Giving bad tenants the boot

Lynne Downs thought renting out her Post Falls home last spring would be simple.

She needed it to happen quickly, she said, so she could follow her husband to Seattle, where he had moved for work after getting laid off.

"It was very lonesome. It was five months being apart," said Downs, 48. "We just kept saying, 'We didn't get married to be apart.'"

So she leapt at the opportunity in August when she found a renter, who agreed to a lease option to buy.

The first two months after Downs moved out, things were fine.

Then the tenant stopped paying.

"I kept trying to call her, but she would only respond to my e-mails," Downs said. "She would only say, 'It's coming, it's coming.'"

Trusting her suspicions, Downs pursued an eviction through an attorney, which followed with months of paperwork and legal fees. The tenant finally moved out in December to avoid facing a court hearing in January.

By that time the couple was out about $21,000, Downs said, including attorneys' fees, lost rent and damages to the carpet and doors from the tenant's children and pets.

The couple never tried to recover the unpaid rent, she added, which their attorney predicted would cost up to $10,000 going through the court system.

"We don't know where she (the tenant) went," Downs said. "That (money) was a little bit more that we could have saved toward our retirement. It was a nightmare."

It doesn't have to be so hard.

Removing bad tenants in Idaho - and preventing the situation entirely - can be easier than most people think, according to those in the legal and property management fields.

It just takes knowing the law, and having tough standards for screening tenants.

And being firm.

"I had one client who bent over backwards and allowed a family to stay in his house for over a year and a half, and tried working with them and continued to get promises and promises for rent," said Coeur d'Alene attorney Kevin Holt, who emphasizes in tenant-landlord law. "He finally came to us and it was only 25 days later we were able to get them evicted."

That's because Idaho law is set up to give bad tenants the boot quick, he said.

If a tenant hasn't paid rent in a month and disregards a landlord's written notice to move in three days, a landlord can file an unlawful detainer action with the county courthouse.

The courts will have a trial within 12 working days, Holt said, if the landlord doesn't want to recover the unpaid rent.

"Most times tenants won't even show up, and if they do, it's almost impossible for them to actually win or stay in the house," Holt said.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, he added, the judge will issue a writ of restitution, which instructs the Sheriff's Department to escort the tenant off the property within a few days if the tenant doesn't leave.

"Usually one or two warnings will get it done," he said.

Cases like Downs' will take longer, he said, if a landlord provided a rental agreement promising 30 days notice for eviction, which has to follow with serving the tenant a complaint to evict.

Trying to recover unpaid rent requires filing a lawsuit, he said, and is rarely worth it.

"It's because you're trying to get blood out of a turnip," he said. "There are lots of things you can do after judgment in court like garnish wages, bank accounts. You can pursue judgment debtors a long ways and actually recover a lot of money, but most people are just happy to get folks out of their house and rent to somebody who's OK."

That's typically the case with Carrie Farrell, manager of Absolute Property Management in Coeur d'Alene.

Farrell sees tenants about once a month who simply refuse to pay rent, she said.

"Maybe it's just their lifestyle, going from house to house, and they've lied on their applications with previous landlords. We do get that," Farrell said.

An unlawful detainer is the quickest way to remove problem tenants and lose the least money, she said.

In her 13 years in the business, she said the sheriff has never had to physically remove anyone from a property.

"You can do it (the unlawful detainer) on your own. It's a pretty simple procedure," Farrell said. "You only lose about two months worth of rent at the most."

Nanci Hawkins with Rental Property Management in Coeur d'Alene said about 90 percent of tenants who refuse to pay rent will respond to her initial written request to move out.

For her, filing an unlawful detainer is rare, she said.

"Those are pretty down and dirty," Hawkins said. "We only do that if they're refusing to work with us and we're seeing damage. There are lots of reasons we're going after the eviction at that point. It's not about rent."

Only three times in 30 years has she had to accompany a sheriff to throw out stubborn tenants, she added.

"They were just bad people. That's all there was to it," she said.

Why are evictions only an occasional problem for them?

Because they screen their tenants, Hawkins said.

Where a property management company might get five calls on a room for rent, an individual owner will get 100, Hawkins said, because the latter doesn't have the rigid background checks that companies do.

Nor the rigid rules.

"Private landlords are, for one, gullible," she said. "If I'm an owner, I break rules, because emotionally I'm involved in it, and I'm not on a contract saying, 'These are the rules.' Private owners, you want to bend the rules because you want to be good people.'"

Setting rules and standing by them firmly is a good place to start, she said.

Most property management companies won't accept anyone with a history of felonies, inconsistent employment or poor references, Farrell said.

"Some people (private owners) will take the first applicant just to get it, instead of giving it a little time and getting several applications to pick the right one," she said.

Most individual landlords don't realize they can go through private companies to run criminal and credit checks, she added.

"If anything seems a little fishy, don't rent to them," she said.

Tenants don't always have to get evicted either, Farrell said, especially when they're just down on their luck, as so many are right now.

"Right now, what's difficult is a lot of people who have been renting from us for years are having problems," she said.

The most affected are families where one or both parents have lost their jobs, she added, and are relying on unemployment that barely covers rent, let alone taking care of their children.

"They're months behind and we're trying to work with them," she said.

She's written up agreements so people can pay a little at a time, she said, allowing some to try catching up even if they're a few months late on rent.

Some are coming through, and some aren't, she admitted.

"Certainly (we're hurting)," she said. "Obviously if someone can't pay their rent, the homeowner can't pay the mortgage or can't pay the management company. It affects everybody."

Hawkins is also making exceptions for struggling tenants who have reliable histories, she said.

Sometimes she'll flex payment schedules to accommodate people's needs, though not for more than one or two months.

"If people speak to us and let us know what's going on, I would say we probably work it out so they give us a certain percentage at a time," she said. "They get it in, one way or another."

Occasionally she even allows old tenants to stay and keep up a house until a new renter is found, with the agreement the former tenant will make payments later.

"Just because someone has a lack of money doesn't mean they can't take care of a property," Hawkins said. "You can be broke and clean."

Under Idaho law, tenants can be evicted if they violate the terms of the lease agreement, are behind in paying the rent, or if they rent month-to-month and are asked to move within 30 days. They can also be evicted for engaging in the illegal use, delivery or production of a controlled substance on the leased property.

The tenant can't be evicted in retaliation for exercising a legal right like requesting repairs.

Holt suggested landlords document the reasons for eviction to prevent a discrimination lawsuit.

Downs, who is now relying on a property management company to rent out her home, said things are finally going smoothly.

She isn't worried about recovering the unpaid rent from her former tenant, she said.

"I'm just glad to have her out," she said. "I feel John and I were blessed to both have paying jobs. If it had been a single household breadwinner or someone with lots of kids, we would have been a lot worse off."