No landlord or property owner wants to evict a tenant, but sometimes the situation requires you to do so. If the terms of the lease agreement have been broken and the rent has not been paid, you may have to pursue an eviction.
Who Handles the Eviction Process?
When you work with a property management company, they may or may not handle the eviction process for you. You should be sure to ask about this when interviewing potential management companies, especially if it’s not something you want to deal with.
At RL Property Management, we handle evictions for our clients and charge a one-time flat fee to process them. Our attorney group also charges a flat fee, and there are some additional costs in terms of the court. In total the estimated eviction cost for property owners is approximately $400 when all is said and done.
Because the property owner would rather not pay the cost to evict a tenant, and the tenant would often like to stay, we offer the tenant a “pay and stay” option. This is when the tenant chooses to (and is able to) pay the full balance of past-due rent, cancels the eviction, and gets fully caught back up on rent. In our experience, tenants choose to do a “pay and stay” roughly 50 percent of the time.
How Long Does an Eviction Take?
We follow a tight timeline for our eviction process, and it starts by posting a 3-day notice on the tenant’s door about halfway through the month if they fall behind on rent. The 3-day notice informs the resident that they have three business days to pay the rent in full (or move out). If no action is taken, we proceed with the eviction process. To learn more about the steps in an eviction, you can read about them in our blog here .
When a tenant does not choose to do a “pay and stay,” we proceed with the eviction setout, schedule it with a bailiff, and the court system takes it from there to make sure the property gets vacated.
The timeline for the full eviction process extends to roughly 60 days, which means there are about two months of vacancy before we can turn the unit around and get it re-rented for property owners.
While no one prefers to pursue an eviction, there are times when it becomes necessary. At RL Property Management, we do everything we can to prevent evictions in the first place, but when they’re required, we handle the entire process for our clients. If you have questions about owning rental property in Columbus, please get in touch with us to learn more.
