An Open Letter to Tenants Who Don’t Pay
November 1, 2009
What would you do if you worked hard all week long and on payday your boss told you that you were not going to get paid and. . . that you would have to wait and wait and wait for your money and . . . that he did not know when (or if) you would ever get paid?
How would you feel? And what would you do about it?
How long would you work without getting paid? How would you feel? And what would you do about it?
Would you call your boss on the phone? What if he refused to return your calls? Would you send letters? What if your letters were ignored? Then what would you do? Would you go to his or her office? Would you argue? Would you report him to a government agency whose job it is to protect working people like you? Would you hire a lawyer and pay big bucks that you will never see again? Would you agree to pay court costs and the legal fees that being to pile up the moment you tell your lawyer to sue?
What if you sued, paid the court costs and paid your lawyer but found out that your boss had done you one better? What if he found a free lawyer? And what if the free lawyer’s job was to fight back (using every cheap lawyer trick in the book) just to see that you never got paid?
What if you tried to quit and found out that your boss’s lawyer found a way to force you to keep working without pay? How would you feel? And then what would you do about it?
And finally, what if this happened every December–when your bills were always highest? What if your family was depending on you to provide a quiet Christmas together and enjoy what you have worked for all year. How would you feel? And then what would you do?
What if you got home and found out that your boss had figured a way to trash your home; use up your water; use up your heat and lights and run your bills through the roof . . .without getting into any trouble? How would you feel? And what would you do about it?
Sound familiar? Probably not. Few employers can get away with those atrocities–and few employees would stand for it. But this is exactly what happens every day . . . to landlords.
Here is the chain of events: Tenant refuses to pay. When you continue to stay without paying, your landlord is forced to file for eviction, forced to pay court costs, and forced to continue to work without pay. The question remains, what would you do?
Here is what we do. We are professional landlords. We know all these games and we defend ourselves aggressively. We use every legal remedy available to landlords who must deal with tenants who don’t pay. WE EVICT. We report bad tenants to other landlords and to all three credit-reporting agencies. We sue and pay court costs; then we file judgments against the tenants. We ruin their credit for ten years. We eat the delinquent rent and pay the unpaid bills. We repair the damages and then we attach their wages. We clean the house and we evict. We evict without remorse. . . even it if means the tenant will be homeless in the dead of winter. Why? Because these are our only legal remedies and your rent is our paycheck. What would you do?
Pay your rent today!
About the Author: Bob Cain
Some 30 years ago Bob Cain went to a no-money-down seminar and got the notion that owning rental property would be just the best idea there is for making money. He bought some. Trouble was, what he learned at the seminar didn’t tell him how to make money on his rental property. He went looking for help in the form of a magazine or newsletter about the business. He couldn't find any.
Always ready to jump at a great idea, he decided he could put his speaking and writing skills to work and perform a valuable service for other investors who needed more information about property management. So Bob ferreted out the secrets, tricks and techniques of property management wherever he found them; then he passed them along to other landlords.
For over 25 years now, Bob has been publishing information, giving speeches, putting on seminars and workshops, and consulting for landlords on how to buy, rent and manage property more effectively.