For those of you who follow this blog, you might recall a post from a while ago titled The Perils of Landlording: Canine Catastrophes.
That was a heartbreaking experience for me. I had to clean up my tenants filth and I knew that better tenant screening would have saved me the money and the hassle. The whole experience cost me about $3,000 in damages. Not fun.
Part of my problem was trying to recover the damages. The tenants balked when I told them they needed to pay for the carpet. They grabbed any excuse they could (all very poor ones) to try to avoid payment. My concern as a landlord was the learning curve involved with taking a tenant to collections. I had never had a damage dispute with a tenant nor had a reason to have one before this.
Fortunately, one of my property management friends suggested I contact North American Recovery Services in Salt Lake City. As a collections agency, they do all the work in hunting down and getting funds from deadbeat tenants. They don't charge you unless they collect. If the collection is pre-judgement then the rate is about 30%. If the collection goes to court (which you don't have to personally appear at) then their rate goes to 50%. Either way, its been a valuable stress-relieveing tool in my landlord tool belt.
As of today when I called to get an update, they had recieved a judgement from a court and also recieved approval for thier garnishment to start in the fall. I know I will be paid and I know when. Beautiful. Justice is served.
If you have trouble with a tenant damaging property or skipping on rent contact North American Recovery at 801-364-0777.
A Weber County, Utah based blog that keeps you informed on real estate and related subjects. For all your real estate needs contact Jeremy Peterson ~ Owner/Broker of Vesta Real Estate ~ 801-390-1480
Thank you for the blog and the resource. We will start using this collection agency.
ReplyDeleteI've added this post to my new blog realre.blogspot.com that provides proven resources for real estate investors.
David Safeer
dsafeer@cleardaycap.com
Commercial debt recovery saves thousands of dollars of any financial set-up every year.It is also important if we look at it with the view of outsourcing to some third-part collection company.The collection company asks for a nominal fee and what it does is really heartening.
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