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I got a call from a customer of mine that had recently purchased an investment property.  He had a tenant that had not paid him rent from the current month.  This tenant had made multiple promises to pay and eventually gave him a personal check late one night for the past due rent.  The landlord brought the check to the bank the next day only to find out that they did not have any money in this account.

After several more attempts to contact the tenant, the landlord stopped over to the apartment to find the door open.  When he walked in, he found that all of the tenant’s belongings where mostly gone and the place was a mess with garbage and junk everywhere.  He was asking me what he should do.

I suggested that he should call an eviction lawyer right away and start the eviction.  While it appears that the tenant moved out, this could get to be a problem.  If the landlord simply changes the locks, cleans the apartment and then moves someone else in, the original tenant could come back and claim that the landlord illegally locked him.  And because the landlord did not file the eviction, this deadbeat tenant might win.

Using any one of the many eviction lawyers will help you cut through any emotion that you have involved in this property or tenant.  They can make an experienced judgment as your best course of action to handle this situation.  In some cases, it may NOT be eviction.  They may look at the facts of the case and see that since the tenant abandoned the property that they broke the lease and you do not need to evict them.  I would not want to make this judgment on my own. I would prefer an experienced eviction attorney to tell me this.