The sheriff is of no use to you. He will tell you that it's a civil matter and you'll have to sue for damages.
If you find them they will deny doing it and claim it was that way when they moved in.
Likely you'd win in court and get a judgement against them. Collecting it is another matter. If you're aggressive you can have their wages garnished, have any property they own seized and sold at auction etc.
I had one old judgement (over 15yrs) that I just collected on last year. they had bought a house some years ago and sold it. When they went to closing they were informed that their "settlement" was going to be over $11k LESS than what they thought as the judgement came up in the records search. They didn't even recognize me sitting at the table waiting for my check....:-)
Always take date stamped pictures of the property just prior to a tenant moving in. Likewise take them asap as a tenant vacates.
Always run a credit/background check, confirm their employment and never ever ever rent without at least one months security deposit.
I allow one pet under 30lbs with an additional one month security deposit as a pet deposit only in houses that do not have wood or carpeted floors. Wood or carpet, no pets period.
My property manager inspects every property once every 60days.
Your rental application should also have a place for landlord references... check with who they've rented from before. Get the names, addresses and phone numbers of their relatives/references and check those too..
On the 31st day that rent is late we send the eviction notice unless they've contacted us in advance and made arrangements that we find acceptable.
I used to be much more flexible but changed my ways about 10yrs ago.. Now I don't mess with them. Fair but firm is the only way to deal with tenants.
I'm in court every couple of months but we own a lot of rentals. I prosecute bad checks, sue for damages and am relentless in enforcing judgements. I've had trucks, tools, plasma TVs, lawn mowers etc seized and sold at auction to settle judgements as well as garnished wages.
Unless they skip the state they're eventually going to pay and I've even gotten a few that did move out of state with wage garnishments.
They also end up paying all the costs associated with collecting on the judgment... which sometimes is more than they owed to begin with.
Court costs, attorney costs, service costs, sheriff's enforcement costs and interest all add up.
I get first and last months rent and security deposit up front (3 months rent) If they have a pet it's another months rent.
This post was edited by kaferhaus at 17:37:43 08/10/11.
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Today's Featured Article - Listening to Your Tractor - by Curtis Von Fange. Years ago there was a TV show about a talking car. Unless you are from another planet, physically or otherwise, I don’t think our internal combustion buddies will talk and tell us their problems. But, on the other hand, there is a secret language that our mechanical companions readily do speak. It is an interesting form of communication that involves all the senses of the listener. In this series we are going to investigate and learn the basic rudimentary skills of understanding this lingo.
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