Our story continued...

Our story gets more and more interesting as we go along. The last house that I wrote about, was the house that we bought in 2003. We still own that house, and are in the process of fixing it up a 3rd time, so that we can sell it. More on that in a subsequent post.
Now, back to the story. When we bought the house, we purchased the home in our name, applied for an 80% loan, and the partner paid for the repair costs, the 20% down payment, and closing costs. Our total monthly payment, at the time, was $450 for this house. We rented the house out to some people who I personally screened for credit, previous landlord experience, and also visited their home before signing the lease. Everything checked out o.k.
The credit was nominal (medical bills, and some utility bills), however there were no evictions on the credit report, and no indication that they were going to have a problem with anything. I even visited their home before signing the lease, just to make doubly certain that they were going to take care of the house.
After they moved into the house, they stopped "singing the tune" . They paid none of the rent, allowed their children to skateboard in the house, pulling up the intricately designed hardwood floors in the living room, tearing holes in the dining room linoleum, and breaking spindles out on the front porch railing, and the staircase going up the steps to the bedrooms. They also ended up with an almost $500.00 water and sewer bill, which is a leinable municipal item for the owner. Whenever you went to talk with them, they claimed hardship, cried the tears, and begged for understanding. One of their infant children had a tracheotomy, the property had issues that they could not live with, etc. The city sent an inspector out to the property at the tenants' request to look at "issues" that the house was uninhabitable, and needed repairs. The inspector called me, and told me that I needed to install 2 smoke detectors, and fix a leak in the bathtub. We repaired those immediately, and spoke with the inspector for reinspection, and he told us that we had a nice house with less than reputable tenants. He told me that they "sang the blues" for him too, and at first, he believed them.
We ended up evicting these people, paying over $1000.00 in attorneys' fees, and found out that if we would have inquired about them at the district justice level, we would have seen many cases of previous evictions in their name, which never went on the credit report!
The interesting part of this whole story is: that these people have done this same thing to numerous other people in their lifetime, and had the experience to pull it off many times. They knew the process so well, that after they lost the eviction in district justice level, they waited for the very last day of the appeal process, went into the prothonotary's office to appeal the decision of the district judge, paid NO money for back rent or otherwise, crossed out words on the appeal and changed them, and went their merry way. The prothonotary, sent the paperwork over to the business judge at the end of the day, and he took a cursory look at it, signed it, and they were now living in the property free of charge with their appeal filed!
I spoke with their new landlord (who was a realtor also), after they moved out of our house. She told me that these people just could not be the kind of people that I was describing! I told her to do her research in the district justice offices, and let me know what she found out.
This was certainly a learning experience for all of us, including our attorney, who just could not believe that someone could appeal a decision of the district court, without paying the amount of rent and costs awarded at that level, to the prothonotary! Fortunately for us, our attorney is a landlord, works with real estate, wrote a book about landlord/tenant laws, and is the solicitor for the sheriffs' department in the county. So, he had the experience to handle this oddball case as well. To say that we could have done this by ourselves, would be lying!
This brings us to another point for all of you investors and almost-investors: build your team wisely! Your team should include an accountant, an attorney, a contractor, and a realtor at the very minimum. You need access to many different people to help you achieve your goals of making money in real estate. Don't be afraid to pay them either. They deserve to make money on these transactions also. Remember, they are doing a service to you. Without them, you could not achieve your goals of investing. Besides, when you see the money that can be made from real estate, you won't ever go back to the mundane 9-5 mentality that is so prevalent in our society today.
Don't forget to email me any questions. I will gladly answer them for you. Talk to you soon.