall to bang my head on).
As you can imagine I’m pretty upbeat when I go to meet him Saturday, at least at first.
You see, he lost his bank card and couldn’t withdraw the money.
Is it time to panic yet?
Of course he can’t tell me this due to the lack of conversational English between us, but he has notes that someone obviously wrote out for him in English. So now I’m stuck in a tight spot. It’s the Eviction Spiral I referred to originally.
If I kick him out, I take a huge loss, so I have to take a stand.
His notes tell me he will go to the bank after work Monday get the cash and get a new card and will have the money for me Tuesday night. Experience tells me this is the perfect getaway for him.
If he has $2,000 that is enough for him to get into a new rental place, with the 1st being the next day, it’s an optimum time for him to skip out.
But I follow the hypocritical emotional road and lay down the line, Either I get paid Tuesday or he GETS OUT!!
Even in our lack of a mutual language I am quite sure I got my point across, now I play the waiting game.
My question for you, what would you have done? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and I’ll add an update Wednesday about what happened!
Update Friday
Just to make this worse, I’ve extended to tomorrow. The tenant paid $200 to buy a few more days, but tomorrow is the cutoff. I meant to update Wednesday, but it’s been one of those weeks that will likely be extending out for the entire month!
Poof, It’s Magic!
Yes, I’ve had another tenant disappear…
I was at the property Monday to get some work and cleaning done there (I rented a steam cleaner for the day, so I was bouncing from property to property to get the most bang for my rental dollar) and my tenant’s room was wide open, all his items were gone, the room was quite clean, his keys were on the dresser and he was gone.
Bottom line, I’m out a bunch of money, my faith in humanity is eaten away a bit more and in the end I can still sleep at night. I tried to help, deep down I knew it probably wasn’t going to work out for me, but as part of my nature I really do want to help people (hence this site!), just along the way I may have to take a little damage.
The hypocritical lesson to pass along is if things are really tight, you can’t take this chance. You need to clamp down immediately. I could probably rationalize some of the loss as I would have had a vacant room for multiple weeks anyway, but it’s still a loss. If you have more losses than wins, you eventually lose and in Real Estate, you lose big when you lose.
To my wife’s reply, we were in that very spot with a late renter, recently.
I had previously purchased a very expensive router, so when the problem tenant was late with his rent, I remotely calibrated the router so the late tenant couldn’t access the Internet.
One concern was him taking or manually resetting the router, so I physically locked the router in a chest.
Thanks Sam’s Husband! (more Sam’s!),
That can work as well, I have shared wifi in my properties so while I could go block individuals but it can be more work for me. I guess the big issue is balancing hope in people versus running your business!
Bill
I would kick him out when the security deposit is used up in rent. And also in the meantime cut the internet access from his devices.
Hi Sam (where did all these different Sam’s come from all at once?!),
It’s actually not as simple as that. Since he pays weekly, or is supposed to I have two options. I can either give him a 14 day eviction notice where I’m located or I can apply for an eviction hearing.
That eviction notice gives him two extra weeks of rent and if he understands the rules, or worse he doesn’t and doesn’t leave then I still have to file for an eviction hearing. Eviction hearings take roughly two weeks and unless there is a urgent reason for them to be out, violence, damages or the like, they could be granted an extra week or two to vacate.
Then if they don’t leave I’nm facing an extra $600 plus costs that come out of my pocket to get a bailiff involved.
Bottom line it’s cheaper for me to hope and then have them bail quite often rather than go through the process of following the rules to evict him here.
Bill
Unfortunately, I have been in a similar situation. I had a room for rent a while ago and a fellow from another culture renting for a while but; every year would travel out-of-country and, I had to haggle for 1 month of missed rent every-time around the holidays. Eventually, he always paid but it was a pain and a frustration to explain the terms of contract again. So, after 2 eviction notices in 2 years, the last one was the last straw. 3 strikes and he was out evicted and he never paid the last outstanding month and a half. Now, I am renting to an student that is on-time and sometimes even pays a week before it’s due. He’s also a fellow from another culture but it seems to be more responsible and well educated in the art of budgeting and bill payments.
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” –Benjamin Franklin
Hi Aleks,
When it becomes a pain, you need to take action. It’s fine to help others when it doesn’t hurt you, but when it starts to drain your time, resources and energy like your situation it makes it more imperative to change things up as you did, good job!
Bill
Agree with what you did and also what Kim stated, especially about the “selective” understanding.
I suppose the only other thing you may have done is, take him to HIS BANK, to get his card replacement and get your cash 🙂 as many banks are offering Saturday services and some even Sunday, like TD Canada Trust.
Hope he does the right thing, as Karma will kick him where his keeps his nice goods!
Glad to see the new service on Room Rentals! Way to go! I’m excited about it!
Thanks for your terrific service and sharing your phenomenal experiences.
Thanks Sam, he’s supposed to have it tonight, but due to a busy schedule I’ve arranged to meet him tomorrow just after noon, fingers crossed.
Bill
Right or wrong I would have done pretty much what you did. He might have better english than you think, just being selective.
The room was empty most of the time anyway so the loss is not so great.
Good tenants are hard to find. But in this case you have reached your limit.
I kept a 4 bedroom house empty for 5 winter months while I waited to find half decent tenants.
It is a weakness, but I’m in a situation where I can go a bit out on a limb when it comes to helping people out. And yes I wouldn’t have had any money incoming during the empty slow times anyway, but that market has evolved and I could use any vacant room I could find right now!
Bill
It’s easy to see how you got into that predicament. I also do weekly rents (happy to find another landlord doing weekly rents – they seem to be few and far between, but I love it, because I get so much more money that way) and most of my renters are in construction jobs. I suddenly had 3 vacancies at the beginning of February (I only have 7 rentals), so it was stressful.
Fortunately, I only had one renter get in a bind with rent, but he faithfully paid as much as he could while he was waiting to go back to work from his wife’s small earnings. He was surprised when he finally got back to work that he only had $122 in arrears, thanks to his paying as much as he could along the way.
This guy had paid faithfully every week up til the job problem in November, so I gave him a break. Yes, I broke my own zero-tolerance for late policy! I wonder if I’m getting soft! LOL We can’t have that, can we?
Hi Leslie,
Great to hear from another “room renter”! It definitely increases the cash flow and while it may not work everywhere we find it fits a real hole in the market in our area.
For us, it also gives us an opportunity to help out. We know a lot of the trades guys and contract work people bounce between jobs and there can be gaps between payments and while quite a few do pay up and we feel rewarded, there are those that simply take advantage of the opportunity. I’m hoping my example above isn’t one of those.
As a side note, and I’ll be sending another email out later in the week about this, I started a second email series of tips that deals specifically with Rooming House and weekly/monthly rentals. You can find out more about ti and register here if it’s of interest.
Rooming House Tips
Regards,
Bill