Evicting a tenant can be difficult and emotionally trying for everyone involved. If you have a tenant who is chronically behind on rent payments or who you need to evict for some other reason, the process can often seem confusing and complex. Handling this task alone can seem particularly challenging if you're a first-time rental property owner.
While you don't need to hire a lawyer to handle an eviction, there are some compelling reasons why you might want to work with a professional service to handle your eviction document preparation. Before taking a do-it-yourself approach, consider these three reasons why relying on an expert might be a much better plan.
1. Extended Eviction Times
When you rely on your rental properties for income, any disruption to regular rent payments can significantly impact your bottom line. Allowing a delinquent or otherwise troublesome tenant to remain in a unit will probably result in a meaningful reduction of income, and recovering those damages later may be challenging or impossible.
Working your way through the court system can already be time-consuming, and document preparation mistakes can greatly extend this period. In a worst-case scenario, errors may force you to make corrections and restart the eviction process, resulting in an even longer wait with a rental unit that you can't yet put back on the market.
2. Lost Filing and Legal Fees
While many evictions are fairly routine, some can be substantially more contentious. If your tenant chooses to fight their eviction, you may need to seek legal counsel to help you successfully win your petition. Even for uncontested evictions, many states impose a filing fee you must pay when submitting your eviction documents.
If you lose your case or an error in your filing results in a rejection, you'll typically need to resubmit your documentation and pay a new filing fee. Working with a professional service to prepare your eviction documents will minimize the likelihood of a clerical error causing a rejection, helping you avoid extra and unnecessary fees.
3. Wasted Time
If you own multiple rental units, you probably have a fairly busy schedule between dealing with administrative issues, handling repairs, and taking care of other day-to-day tasks. Preparing eviction documents isn't necessarily a challenging process, but it can be time-consuming. Double and triple-checking your work to ensure accuracy can add to this burden.
While working with a professional service will cost a little more than doing it yourself, you'll ultimately save money by freeing up time in your schedule. In addition to ensuring that your documentation is correct and error-free, you'll have more time to deal with issues that may arise with your other rental units.
Contact a local company to learn more about eviction document preparation.
Share21 July 2023
