Most of the time when my tenants have been behaving badly, they’ve also been behind on rent, so we have evicted based on the latter. I’ve generally hear that it’s hard to evict for other reasons than non-payment. Can easily turn into one person’s word against another.
I’ve currently got two situations I’m not happy about.
Situation 1: a couple who we evicted for non-payment (and had damaged the home) is living in the park with the man’s mother. They were never approved to live there (and wouldn’t be given their past). Mom is not complying with our request to get them out, but she DOES pay the rent. If they were entirely peaceful, I’d prob let it go on the premise that there are always bigger fish to fry, but the woman squatter is on the nasty side and gets into verbal conflicts with other tenants.
Situation 2: A six year old, who is being watched by grandma while mom works, has become a terror. Rides through the park on his bike hurling f-bombs, generally being a nuisance. One of the other tenants told him he had to leave her yard, before long mom shows up claiming that the tenant had touched the boy, seems unlikely given our knowledge of the tenant. Lots of other tenants are complaining about the boy. But again, mom does pay her rent.
In most states, its a 10-day Notice for breach of the lease. Serve the tenant a 10-day Notice making it clear that if they do not comply with the lease (and your expectations) then they will face eviction. As an owner, its a continual process to keep a high standard in your property and ensure that tenants are following the terms of your lease and rules.
You must serve the eviction notices. To not do so, regardless of your doubts about success, means you have allowed tenants to run your community. If you do not intend to inforce rules/standards you should re-write your community rules removing all those you will not inforce.
To not serve tenants with violation notices is mismanagement of your community and does a disservice to all your tenant.
Serve the notices.
I assume all community owners would know better than to have residents on term leases.
The non renew is step two after issuing the letter to evict assuming you would prefer to keep a tenant. If you believe a notice to correct is not going to be successful you should begin with the non renew and be done with the situation.
Landlords should never keep any tenant that is blatantly refusing to follow community rules.
I get that, but the gist of my question rather is how successful have others actually been with evictions when the tenant is current on rent? Anecdotally, I’ve heard that don’t hold up so well in court.
Laws vary from state to state, so it’s hard to help without knowing what state you’re in. But usually you can just service them with a notice that you’re canceling the lease if it’s month to month. A no fault eviction. They can file an answer and you end up in court, but they can’t do or say anything to change the fact that you are terminating their lease. You don’t have to have a reason. So you will win the case.
“…how successful have others actually been with evictions when the tenant is current on rent?”
We own 2 Mobile Home Parks in South Carolina.
Our Tenants are on Month-To-Month Leases.
We evict on:
1.) "Non-Payment"
2.) “Grounds Other Than Non-Payment”
We have evicted at least 3 Tenants on “Grounds Other Than Non-Payment”.
One Tenant lived in our Mobile Home and the other two Tenants owned their own Mobile Homes.
During the Eviction Process through the Magistrate’s Office none of the Tenants requested to go before the Judge to plead their case.
In addition the Tenants finally left the Mobile Home Park after a month or so after the Final Eviction Papers were served on them.
When evicting on “Grounds Other Than Non-Payment”, we do the following:
1.) Create a letter stating that the Tenant is on a Month-To-Month Lease and that either the Tenant or Landlord can end the Lease with a 30 Written Day Notice.
2.) We then state that the Tenant’s Lease has ended and that this letter serves as the Tenant’s 30 Day Written Notice.
3.) We state that the Tenant will need to move their Mobile Home by Day 31.
4.) We state that the Tenant is required to pay all Rent and Fees while their Mobile Home is in the MHP.
5.) We do NOT give a reason why the Lease has ended.
6.) We then mail the Tenant two copies of the same letter:
1 Letter: Certified Mail Return Receipt Requested
/And/
1 Letter: Regular Mail
7.) They will read your Regular Mail. They will then call and ask you for a reason. We never give reasons.
8.) They typically will never pick-up the Certified Mail. The Certified Mail just gives you proof (for the Judge if needed) that you have given them Written Notice. Eventually, if the Certified Mail is not picked up by the Tenant, it will be sent back to you. However, you always have your receipt as proof of when you mailed it.
When evicting on “Grounds Other Than Non-Payment”, the Tenants will:
1.) Stop paying you. Then you can file your Eviction on Non-Payment and End Of Lease.
2.) Live in your MHP up to the Date of the Magistrate serving them with the Final Eviction Papers
3.) Move out of the Mobile Home once the Magistrate serves them the Final Eviction Papers
4.) Finally move their Mobile Home out of your MHP after a month or so after they receive the Final Eviction Papers
We continue with the following processes until the Mobile Home is moved out of the MHP by the Old Tenant:
1.) Eviction Process
2.) Abandoned Mobile Home Process
I’d add three things to Kristin’s great info/advice:
JP’s and Judges vary greatly as does jurisdictional law. Ask around about your JP and know the local laws before you go to court, or be prepared for your Hearing to be an educational endeavor;
Consistently and politely enforcing a good set of park rules is about the best business practice you can follow in a MHP. Remember, when you evict one problematic tenant, you just make all the other tenants happy; and
In most states, you can evict for any or no reason, just as long as it’s not an illegal reason (ex. race, sex, age, handicap, religion…)
Knowing your states laws and your rights will help you in your decision. I was nervous the first time I evicted when it had nothing to do with non-payment. I bought my park and had some trouble makers that paid rent but they were also running my park but also running my parks reputation into the ground. Since getting rid of them, my park is happy now & a well oiled machine. I have more interest now than ever and it seems these trouble makers were detouring my business in ways I couldn’t even imagine. Listen to the advice on here, it is solid advice!! Your decisions will not always be easy but the results will be rewarding.
I know this is a year late, but wanted to answer anyway. We’re in NC and haven’t had a problem with this situation. Because we have those issues states in the rules. We had to make sure the rules were clear AND we put up a BAN list at the top of the road in the bulletin board box. Once someone (not all) is evicted they go on the ban list. We also stated that anyone who allows a banned person in their home or on their property, they are subject to eviction.
We have had several people do that, and we made sure to keep notes on everything; dates, times, etc. And took pictures when possible. We would give the tenant a violation notice with the violation(s) to quit or leave by a certain time frame. If they didn’t leave, then we filed an eviction and took them to court. We have not lost a court eviction yet. Record as much as possible. When I went to court I made sure the print was large enough for the judge to read everything quickly.
The problem is, we couldn’t make someone leave that was banned unless we had it up on the board in writing for all to see, and called the sheriff. If they’re at someone’s house, we couldn’t force them out, so we had to evict the person who was having them stay. We didn’t like having to do that, but word travels in little communities, specially if people can get away with stuff.
