My new method…
“Hand over the keys or I will place a monetary judgement against you for all back rent, late fees, and rent owed up until the time I rent the place out again. This could total thousands of dollars and ruin your credit.”
I already collected enough deposit to cover about 50% of what I would have gotten in the meantime.
Every situation is different and has its own dynamics to deal with.
It’s nice to mentally masturbate over all the ways you’re gonna be a jackass, but you’re still not dealing in reality.
That’s why God invented negotiating. A true professional uncovers what the other side wants, in order to compel them to happily give up their position. Otherwise, the thug approach is reserved for dealing with crazy people. Otherwise, why not just shoot them in the head, and get it over with? You know, the whole family. Grandma. The dog.
Yea I could do this for days. But you should have seen me when I took over the place, I was the nicest guy in the world and everyone took advantage of me.
Being nice can’t be the same as being a pushover. I understand what you’re saying.
I’ve tried being nice, and a pushover, and ended up getting my butt handed to me.
I don’t know how to express this better, but I’ve also discovered that that if I maintain a history of keeping my word, that tenants will not call my bluff. I have bluffed many times, and the tenants I’ve bluffed couldn’t take the chance that I was bluffing, because I had never pulled a punch with them before.
I think it’s good business when you’re taking over as manager of a messy deal, to pretty much put on a show of force for everyone to see.
I did this by accident on my first management mess of a project. I had inherited mostly deadbeats in my building, but I had one that hadn’t paid for several months. She was an expired-prescription drug dealer, that had disappeared for several days. I gave her notice with no response. To expedite things, my eviction process included dumping all her stuff out the third floor balcony on to the lawn for all to see.
It was quite spectacular. Never mind, I discovered that all the furniture was MINE. It was a furnished apartment! Well, nobody knew that, including me. My ‘helper’ informed me of this detail AFTER I dumped everything overboard. Pffft.
Meanwhile, the police drove up, and asked what in the crap we were doing (my words), and my helper told them that I was evicting ‘whats-her-name,’ and they knew who he was talking about, and laughed about it, and drove away.
You know, after that episode, ALL the tenants got the message that I meant business when I said I wanted the rent. That stunt kept me out of court with all the rest of the deadbeats I inherited. One by one, they just packed up and got outta Dodge.
Not one of those situations was a cash-for-keys deals. It was just a ‘keys’ deal. [Insert evil laugh here.]
There was a tenant last year who would always threaten me every time I went up there. He would get in my face and tell me he was going to break it.
If I were not a felon, I would have carried a gun, baited him into attacking me and shot him in self-defense in front of his three kids.
Maybe bring a video camera, too.
The worst thing is not a vacant unit the worst thing is a nonpaying tenant because if the unit is empty all you have to do to make money is to lease the unit. A nonpaying tenant is not only not paying but prevents you from leasing the unit because he is in it. You need to treat a nonpaying tenant like the enemy and use all of your resources to get that unit up as a paying assett.
That should have been your old method also.
Cash for keys is only in cases where nothing else will work with that tenant. And you will lose more than the cash amount if you don’t use it.
Just a tool to use in the rare cases it is needed.