[throwaway0a5e]

While I might not agree with a lot of the opinions in these comments the sheer ignorance of the eviction process is what bothers me more. Opinions are pretty easy to write off but anyone here also has a multitude of search engines at their fingertips so there's no excuse for ignorance.

It varies by state but evicting someone is not the "just show up and kick out the tenant with threat of violence" process that many comments seem to be operating under the assumption that it is. You might be able to get away with that once or twice but (in the US) even the most shady of slumlord make a profit on a timeline longer than that approach is tenable.

[tuna-piano]

Those people would be surprised to learn how common "cash for keys" agreements are...

When a landlord wants to evict a tenant who hasn't been paying rent, it's not uncommon for the landlord to actually pay the tenant cash to leave! This is so the landlord doesn't need to wait months with no rent income while spending significant time going to court, etc[1].

In much of the country it likely takes several months. Each step in the multi-step process generally has lots of loopholes, gotchas and potentially weeks of waiting.

[1]https://www.nav.com/blog/cash-for-keys-357679/

[scarface74]

If I had known what I know now, instead of going through the entire eviction process, I would have done that.

It’s a win/win for everyone.

The tenant won’t have an eviction on their record making it harder to rent somewhere else, they can move their own stuff out without the risk of it being damaged, they have cash in hand to stay somewhere else temporarily like a weekly stay hotel [1], and/or they could put their stuff in storage.

I should have been willing to pay up to two to three months mortgage for a cash for keys deal. They weren’t paying anyway, I could have saved the aggravation and they wouldn’t have trashed the place.

[1] all weekly hotels aren’t bad. I stayed in one with my wife and son for months after my lease was up and we were waiting for our house to be built.

[nitrogen]

It varies by state but evicting someone is not the "just show up and kick out the tenant with threat of violence" process that many comments seem to be operating under the assumption that it is.

It's a lot easier to just leave when the semester is almost over, you find out your roommate was maybe pocketing your rent, and the landlord shows up and says "I don't want to rent to singles any more. I've got a family moving in on Monday." That one had ripple effects in my life for years even with the highly undesirable safety net of moving in with family on short notice.

I also know how much damage a bad tenant can do to a property -- graffiti, smoke damage, pet stains -- on top of not paying rent.

I can see why people get pretty heated about tenants' rights, but I've also seen how badly both sides of the transaction can behave. Sometimes eviction is the best course of action for both parties.

[scarface74]

I don’t believe that is the point the parent poster is making. It’s the entire Dunning Kruger Effect of most people who are posting who have no idea how a legal eviction process works.