today we're talking about evictions it's taken me four months to remove somebody
from a property because I did not know the law we're gonna talk about what you
need to know about eviction law at least in Texas but a lot of it's similar in
other states how long it should actually take you if you do it right what are the
do's what are the don'ts if you don't do it yourself how much it might cost you
to use a lawyer all of it everything from my long tumultuous experience with
my first eviction ever but I won eventually so it's good news so without
further ado let's talk two fictions we'll jump right into it all right
welcome back our beanie family so yes November 3rd I fourth November 4th I put
a notice on a door for them to vacate a property for delinquency non-payment now
there's two types of evictions there's going to be your delinquency and then
your non delinquency which non delinquency would be like a violations
of some terms of that contract like the lease agreement so those are your two
types now there's a common misconception about
evictions in our world the world of rental arbitrage where you have a lease
and then you're the lease holder and then somebody else is an occupant a lot
of times people would argue that you are roommates with the person you're trying
to evict which means you can't legally evict them well let's clear that up if
somebody has an agreement to pay you to stay somewhere or as some other
agreement where you know in exchange for other like the sort of like if somebody
works for you in exchange for services or payment or something they're staying
at this property you have a landlord-tenant relationship and if you
have a landlord-tenant relationship you can proceed with an eviction but in
texas at least you cannot evict somebody unless you're the owner of the property
but that's not even a big deal because if you think about it a lot of these
properties that we stay at we live at have property management companies those
are called third party fee based property management companies they have
permission from the owners to evict people on behalf of the owner this is
already something they have permission for and that's all you need as well as
you just need permission to conduct an eviction on behalf of the owner of the
property that's it so you can go to your landlord or you can go to the
a management company for the building that you've already negotiated with
before and state that any case that you need to remove somebody and conduct an
eviction you'd like that permission to do so and it's super simple you get like
this written permission slip and you you know move you move forward so this is
something that I did not know and this was at the heart of my mistake when I
went through the eviction process so I submitted this notice to vacate I put it
on the inside of the door of the apartment which is what you have to do
there's a couple other ways you can you know you some you know submit it and for
ease I'm going to give you a copy of a blank version of a notice to vacate I'm
gonna leave it in like the description so that way you can have a link to one
for your own reference your notice to vacate needs to be airtight and legal
you have to give somebody at least three days notice to vacate when they're
delinquent on payment you have to list you know basically name of the person
you're evicting person to who's doing the evicting date application or date
the notice was given how it was given you have to fill out this whole thing
nice and perfect and then leave it after that three days on the fourth day you
can conduct what's called an eviction petition online filed to do that go to
court and everything so I was the plaintiff which was what was incorrect
about my case when I showed up I did not show up with a copy of the lease I
showed up with my notice to vacate and things like that I showed up with proof
that he's paid me before like in my phone but not on on paper and then the
defendant showed up and claimed that he was like my roommate essentially and
that I didn't have right to a victim that the only the property management
could actually do the evicting I didn't have a copy of my lease so I can't prove
that he wasn't on the lease itself and he lied and said that we didn't have a
payment agreement so that caused my court case to be reset he did not
dismiss it because the defendant was there so since the defender was there to
defend himself and we couldn't come to like some sort of like this is
legitimate he gave me my since was my first time doing an eviction he gave me
a week and reset it so after that I got an attorney the attorney did what's
called an amended petition where instead of me being the sole plaintiff he
added the building owner as an added party well this is where he went wrong
he was technically supposed to add the building owner as the plaintiff and then
I would be the added party so when he amended the petition which allows him to
rewrite the petition he should have wrote it differently so when we show up
for our next court case the defendant did not show up and since the defendant
did not show up to defend himself the judge goes through the paperwork just
nice and thorough and makes sure everything is legit before you know
stamps his approval but that was where the problem was if the defendant
actually showed up again he we would had like this back-and-forth talk and then
the judge would have saw the paperwork in specific pieces that he asked for and
saw that it was legit and he would have awarded us if the defendant does not
show up it's actually harder okay so make sure your paperwork is in order and
proper in case the defendant does not show up for a trial so they dismiss the
case that was no fun so what we had to do is we had to appeal and take it to
County Court now when we take it to county court even if you have an
attorney you have to show up so I had to show up and what was great about this
though is we would normally appeal and say well the paperwork is correct enough
right there was no reason for it to get dismissed over this little nuance we
should still be able to proceed with the eviction because in the nature of it you
know he had his argument and he was going to even call me as a witness etc
so it event a little bit more of a tedious task but since my attorney
sent you know first-class mail stating you know we were filing the we're filing
an appeal this is the information and we tried to correspond with the defendant
and the defendant did not respond and then the defendant did not show up for
the appeal date we were able to file what's called a notice for default
judgment just we're gonna get the judgment by default and so we won nice
and easy because the defendant did not show up fun okay so now we finally have
our eviction case one and so this took what this would have taken in a normal
vacuum three days notice to vacate fourth day file your petition it takes
two weeks to get a court case usually and then from there there's a five-day
appeal window in our case since we lost the court case
had already gone by and then the reset was set for another two and two and a
half weeks out and then we won and then we have five days from that one for
another appeal process so every time that there's a judgement there's a
five-day appeal window since we won after this five-day appeal window we can
then file for the writ of possession and that's when the judge sends a constable
to leave a writ of possession on the door now that has the state of 24 hours
before we can call and ask for constable to remove the person from the property
and they can be available to do so within a couple of days it could take a
week or so so realistically if you do it without losing and appealing and if you
do it in one smooth motion it should take you about 30 to 40 days to get
constable at the door to remove somebody so with that said if you do it on your
own and you do it right you can do it for like less than 500 bucks because
you're gonna have to pay for your your eviction petition you're gonna have to
pay for the constable to come out stuff like that you're gonna have to pay then
also for the locks to get changed while the constable is there and for a mover
to remove the property if the defendant is not willing to remove his property
himself you're gonna have to hire a mover to curb everything and then the
defendant has seven to ten days to remove his property from the curb before
it can be thrown away and that's just the law now if the defendant leaves and
abandons the property before the constable comes for this final time you
still have to remove any leftover property and curb it and if he leaves a
pet you have to file a report because abandoning a pet is neglect and that's
actually illegal and then you have to take that animal somewhere safe like an
animal shelter and give the owners information over it's because you cannot
leave an animal on the street outside for seven to ten days that's also animal
cruelty so don't do that so this is the this is the what you should do okay now
let's talk about you should not do there are things called self-help which is
where you shut the electricity off or remove the internet or something like
that you cannot do that anything that you provide a tenant in exchange for
their rents you have to continue to provide throughout the state this
includes a parking spot anything you cannot remove the tenants property you
cannot withhold their property for payment you cannot that's theft you
cannot try to forcibly remove the tenant from the property these are all
self-help so you can't do you can't remove
door so that way they're unable to lock the door these are things that you
cannot do also so all self-help practices you should
not do it's also advised that you don't communicate with the defendant because
if you say anything sideways they can try to take it to court and get like a
restraining order against you and this could delay the eviction process there's
also a couple other things that they could do to delay the eviction process
but we're not going to talk about it here because I'd hate for a defendant to
get this video and get extra ammo that'd be super stupid of me to give you there
but there are just things that you want to avoid from happening
do not let a tenant pay you for rent which means never allow a tenant to
deposit rents into your bank account do not give them some sort of method to pay
like that because as they drop a check in your account and say hey I already
paid him rent there's proof in his account this proof that my check was
cashed they can use that as like a reason to state your notice of
delinquency is no longer valid so those are some things you do not do you do not
give them the out like that never take partial payment for rent also if you put
in the notice to vacate that you know that they were delinquent but it wasn't
just the rent that they're getting thrown out for it but you put like
another contractual breach in there that way if you do get them to pay you rent
you can still move forward with the eviction if you in the notice to vacate
leave in the language a certain way so you can do a little homework on that on
how you want to actually do the language if your notice to vacate to still give
you the ability to collect the rents and kick the person out because you should
be able to so the plot twist like the big plot twist for this whole thing
aside from the fact that I lost and then one was that this was not an Airbnb
guest this was actually not even a short-term rental customer so my company
media press provides housing for sales representatives when they relocate from
different cities and this was a guy from Chicago staying in Fort Worth and we
actually cut his contract and terminated it in October but we told him that will
allow him to still pay him but his weekly rent while he figures his life
out even though he wasn't working for the company well no good deed goes
unpunished and so he stopped paying his rent and then we tried to evict him so
November third was when I gave him his notice and then I had to go to Thailand
because I might trip and he said that he was getting a lease some
so ready so it wasn't a big deal and that he was gonna get out and he kind of
convinced me to not be aggressive in my eviction process so another thing is
don't believe people right people will lie to you especially when it comes to
like living and squatting in your home so with that said be aggressive with
your eviction process be a little bit heartless unfortunately people will take
advantage of you just for the sake of buying time in writing on your dime do
not communicate with the guests do not allow them to make you like the
emotional in any way so that way they can't might start to use that against
you in court don't do anything in the self-help category but just do a little
bit more homework about tenant-landlord relationships and in advance get
permission from your buildings to conduct evictions if you ever need it
now the point here though is the reason why I told you is that it wasn't an air
B&B guest is because I still haven't had this issue with any air B&B guests to
spend five years now almost that I've been an Airbnb host and I've never had
to go through this process of forcibly removing somebody it's always been
handled prior to having to do an eviction now in Texas people have
established tenancy in as short as a week well I don't know how it could be
that maybe there was a lease agreement or some sort of written agreement that
started and because they had executed this agreement that that's what awarded
them tenancy normally it's like four weeks or more that you need to stay
somewhere before you become a tenant but look at your local laws about that and
just be prepared for that too if you want to avoid it another thing that I do
to help prevent people from proving tenancy is I don't give my guests keys
to the mailbox I don't let them receive mail at the property if somebody puts a
utility in their name or if they receive mail at the property that's a way to
prove tenancy at a spot and I don't allow people to do things that would
establish tenancy that's something that I've always done right from the
beginning and maybe that's why I've never had this issue is because I've
also made it a little bit harder for people to become tenants so take all
that for what it is put it in your back pocket as an Airbnb host and keep it
just in case you need it if you have any questions about this
leave it in the comments if you have a specific situation going through with a
person not leaving also feel free to ask away I'm here for you guys it's good to
be back and doing videos again and on a similar note don't murder people I don't
know if you saw in News but a BBC just did a report on this
- thank you - one of my friends who sent it let's see who oh I'm a guy from my
high school actually Michael O'Keefe which actually Michael is somebody that
everybody in my high school looked up to because his family was like like real
estate they were really good at what they did and they had this booming real
estate company and I think he got like a factory in China from his grandfather
when he turned 18 so family was doing pretty well
so me and my poverty on welfare of course looking up at the O'Keefe family
at like how can I do well for my life and it's fun we're friends and I think
were more financially equal now I think I don't know in a factory in China
though so Mike in the comments what are you doing with that factory in China we
would like to know but anyway he's always said the article the BBC reported
on it a guy did not pay his rent to an Airbnb host for like three days was like
two hundred ten American dollars that the guy owed and the host attacked him
the host and the host friend attacked this guy and killed the man and now the
claim was he didn't think he was going to kill the guy by getting physical with
them and so now he's got like a manslaughter charge so that's not going
to be good for Airbnb as a brand but don't do that don't get violent and kill
people please so thank you for watching every
beam be automated thanks for sticking around I'll see you on the other side