What do you do when your tenant is behind on their lease payments?

What do you do when your tenant is multiple months behind on their rent payments? One Stop Property Management’s Rachael Rice decided to try something a little different.   

As a property manager, it is our responsibility to collect monthly rent from our tenants. While we screen our tenants thoroughly to reduce unreliable occupants, there are unpredictable and unfortunate circumstances that can cause tenants to fall behind on rent.  Rachael Rice, our Occupied Tenant Coordinator, is responsible for collecting past due rent and fees.  She strives to get the best outcome for both the tenant and owner often without having to go to eviction court. Here she shares her recent victory with a major happy ending! 

“The past 2 years have definitely brought on an onslaught of uncertainty. My position requires me to collect rent. The introduction of new tenant assistance programs due to the COVID pandemic was absolutely something that I wanted to educate myself on, so I attended several online meetings/ trainings to become familiar with the processes. With this knowledge, I have supported tenants in obtaining assistance and collected rent for many owners that would have otherwise had to go through an eviction and then attempt to collect afterwards, which can take years, if any funds are received at all.   

We recently had a situation where one of our owners had been reluctant to evict their tenant for several months which created a very high balance on the tenant’s ledger. The owner then realized that this tenant was not going to be able to catch up as the balance was steadily increasing, so she gave me the authorization to evict.  For my last effort before evicting, I suggested to the tenant that they contact assistance which had been suggested prior, but the tenant now knew that an eviction was being authorized.  This prompted the tenant to finally seek assistance. 

As usual, I obtained the case manager’s contact information from the tenant.  I then contacted the case manager and she told me that our tenant was on the waiting list, but it could be several months for them to review their application.  At this point, I had to decide whether the lengthy wait was going to be worth it to the owner.  My knowledge of how long collection judgements take to finally see payment was heavily considered and I decided to suggest to the owner that we wait for this assistance.  I continued to negotiate rent payments with the tenant so that there would be some sort of income for the owner while we were waiting.  Fast forward to almost 5 months later, we received a check for over $9,000 which paid for ALL of the past due rent and fees as well as 3 months of forward rent totaling 8 months of rent paid.  This situation became a “win” for all parties involved and I am so happy that I could keep our tenant housed as well as getting our owner paid in full!” 

Well done, Rachael.  We appreciate your commitment to our tenants and our owners!  The keys to success were knowledge of the system, foresight and patience to counsel for the best outcome.  That is the benefit of having an expert on your management team!