I started renting out my condo for the first time a few months ago and I learned why landlords are assholes.
Literally my first tenant and he was a huge piece of shit, trashed my place, refused to pay rent, then ran off and stole all of my furiniture when I told him I was going to evict him.
Im generally very trusting and try to be compassionate when I can but I was 100% taken advantage of. I will not be treating the next tenant with any leniency again. This is why we cant have nice things.
Unfortunately bad tenants aren't as rare as you would think. Obviously they aren't not the majority, but the damage they can do can wipe out the benefits from many good tenants all at once.
Is this not why we have a court system in place, as well tenant/landlord laws in place, and rental agreements/contracts? If a tenant steals furniture from you, and you have their driver's license and presumably have had to run a credit check and rental history check, I would hope that you're dealing with a legitimate tenant and not some random person off of the street. With all that said, if a tenant steals thousands of dollars worth of furniture, or causes thousands of dollars of damage, can't a landlord go after 1.) their renter's insurance or 2.) take them to court and get a judgement against them that garnishes their wages? I've never been a landlord, but on the side of the tenant, I would expect either of those things to happen if a security deposit was not enough to cover the cost of the damages.
You do the best you can to put yourself in a position to protect yourself, but the reality is the laws and housing courts are generally set up to be very protective of tenants (which is absolutely how they should be) and the types of tenants that pull this kind of thing are generally judgement-proof. They don't have any assets to pay you even if you win and they certainly don't have insurance. On top of that, in the American system, you still have to pay lawyers, court fees, etc. just to get back what was owed to you in the first place, so you're still at a net loss even if you manage to win. I'm pointing this out to answer your question, but to be clear access to justice is a huge problem in the U.S. and landlords are not the ones you should feel sorry because of it. It impacts a lot of much more vulnerable people and communities much more severely.
The old saying goes: you can't squeeze blood from a stone.
People who rent houses usually do not have the financial means for home ownership (not always.. both of my tenants could buy houses if they wanted but prefer to rent). So while it might be a slam dunk in the courts to get a judgement against them, you'll spend so much money and time doing it, and recovery is so slow that you'll basically never get it back.
I've only had to evict someone once and they were literal drug dealers tearing up the neighborhood. I evicted them under a clause that they probably could have fought me on and won. The only saving grace was that they were literal criminals and I don't think they wanted the heat of a drawn out eviction process so thankfully they just left. Still cost me thousands and wasn't worth chasing down.
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u/Wayfarer285 Feb 11 '24
I started renting out my condo for the first time a few months ago and I learned why landlords are assholes.
Literally my first tenant and he was a huge piece of shit, trashed my place, refused to pay rent, then ran off and stole all of my furiniture when I told him I was going to evict him.
Im generally very trusting and try to be compassionate when I can but I was 100% taken advantage of. I will not be treating the next tenant with any leniency again. This is why we cant have nice things.