Blog & Advice

Landlord Finds Evictions Painful, Turns to Property Management Company for Help

After getting married, Darius and his wife found themselves with two houses and two mortgages. They considered selling, but Darius wasn’t ready to give up his first home just yet. He decided to keep the home, become a landlord and thought he’d take the safe route by renting to a friend. He had never considered using a property management company. As a police officer, Darius had dealt with his fair share of landlord/tenant problems, so he figured he would have no issues with property management. That is, until seven months had passed and he still hadn’t received a single rent payment.

During the course of those seven months, Darius found that he simply didn’t have time to devote to checking on the property, hounding the tenants for payments, nor the heart to begin the eviction process. When Darius finally went to check on the house, he found extensive damage. “It looked like they had lived there for 10 years,” said Darius. “It was just a complete mess. The carpets had holes in them, doors had holes in them, paint all over the walls. I don’t know how you break a toilet, but they broke a toilet. Water leaked all over everything. They never called me up and said, ‘Hey, this is broken and needs to be replaced.’”

When it settled in that he was going to have to take them to court, Darius discovered that he had no knowledge of the civil side of landlord/tenant issues. His expertise as a police officer was not going to get him very far when it came to evicting his own tenant. When all was said and done, Darius lost $30,000 in lost rent, property damage and attorney fees. Once Darius made it through the painful eviction process, he began searching for a property management company to take this burden off of his hands. His brother-in-law recommended Real Property Management.

Since hiring Real Property Management and getting a new properly screened tenant within weeks, Darius has been free from the pressure of renting his home. “We don’t have hands on the property,” Darius said. “Real Property Management does everything. They manage, they do all the screening of the tenants, and every month they deposit a check into our accounts. It’s that simple for us.” Darius says that they have had no problems or maintenance calls since hiring Real Property Management, thanks to their thorough screening process and regular maintenance checkups. According to Darius, the biggest lesson learned was that if you don’t have the time to devote to home rental management, “go with someone like Real Property Management to take that burden off of you.