It’s very common for a landlord, rental property owner; they just wait and hope for the best when they have a tenant that’s not paying their rent rather than to begin the eviction process. This connects to mistake that I see very often as a property management company owner.
Hi, there! Joe White here from Grow Property Management, your trusted property management company in Philadelphia.
I just got a text from a close friend, and honestly, it’s left me feeling kind of torn. She and her husband are not only good friends of mine – they’re also our neighbors. We live pretty close by, and I really do care about them. That’s what makes this whole situation so frustrating. I know if they ever read or heard this, they might feel like I’m throwing them under the bus, even though I’m not naming names. The only people who’d probably know who I’m talking about are me and maybe my wife. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that this might end up putting a strain on the friendship.
So here’s the situation: they recently bought a rental property not far from their home. They rented it out to, by their account, a very sweet little old lady. Sounds nice enough, right? But the issue is that the woman has since passed away – and now her two adult sons are the ones occupying the home. From what I understand, one of them has some sort of disability and might be receiving income because of it. But despite that, neither of them is paying rent.
As soon as their mother passed away, the rent stopped coming. My friends – now landlords – are effectively going without any income from this property. I tried to help. I really did. I advised them early on to at least get these guys on a lease, even if it’s just a token lease with some form of consideration, even just a dollar. That way, the contract is valid, and they could proceed with an eviction process if needed. The key difference between evicting a tenant and removing a squatter is night and day. One’s hard and costly. The other’s extremely hard and even more costly. Without a lease, they’re looking at a long and expensive ordeal to get these guys out.
But here’s where I understand them – and maybe even empathize a little too much. They’re holding out hope. Hope that somehow, things will just work themselves out. That the sons will suddenly decide to do the right thing and start paying rent. That this won’t end up being the eviction headache it clearly already is becoming. I call it “injecting hopium into the veins.” And I get it. Hope is comforting. It lets us pretend that we won’t have to make the hard, expensive, emotional decisions that are staring us in the face.
They want to believe this will resolve painlessly. But the truth is, it almost never does. I gave them my perspective, probably too bluntly, and maybe they felt I was just being jaded. I think they hear me talk and think, “Oh, he’s a property manager. Of course, he thinks all tenants are freeloaders and we should kick them all out the second they fall behind.” But that’s not it at all. I don’t speak from emotion. I speak from experience – cold, hard data.
You see, my property management company oversees a large number of units. So we don’t just react emotionally to any single case. We rely on numbers, patterns, and long – term metrics. We’ve seen this scenario countless times. When someone stops paying rent and makes no effort to fix the situation, we know how it usually ends. I’m not being heartless. I just know the odds. The odds say these guys are never going to become paying tenants again. I’d love to be wrong – but I never am in cases like this.
The tough part is that they started the eviction process… and then backed off. That’s the worst thing you can do. Now they’ve reset the clock. Every day they hesitate is another day they lose money. And they are bleeding cash. They probably don’t even realize how much. At our company, we’ve calculated that every vacant day costs an owner over $78. That’s our median rental loss per day when a unit is sitting empty. Multiply that by 10, 30, 60 days – it adds up fast. These aren’t small numbers. And when you’ve got a situation like this where it’s not a question of “if” but “when” they’ll need to evict, dragging it out just compounds the damage.
But again, they’re friends. I get their reluctance. They don’t want to be the bad guys. They don’t want to hire an attorney and fork out money just to push someone out of a home – especially when it’s a situation that used to involve a sweet old lady. There’s guilt. There’s emotional hesitation. But you have to be able to separate emotion from investment. You have to make intellectual decisions, not emotional ones. Otherwise, you’re not acting as a landlord. You’re just reacting as a person who’s scared to lose more than they already have.
This is the hardest part of being a landlord. Not the leaky roofs or late – night maintenance calls. It’s making these painful decisions when your heart is screaming at you to wait just a little longer. But that “little longer” turns into months of lost income. And here’s the kicker – they might never see that money. Once a tenant stops paying and shows no willingness to cooperate, there’s almost no chance they’re going to make you whole again.
At my company, when we’re going through an eviction, we don’t just cut tenants off. We keep the lines of communication open. We want to know what’s going on. We want them to tell us if there’s a leak in the ceiling or a plumbing issue. Because if they go radio silent, and that bathroom leak turns into ceiling collapse, the property owner takes another financial hit. So we talk to them. We offer solutions. We tell them, “Hey, if you can move out a week early, that’s seven days sooner the unit can be marketed again.” We’re always calculating the savings – even when it’s about how quickly we can get a bad tenant out with minimal damage.
Now, not every tenant we’ve inherited from other landlords or agents ends in eviction. But a lot of them do. They weren’t properly screened, or someone ignored red flags. And when it comes time to clean up the mess, we’re the ones they call. So I see the full arc of these problems, from start to finish. And that’s why I’m so adamant: the longer you delay, the worse it gets.
Look, I’m just a humble property management company owner in Philly trying to share what I’ve learned. If you’re a landlord – or thinking about becoming one – my biggest piece of advice is this: don’t let emotion guide your decisions. Think like an investor. If your property needed a new roof, you’d pay for it because it protects your asset. If you’ve got non – paying tenants who aren’t going to come around, take the steps needed to protect your investment. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary.
And to my friends, if you ever read this – know that I’m only saying all this because I care. I hate seeing you lose money, and I hate watching you hope for a turnaround that’s just not coming. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. And I’m just trying to help you not fall deeper into the trap of delay.
Happy rental property investing – make smart, not soft, decisions.
