SPEAKER_00 0:00

Can landlord file themselves or they have to have an attorney? Let's say we are in court now and again it's a second mediation at this point so we reached an agreement let's say it's a payment plan or tenant needs to vacate at certain point what happens after? If or when you go in front of the judge do you see that our judges in the city they more tenant friendly or landlord friendly or it's all over the place? I would say most of the The judges are. We're here to share insights and experiences, not legal or accounting advice. Be sure to talk to your attorney, accountant, or professional advisor before making any decisions. Everyone's situation is different. Get the help that is right for you. Welcome to the Philly Landlord Guy show. My name is Yuri Skripnichenko. The guy was a crazy last name. Do not try to remember it. Just think of me as Philly Landlord Guy. I am a licensed real estate broker. certified property manager in the city of Philadelphia. And today we're joined by Philadelphia eviction attorney Len Mancini to break down what it actually takes legally to evict a tenant in the city. From what documents you need, to court times, to what happens if your rental license or lead cert isn't in place, we're covering it all. So let's jump right in. Today, I have eviction attorney here, Len Mancini, a great person. I've been working with him for multiple, multiple years, and he will be sharing a lot of information about evictions in the city of Philadelphia. Len, welcome. And if you can introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about how did you get on this and how long you've been doing this?

SPEAKER_02 1:59

Sure. Good afternoon, my friend. I've been doing evictions for over 25 years. When I started out, it was a very small part of my practice. But there's a lot of people who do only a little bit delving into this, but there's only a few who do a whole lot of it. And it just became a bigger and bigger part of my practices. One client heard that I did it, they referred them out, and the practice just grew and grew and grew to the point where it was enough to make a living at. And I enjoy it. And I enjoy meeting the different tenants. They're always interesting and fun to talk to. You meet a wide variety of people. As also landlords, you meet a wide variety of people. So it's an enjoyable practice.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Well, that's great that you're enjoying it because sometimes evictions or most of the time evictions are not enjoyable. Not for the people involved. That's correct. Yeah. So you've been doing it for 25 years. That's a long time. And I think I've been working with you over 10 years now. I was looking into the history before this recording and I was like, I've known Len for a long time. I didn't realize it was that long either, to be honest with you. Yeah. And I just still remember my first experience with eviction that was about 10 years ago, how shocked I was from the whole process. And that was 10 years ago. So in 10 years, we had a lot of changes and it looks very different now or the timeframes

SPEAKER_02 3:29

are very different. So timeframes are a are extremely different. And yes, just the whole process has changed.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

The whole process. Yeah, especially since the pandemic. So let's start with the basics. What are the legal requirements before a landlord can file for eviction in Philadelphia?

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Landlord-tenant court is what's called a codified court, which means you have to fulfill certain requirements to actually even be entitled. It has to be a landlord-tenant relationship first. So If you're trying to evict a squatter, landlord-tenant court is not your place. They have to have paid you rent or you need a lease. The basic requirements you need are a rental license, a certificate of rental suitability, assuming it's a relatively new case, there's some exceptions to that, and a lead safe certificate. There's also some exceptions to that. If the property was built after 1978, you don't need a lead certificate. And those are the three basic things you need to file a landlord tenant complaint to get it approved by the court. Before you do that, though, you're supposed to go into what's called now the eviction diversion program. And in order to do that, and that's getting ready to change a little bit, too, in the next 45 days, which it's not completely out yet. So they're getting ready to release it. I believe it's June 16th. but there'll be some minor changes to that. But at that point, we need a lot more information.

SPEAKER_00 5:00

Well, let's dive in into the eviction diversion program a little bit later. Let's start with the eviction and what are the requirements. So you mentioned that you need to have rental license, rental suitability certificate, and LAT certificate. Those are the

SPEAKER_02 5:15

basics of what you need. You should have a lease, but a lease is not a requirement to get into Landlord Tenant Court. There are oral leases. So it is not a requirement. Those are the three basic requirements you need to get into the

SPEAKER_00 5:29

land. Okay. And something that you mentioned in the beginning that you have to file with the tenant landlord court, and that may be very different for people who's not, or who's from out of city or out of state, because our court system is not the same as on the state and not the same as everywhere else. We have separate court for landlord tenant cases. Is that right? That

SPEAKER_02 5:51

is correct. I don't know how other jurisdictions are as far as states, but as far as even the counties have a different practice. As far as the city has one big court, the counties use little magisterial districts in each of their little separate areas and they have different, each one has different requirements.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Yeah, it's definitely not easy to keep track of all of them. So what happens if a landlord is missing one of these requirements that you just mentioned, one of these documents? Can they still file?

SPEAKER_02 6:22

Theoretically, yes. You can do what's called a 109 affidavit and say you'll provide it at court. But if you don't have it, you just wasted your money because you cannot proceed at court without all the documents. they will throw in your case. If you can get it through filing, they will throw it out at the hearing if you don't have all your documents.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

That is very interesting. And we're going to get to it later, but keep your foot on that. So another question is when you file, can landlord file themselves or they have to have an attorney involved?

SPEAKER_02 6:57

No, they are not required to have an attorney in municipal court. If it's a corporation, You can get what's called the authorized rep form and the corporation can be represented by a member of the corporation. Individuals can represent themselves. Individuals theoretically can even represent a family member as long as they have the authorized rep form. I don't recommend it. But yes, you can do it. If the case gets appealed to CP court, you have to be the owner of the property. If it's a LLC or a corporation, they have to have an attorney. There is no authorized rep in common pleas court.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Okay. So if you go to common pleas, if your property is held an LLC or corporation, you will have to have an attorney. But if you're going to landlord tenants court, somebody or a member of LLC or owner of S corporation or whatever corporation, and represent themselves as long as they have this affiliate, like whatever paper that they need to submit. Okay. So let's say now we have the requirement or all of these papers that are required. We know that we can file for eviction. So we go and file for it. Can you walk us through the full process from beginning to the actual account, how it all works. And I know that you mentioned the eviction diversion program. So we'll dive into that, what that is and when that comes in play.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

Clarify that for me. You want to know if an individual goes over or what documents they need or where they go or are you

SPEAKER_00 8:37

looking? No, after we have all of the documents, we already... like clear that we need to have a lead search, we need to have rental license, we need to have a rental suitability certificate. So we have all that, we go and file for eviction. What happens then?

SPEAKER_02 8:51

Well, next you'll schedule a hearing date. So if it's an individual, if they don't have access to file electronically, they would have to go down to the 10th floor at municipal court. And there are people down there who would help them file everything. If you give all your paperwork to an attorney, attorney will file electronically online and basically what we do is we input all the information onto the website it creates a complaint we download all of the exhibits onto the complaint and we schedule a hearing date and once that gets approved by the court it then gets served on the tenant

SPEAKER_00 9:29

is it only attorneys that can do it online or myself as a landlord i can go online and fill out that as well or i have to go into the city so

SPEAKER_02 9:38

i'm not 100 sure about that i know previously if you went through the training as a landlord i believe you can get access to file online i'm not sure at this point i know or when it's originally open but that was 15 years ago yes an individual as long as they went through the training could be approved to file online now i don't really know what the requirements are.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Okay. So going back to filing, at which point eviction diversion program kicks in and what is that?

SPEAKER_02 10:13

So the eviction diversion program was created during the pandemic, during COVID. And basically what it is, I look at it as a 30 day cooling off period between the parties. So in order to file, you have to go through diversion first. And once diversion is approved, you have to wait 30 days before you can file your landlord tenant complaint. For diversion, you're basically inputting a lot of the same things you input for the complaint. However, once it gets approved, they will either schedule it for a mediation or you're supposed to negotiate with the tenant individually and try and work something out before you actually get it into court. And once the 30 days is up, if there's no agreement, then you can file your landlord-tenant

SPEAKER_00 11:03

complaint. What if there is an agreement during this 30 days?

SPEAKER_02 11:07

Well, then you'd live up to the agreement. So mediation, you can pretty much come to any agreement you want. You can come to a payment plan where the tenant agrees to pay their rent plus something towards the back, or you give them 30 days to pay everything in full, or they agree to vacate. So it's whatever you can agree to, it's to avoid basically filing in court against the tenant. And if they don't live up to it, you have the right to file your complaint right away.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Do you have to agree to something during the mediation process?

SPEAKER_02 11:39

You are not required to agree to anything. The requirement is to negotiate in good faith. So you can't just walk in and go, I'm not doing anything. So if you go in and you want the tenant to leave and you say, I want the tenant to leave in two weeks, That's good faith negotiation, whether the tenant wants to do it or not. You don't have to break from that. That's what you want. You can't just go in and go, I'm not negotiating. I'm not doing anything. That's not considered good faith.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

So what do you usually see when this mediation happens? What do you usually see as an outcome? Is it some kind of payment plan or it's tenants moving out? It's

SPEAKER_02 12:15

every case is different. There's no way of knowing because a lot of it depends on what the landlord wants to do because we're taking our instructions from the landlord. If the landlord wants them out, we try and work out an agreement where they're going to vacate. If the landlord's willing to do a payment plan, we'll work out some kind of payment plan. But it really is controlled by what the landlord wants to do.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Okay. And the EDP also comes with TFA. I know it's a lot of... Targeted financial assistance. Yeah, but it's targeted financial assistance for tenants, but kind of for landlords as well. Can you talk a little bit about that and what that means if landlord accepts that

SPEAKER_02 12:54

so targeted financial assistance as it stands right now because they do change it every now and then if the tenant well he can they can owe more than 3 500 but if you file for 3 500 or less you can get what's called targeted financial assistance if they qualify it's not a guarantee the tenant still has to participate and put their application in, the landlord has to put their application in, and then they qualify, you'll get paid up to $3,500 in your arrears, plus two months going forward. The downside to it is you cannot file your landlord tenant complaint for 60 days after the last month is paid. So just as an example, if they paid you through May, you couldn't file for until August 1st. So if they don't pay you, you get paid through May, But if they don't pay you for June and July, you can't do anything until August 1st.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Before we continue, I would like to take a moment to thank our sponsor, Trust Art Realty, property management company in Philadelphia. If you are a landlord, you know that managing properties in Philadelphia can be a headache. And as we just spoke to Len, you know that it's not easy to do an eviction. So that's why Trust Art Realty is offering to all of our listeners a free rental analysis or management advice session. Whether you need help understanding market trends or improving how you're managing your property, they've got you covered. So to claim your free rental analysis, just send an email to trustartrealty at philalandlordguy.com or click the link in the show notes to fill out a quick form and somebody will get in touch with you. Okay. And August 1st, that's actually the time when you can start the eviction process.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

Right. You can go straight to landlord tenant. and one other thing I forgot to mention is if you file your landlord tenant complaint during the TFA process they will not pay out TFA as soon as you file the landlord tenant complaint even if you're approved for TFA that you're not allowed to collect TFA they'll close your application so you have to Basically, as the landlord, you have to agree not to file your complaint and accept the money.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Okay. So let's say we filed for diversion program. We went through mediation. We had an agreement in place or we didn't have the mediation and it's past 30 days and now we can file for eviction. So at the timeline when we can file for eviction. So we go and file. What happens after?

SPEAKER_02 15:36

Yeah, once you file, then the minimum time to get a hearing date is 21 days under the law. Right now, they run generally around 30 days, give or take, to actually get a hearing date. And then that's basically your day in court. As a general rule, there are a lot of tenants now getting attorneys to represent them. There's a lawyer of the day program. There's lots of programs down there. And a large percentage of the tenants now get attorneys. also if the tenant comes down themselves we negotiate with them it's the same type of negotiation that's in mediation the difference being now if we can come to an agreement that agreement will be put in writing it'll be a judgment and if they don't keep to it you can start the eviction process if you can't come to an agreement the case is set up either you have the trial that day or you'll continue it for a trial.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Okay. So you said that a lot of tenants have representation now because they can get it for free. There are a lot of tenants, I guess, groups and organizations who provide it. And there are actually a few zip codes in the city that specifically have free attorneys that tenants can request if they reside in those zip codes.

SPEAKER_02 16:51

Correct. And they're expanding that. They're going to expand it out to the whole city.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

yeah

SPEAKER_02 16:55

all tenants are available but they're targeting certain zip codes

SPEAKER_00 17:00

so what does that mean for the landlord if a tenant gets representation like how does that change the structure or

SPEAKER_02 17:08

it it really doesn't it's just that from my point of view i'm negotiating with their attorney as opposed to the tenant it doesn't really change anything

SPEAKER_00 17:17

does it usually help tenants to get out of more things that they would usually do or that's

SPEAKER_02 17:24

hard to say some tenants are very good at negotiating and they know you know everything from top to bottom it's it's very hard to say i will say if you go in as an individual not an attorney if you go in by yourself and you get an attorney on the other side could make it a lot more difficult for you because they know all the ins and outs and they're going to play hardball with you because they're not concerned about going in front of the judge.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Okay. So let's say if I'm as a landlord filed for eviction myself, I went through this whole process and now I know that my course schedule is in, I don't know, in two weeks. And now all of a sudden I received this letter that the tenant has a presentation. Can I, as a landlord, go and get my eviction attorney at this point or not really? Yeah,

SPEAKER_02 18:14

you absolutely can. not a problem the problem comes in where certain attorneys i usually consider myself part of that i won't take your case if you're that far in i'd really have to review the case to make sure you did everything properly because if i take over your case and you did something that wasn't proper theoretically i could get sued for accepting the case and not realizing whether it was done or not so i'd have to go through the whole case make sure everything was correct and make sure that I'm not going to get sued because you did something wrong because there's the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. There's all sorts of things that we as attorneys know not to do, but landlords who are going in there aren't 100% sure

SPEAKER_00 19:04

about. So let's talk about that a little bit. So what would you say common errors or issues that you see on the landlord's part if they do it themselves? Like what kind of problems can they have when they file for eviction?

SPEAKER_02 19:20

So the biggest problem that I see is they don't have their correct paperwork. They don't have their licenses lined up, their certificates, their lead safe certificates. And they sue for all the rent that they're owed. They think they're owed. But if you don't have the proper licensing, you can't ask for it. but they're asking for it anyway. If I do that, I can get sued under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act for filing for monies that I know are not due. That's the biggest problem.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Can the landlord

SPEAKER_02 19:50

get sued for that as well? So that's a good question. I'd have to look that one up. I believe, and you can't take this for, if you're an individual, it's your property. No. But if you're a property manager who's going in and representing them or someone who's not named, so if it's an LLC and you're an individual going into authorized rep, I believe you can,

SPEAKER_00 20:18

yes. So you see property managers representing landlords as well in

SPEAKER_02 20:22

court? Not too much anymore. They used to, but not too much anymore. I would think so. I would not do that. You're opening yourself up to a lot of liability that you just... Liability and headache that you just... don't need. Correct.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

So let's say we are in court now. And again, it's a second mediation at this point. So we reached an agreement. Let's say it's a payment plan or a tenant needs to vacate at a certain point. What happens after?

SPEAKER_02 20:49

So we would write it up in court. There's computer systems in there. We type up the judgment by agreement. The tenant would sign it. It would get entered on the docket. And if they keep to the payment agreement, great. They get to stay. You get your money. Everyone's happy. If they don't, then we would file a breach of the agreement. So the tenant would get notice that they didn't keep to the agreement and we'd start our writs. And then the lockout procedure begins.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

And what happens if during this mediation on the court date, we cannot come to an agreement? What happens then? so

SPEAKER_02 21:24

theoretically and doesn't always happen that day as i said a lot of times it'll get continued for an actual trial date because either we're not ready the tenant's not ready the tenants attorneys aren't ready but if we can't come to an agreement then the case goes in front of the judge and both sides put their case up and then the judge will make a ruling on the facts

SPEAKER_00 21:47

that they hear. And how often, through the cases that you have, how often that happens? How often do you actually go in front of the judge versus signing an

SPEAKER_02 21:57

agreement? You don't go in front of the judge very often. What I always tell my clients is if you go in front of the judge, you are putting your case in the judge's hands. You have no idea how the judge is going to rule. They could rule for the defendant, in which case you're out of luck. They could rule 100% for you, in which case, great. But, and we'll get to this in a second, there's what's called a de novo appeal. And if you go in front of the judge, in my opinion, if you can make an agreement that both parties can agree to, you know, it's a green, both parties can agree to, it's better for both sides because that way, you know, where you stand at that point. You didn't give your case up to a third party to decide what's going to happen. Sometimes you just can't come to an agreement. But if you can, to me, it's always a benefit because that way there's no appeal. The problem, if you go in front of a judge, there's what's called a de novo appeal, which means they can go to common police court regardless of win, loss, doesn't matter. And it's a brand new case over there. And it's a lot more expensive because it's a full-blown case and it takes a lot longer over there. If it gets appealed, it's not fun.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the part where a lot of landlords hang up or cannot get their head around is why would I sign some agreement? If I'm at this stage, I'm at eviction, I'm at the court, I want you out. I don't want to be talking to you. And I have all of this case that you're destroying my property or you're not paying my rent or whatever else is happening. Landlord is not happy at that point with this tenant. And they, I was there as well, 10 years ago when and I had my first eviction happening, I could not wrap my head around why would I agree to something if this tenant has not been paying for the last few months, I want this to go in front of the judge. And it is hard to understand, especially if you're going

SPEAKER_02 24:00

to- Especially for new landlords. Yep. The advantage to doing the agreement is certainty on your behalf. You know, if it goes bad, you have an idea of how long it's going to take you to get them out. You have an idea of how much it's going to cost you to get them out. You have a time schedule and you're theoretically done with court. If it goes in front of the judge, now you're in, this is assuming they appeal it. If it goes in front of the judge and they appeal it, now you're in a totally different court on a totally different schedule. you're paying additional attorney fees, which are way more expensive than going to municipal court attorney fees. And your timeline is different. You have no idea how long it's going to take you to get them out over there. So it's more about the certainty that you have as a landlord by doing the judgment by agreement. If you go in front of the judge, not only do you have no idea what he's going to rule, but if either side doesn't like it and it gets appealed, now you're in a whole nother case and a whole nother area costing you a whole bunch more money and you don't have the certainty and you got a bunch of more hearings to go attend. So it's time, it's money. A lot of times, that's a consideration you gotta take in when you decide whether or not to go in front of the judge. Sometimes you don't have a choice. Sometimes there just is not an agreement to be had and you have no choice but to go to that path. But if there is a choice, a lot of times it's a better choice to agree just for certainty.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Yeah, that makes sense. And if or when you go in front of the judge, do you see that our judges in the city pay more attention tenant friendly or landlord friendly or it's all over the place?

SPEAKER_02 25:48

I would say most of the judges are very fair. I don't want to get into who's landlord friendly and who's tenant friendly, but I would say most of the judges do their best to be fair and honest. And if you have your paperwork and you as a landlord have done the right things, you'll have a very good shot of win. If you're a landlord who just got your certificates and just did this and you haven't done your repairs and the tenant can come in and show the place is disgusting and you're not doing your repairs, it's not going to go well for you.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

That's a separate topic about the repairs during eviction. And I think we need to talk about that as well. But before we get into that, right now we are at the timeline, at least three months, once we get this agreement signed at court hearing, because we have filed for mediation or for eviction diversion program. Then we waited for 30 days. Then we filed for eviction, we waited another 30 days to get the hearing So it's been two months now, right? And now we sign in this mediation agreement, which usually something should happen within 30 days. It's either a payment or... So,

SPEAKER_02 26:58

yeah. So the rule is you can't file, after judgment, you can't file your writ for 11 days after the judgment. I believe it's 11. Pretty sure it's 11. It's 10 or 11. Nothing's going to happen for that next 10 or 11 days. If they don't make their payment or you just want to start the eviction process after that 10 or 11 days, you file your writ, then the writ gets served. And then 10 days after that, you can file your alias writ, which is what schedules the lockout. So realistically with getting it filed and having the court approve it and getting it down to the sheriff to get it served, I mean, you're looking at another 30 days. The quickest as of right now, If you could get a 90-day lockout, you should be loving life. The problem we're running into right now is the sheriff's taking a considerable amount of time to actually schedule the lockouts. And that's where the big delay is, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Is that 90 days from the time when you got the judgment or from the time when you filed your reads?

SPEAKER_02 28:01

So 90 days from the start of the case. That would be great. not going to happen right now you know 60 to 90 days from when the alias is filed is when the sheriff's scheduling lockouts so you're really realistically looking at i say six months from the time you start give or take it could be a little longer it could be a little shorter there's continuances there's answers to breaches there's petitions but you know i would say six months was is a roundabout good area

SPEAKER_00 28:38

And it all depends on how the case goes. And if you accept TFA, you don't accept TFA, how creation goes.

SPEAKER_02 28:46

Right. Every case is individual. You can say that, you know, they're all similar, but every case based on its own fact has its own path. And some tenants who know what they're doing can delay stuff a long time.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Yeah. And unfortunately, we see that happen pretty often. So you touched a little bit on that, the repairs that so let's say we are in the court and by time we get to the court again it's been at least three months since we started this process that means that tenant was behind at least one month before that so that means that we already have some kind of bad relationship with the tenant for at least four months up to this point And usually when that happens, tenants stop paying. They're not very responsive or not cooperating. They will not let you into the property. And I don't know, let's say during the process, tenants send you a maintenance request that, I don't know, there's a hole in the wall or whatever else they can send, some kind of maintenance problem. And some of them, that we dealt with before, they would call L&I to have L&I out, do the inspection of the unit, and then they will submit that to you. So you receive the letter from L&I saying that you have a certain amount of time to do the repairs, and you want to do the repairs, but the tenants won't let you in, and then they won't let the L&I inspector in again. So how does that work? How do we do that, of course? Quick update. Our Jumpstart Northeast Philly program is live and we're accepting applications now. If you are in Northeast Philly and you're looking to learn how to find, buy, finance, fix, rehab, sell, or rent a property in Philadelphia, this program is built for you. It is based on proven success of Jumpstart Germantown program and focused on building local wealth while improving our own neighborhoods. You also will hear from multiple industry experts such as lenders, contractors, zoning experts, and more sharing real practical knowledge to help you succeed. Don't wait. Space is limited. The first program is running in September. The application process is open to apply. Click the link in the show notes, or go to trustr3lt.com, select resources, jumpstart Northeastern theory.

SPEAKER_02 31:16

Well, yeah, it's a problem, but the best thing you can do is document. everything that you do so show when the inspection was done if if this gets into court for the landlord tenant case show when the inspection was done show and then show every attempt you made to contact the tenant to schedule it to send people over to do the repairs the judges will look at it i mean it's it's a good reason if you tried to do what's right and the tenant won't permit you that's most judges will see you did what you were supposed to do but if it's just they did it and you totally ignored it the judges will also take that into account and you're probably going to get reduced rent if not a judgment for the defendant because you just let them stay in there and you know if especially the the big things are heat in the winter that's a no-no if you have a heat problem if in the winter you need to get over there as soon as possible and remedy it that's a big no-no the other big no-no is uh bugs roaches you know, any kind of infestation, that's also a big no-no.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

That is interesting about the bugs and whatever infestation it can be. Is that only for multifamily units or single family as well? Because from my understanding, a single family, it's the tenant's responsibility to treat the place. So first you have to look to

SPEAKER_02 32:40

the lease and see what the lease says. because a lot of the leases will have in there who's responsible for it. But yes, in single-family homes, the rule is if it's a single-family home, you have to provide them with a rodent, an infestation-free property when they move in. But once they're in there, they're responsible for it themselves. And like I said, unless the lease says different. For multifamily units, the owner's responsible.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Doesn't matter what the lease says.

SPEAKER_02 33:06

Not really, because it's not really fair. I mean, if you think about it, not really fair to the tenant if there's one tenant who's really good and the other tenant or other tenants in the property are bad as far as you know infestations are concerned how does the good tenant keep their place clear if the bad tenant isn't and they can't get into the other unit to spray the other unit. So they really put the onus on the landlords on that.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

What happens if your rental license lapses during the lease term and you need to file for eviction? So let's say we're filing for eviction today, which is what, May 6, we're recording it on May 6, and my rental license was active or is active, but it's going to expire in doing

SPEAKER_02 33:55

so you can file you can file today you can ask for rent up to the time of expiration but you better get your new license before you get to court they will not give you a judgment in court unless you have an active rental license and you cannot ask for any rent during the period of the lap so it makes a lot you know it's really important to keep your rental license active

SPEAKER_00 34:17

and if we change the example a little bit so we're filing in may again we had rental license but rental license ended december and was not renewed until january would we be able to claim rent for december

SPEAKER_02 34:33

no plain and simple now if you go to court you can only ask for rent for the time that you had active rental licenses Your certificate of rental suitability was good and your lead safe certificate was good.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

Now, if we had rental license at all of this time, but we go to file and we find out that there is this rental suitability certificate that we need to have and we did not have that, can we claim? No, you have to have all of them. So what do we do at that point if we have unpaid tenant, we have rental

SPEAKER_02 35:04

license? It is a correctable problem. So you can go print out your certificate of rental suitability in the Partners in Good Housing handbook, serve it on the tenant, and then you can ask for rent from that point going forward. But you lose all your old rent, can't ask for

SPEAKER_00 35:19

it. That's a hard hit to find out that way.

SPEAKER_02 35:22

Well, and I believe you're going to, my recommendation for all landlords, property managers, when you have the tenant come in to sign all the lease documents, you should have your rental license, your certificate of rental suitability, your partners in good housing handbook, and your lead safe certificate there and have the tenant sign and date each one and keep a copy in your file. That'll save you a lot of headaches going forward. If you just let them in without those documents, you know, It's a crapsheet.

SPEAKER_00 35:53

What happens if, take our last example that we're filing now in May and we find out that we didn't have rental suitability certificate. Now we print it out, we send it to the tenant and we go to court and we'll go in front of the judge, or maybe the tenant has a representation. Can they make the landlord pay back the rent that tenant paid during the time when the landlord didn't have active rental license or rental suitability certificate?

SPEAKER_02 36:23

No. The case law as it stands right now is once the tenant pays that rent, they cannot claw it back. But that's only for the rental license and the certificate of rental suitability.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

If you

SPEAKER_02 36:35

were required to have a lead safe certificate, and in order to get your license, you're required to get that. But let's just say for the sake of an example, you didn't get your lead safe certificate until six months after the lease started. Theoretically, the tenant could come in and sue you for those six months to get their rent back. Have you seen

SPEAKER_00 36:58

that

SPEAKER_02 36:58

happen before? Not uncommon.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Really? Really. How does it start? Is it the tenant that sues the landlord or the other way around? How?

SPEAKER_02 37:08

So normally the way it starts is the landlord goes in and sues for eviction and they either get a tenant's attorney or they do enough research on their own and they realize it's like, oh, they didn't give me, they didn't have their lead safe certificate because we have to provide it in the filing until a certain date. We can sue you for that. know and sometimes sometimes they just use it as a negotiating to ploy too that okay you owe us six months we owe you eight we only owe you two now are you okay with that but yes i mean the law is what the law is and if they know it and proceed on it you're opening yourself up to a lawsuit that's one of the things why when you give me all your paperwork i gotta look at everything and make sure because You need to know that before you go into court. It doesn't happen on every case, but it's not uncommon.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Definitely not an easy city to navigate all of that. What do you actually do if, let's say another hypothetical situation that we're in, we have rental license, we had rental suitability certificate, and we had our lead inspection done with the certificate, but it's valid for four years. Right. So it's been four years, now it's expired and we cannot renew rental license until we have new certificate or until we have new test done. And of course it happens right at the time when tenant stops paying and they will not let us into the apartment or into the property to do the test. Is there any remedy for that or how are we able to still do something?

SPEAKER_02 38:50

Yes, theoretically. Sometimes if you can prove all that to the city, they'll give you a waiver and they will give you a new license because you had the old certificate. The city will give you a waiver. I believe it's a one year waiver to get your new lead certificate based on this. But you need to prove to them that you've been trying to get in there. So you need to show attempts to get in. You need something from your lead inspector showing that. And then once you get to court, then we need to show the judge all that that hey we've been trying they won't let us in you know can we proceed and depending on sometimes the judge will order them to let you in to do the lead safe certificate then they'll let you proceed sometimes they'll just let you proceed at that point because it's not fair to the landlord that the tenant is restricting you from doing what you're supposed to do

SPEAKER_00 39:39

where do you go to do that do you go to lni first or do you If it

SPEAKER_02 39:44

was, so if it's the violations, you would need to go to the inspector and talk to them. If it's for the lead safe certificate, you'd need to go to where you renew your license and show them and see if they'll give you a

SPEAKER_00 39:56

waiver. Okay. Makes sense. Let's switch the gears a little bit and let's talk about utility bills and specifically water bills. So what we often see is that landlords, especially for multifamily buildings, would plate the bill between the tenants. So let's say we have a three-unit building and in the city of Philadelphia, we always have one meter water meter per building. So we have three units and the landlord splits the bill between the tenants for whichever amount, 30-30 or whatever they split it. So if they do that, first, can they legally do that? And second, if they do that, can they claim that in court?

SPEAKER_02 40:38

Theoretically, there's two, some of this depends on the judge. Legally, no. In order to charge water, you need separately metered units for each unit. But the lease is a contract and some judges will find if they agreed to it, then yeah, you can do it. It's not a huge headache. I generally say if it was me watching everything, if you have three units, rather than charging each individually water, why not just raise the rent for the water and just charge it as rent? Some months you win, some months you lose, but if you know the unit is eats up $150 worth of water every month, just raise everyone's rent $50 and don't even bother with the water.

SPEAKER_01 41:27

That's the

SPEAKER_02 41:27

safer way to do it. Or have them individually metered. But I believe that's pretty expensive.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

That is very expensive. And you will have to have some company that will be doing sub billing besides the sub metering. That is expensive. It doesn't make sense to do on a small scale unless you have some kind of big apartment complex maybe at that time. The

SPEAKER_02 41:50

other problem with it is regardless of whether they pay or not, order bills are liens against the property. So even if the tenant doesn't pay it, theoretically the owner is still responsible for

SPEAKER_00 42:01

it. Yeah, which is a great segue to my next question. So that was multifamily buildings, but now we have single family and in single family, there is no problem. We can build it back to the tenants, which we usually do. And what we usually recommend people never put water bill onto the tenants or in the tenant's name. It always has to stay with the landlord, but you can just build back the tenant for the actual water usage. So let's say the landlord rented the property. They told the tenants that they will have to pay water bills. And the tenants never did. They just didn't pay water bills. And now the time comes when tenants move out and landlord finds out that there is $1,500 water bill that was unpaid with late charges and all of that. Can the landlord deduct that from tenant

SPEAKER_02 42:57

security deposit? 100%. As long as the tenant was responsible under the lease, yes, you can take it out of the security deposit.

SPEAKER_00 43:04

Does the lease have specifically say that it's tenant's responsibility to pay for water?

SPEAKER_02 43:10

Well, it has to say, yeah, they're responsible for water. Normally on the standard leases, there's a little checkbox.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

Well, that makes sense. It's a little bit easier for some people. But yeah, hopefully the way to do it, it's actually for the landlords to pay the bill themselves. I agree with

SPEAKER_02 43:26

that because that way you can monitor it and you know if they're not paying you. Yeah. At least you can keep the water because at least you can keep the water on and you know if it's getting too big and then you can put them into court to get them to pay the water bill.

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Oh, that's another interesting topic that you just touched. Keep the water on. So I've heard that many times speaking to landlords who's having issues with tenants, that they would say things like, oh, they stopped paying. So I will just go and shut off gas or water to the building. So they will move out or, I don't know, take the front door of the building off for the repair. Can they do that?

SPEAKER_02 44:08

Totally illegal. They can get sued for self-help eviction. They can get sued for lots of things. I would not recommend doing that. If the tenant takes you to court under that scenario, there isn't a judge around who isn't going to hit you with a fine if they sue you properly and let them right back in and order you to turn the water on, turn the heat on. Yeah, you don't want to do that. They call it a constructive, I was looking for the term, it's constructive eviction. You're trying to kick them out by turning off their utilities. And you're just not allowed to do that.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

Yeah. If we were, everybody would go and do it. Right. There is, we were talking about eviction all of this time, but there are two different things that we need to know, eviction and ejection, right? And can you tell us what is the difference between eviction and ejection and when we should use one or the other? If you have a

SPEAKER_02 45:05

landlord tenant relationship and you have all your documents, you should always go to municipal court. It's cheaper, it's quicker. Ejectment actions are for squatters, basically. So that's for when you have a vacant property, you go over there and there's someone in the property and you need to get them out. Ejectment is how you get a person out when you don't have a landlord tenant relationship with them. You didn't let them in, they just moved in on you or someone else moved them in under a false lease or whatever. That's the big difference. But if you can go to landlord tenant court, 99.9% of the time is the way to go. Like I said, it's cheaper and it's quicker.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

Okay. So when we actually go to the court, what should landlords bring with them to eviction court? Any documents, any proof of things? As

SPEAKER_02 46:01

all the judges say, today's your day in court, bring everything. Oh, I didn't bring this with me. And the judges look at you and go, well, today was your day in court. Why didn't you bring it? You should bring your complete file, regardless of whether you think you need it or not. You get in front of a judge. Cases sometimes take weird turns and you need to have proof that you repaired, I don't know, a window a year ago because they're complaining about it. And we didn't even think it mattered because it was done a year ago. But the tenant's like, well, I had a window, you know, and they didn't repair it for six months a year ago. And you can, you know, so you bring your whole file. That way you have no problems regardless of which way the case gets. You know, who knows if someone wants to see a rental license from two years ago or which will start coming up a lot more with the four years of the lead certificates. I only need the current lead certificate to file right now. But what if they want to sue you or try and, you know, they want to see an old lead certificate? Well, if I don't have it in the file and you don't have it, we either need to continue it or it's going to be a problem. So you bring your whole file. That's best practice.

SPEAKER_00 47:20

Yeah. So you have to have records. You have to keep good records

SPEAKER_02 47:25

of everything.

SPEAKER_00 47:26

Yeah. and have that. What are some of the most common mistakes that you see landlords make that hurt their case in court?

SPEAKER_02 47:36

Well, obviously not having the proper documentation. Trying to rent a property without your rental license, without your certificates, without everything. That always comes back to burn you in the long run. The other big one is not doing repairs timely. If the tenant requests that your heat know it's the middle of the winter and they don't have heat a it's not good for your property but b you're not going to get rent if if they don't pay you and they come to court and say your honor they didn't fix my heat for three months that's not going to look good for you and then the other thing is leaking roofs you know all the basic maintenance stuff is where the the the judges don't want to see that what do they consider timely

SPEAKER_00 48:18

We don't have any

SPEAKER_02 48:19

specific law. It depends on the repair. You know, a heater being bad, well, you don't even need to give them heat in the summer. So if the heater went bad in the summer, timely would be before the winter. But if the heat went bad and it's, you know, 20 degrees out, timely will be, you know, Your Honor, I called my guy. They called me at 9 o'clock at night. I called my guy first thing in the morning, and he was booked up. He got over there in two days. That's considered timely. But if you go, yeah, I called my guy and he can't get out there for a month, that isn't going to fly. Call someone else. You got to get someone over there, even if it's just a temporary repair to get the heat back on.

SPEAKER_00 49:02

Okay. As long as you show your best effort that you actually try to do that.

SPEAKER_02 49:07

Correct. Now cosmetic things, you know, if it's not affecting the livability or the habitability of the property and it's just cosmetic, You know, timely could be 30 days, 60. A lot of it depends on what the repair is. A leaking roof, you know, hey, you want to get that done because it's damaging your property. But B, two months isn't going to cut it on a roof repair, you know. Under 30 days, normally 30 days is a good cutoff for most things. Over 30, they're not going to be happy. Under 30, as long as you can see that you've been on top of it and scheduling everything to get people over there. Anything other than heat, I think you're at, or, you know, something that would get them out of the house. Like if there was a window that was broken out on the first floor, that wasn't the tenant's fault and you were responsible, you know, that's, you got to get someone over there at least at a minimum to board it up as quick as possible. So you can get the window, you know, fixed stair, you know, the stairs, they can't use the upstairs because the stairs are bad plumbing. a plumbing leak in the basement where it's flooding or a toilet that's not working, now you're down into the under a week type of thing as opposed to 30 days. So each one is individual, but let's put it this way. If you were living in the house, how quick would you want it done in your own house? If it's the only bathroom in the house, I need that fixed ASAP. I need my heat fixed. If you have two or three bathrooms in the house and one of them is bad, okay, 30 days is probably reasonable.

SPEAKER_00 50:46

You try to fix it for the tenants much quicker than what you do for yourself. So Len, when does it make sense for a landlord to bring in an attorney instead of trying to handle things on their own?

SPEAKER_02 51:00

10 years ago when we first met, you could probably do it very easily as a landlord. Nowadays, I'm not sure I would recommend any landlord going there without representation. You can do it, but let's say you go in as a landlord and you did your own diversion and you didn't do it properly. If the other attorney finds you didn't do it properly or the judge finds you didn't do it properly, they're going to either dismiss your case or rule for the defendant. Now you've just wasted 60 days. Those two months rent that you didn't get, you could have easily paid an attorney. And hopefully if the attorney does what they're supposed to do, you're not another 60 days out. So unless you know what you're doing, I recommend getting an attorney.

SPEAKER_00 51:50

And what would be your top piece of advice for new or smaller landlords who may not be familiar with the legal process? What would that be?

SPEAKER_02 52:00

First of all, you may want to get yourself a property manager if you don't want the headache because it's a job. You can't just buy a house, rent it out and think that, you know, you're going to collect rent every month. As I had one client tell me one time, because I thought about buying and renting properties, he goes, he goes, if you're not going to do it as a business, don't even bother. He said, you can't own one or two houses and think you're just going to collect rent on them and everything's going to be happy. There's maintenance, there's requests, there's who knows what you, your own house it's constant maintenance now you got two or three houses you have a regular job and you're trying to do this and you know property managers and and bigger people they have access to repair people like that all they do is make a call if you don't have access to that all of a sudden you got a call you got to go over there and get estimates the property managers don't need to do that the other big thing do not rent to anyone without all your documents in line before you put them in it always comes back to bite you in the end and the best thing is when they come to sign the lease they're more than willing to sign everything because there's you know the parties are still on good terms so you can get them to sign off on everything and you have it in the file and you're basically good to go know if you wait six months and all of a sudden they're not happy and you hey can you sign this certificate of rental suitability can you sign this lead safe certificate they may look at it and you may email it to them and they're just like oh you get it you know so get all your paperwork in order you shouldn't be running without it anyway so have it when at the lease signing and it'll save you a lot of headaches in the long run

SPEAKER_00 53:49

Yeah, that's a great advice. And Len, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a wealth of information, I'm sure, especially for newer landlords. It's a headache and your head may spin from learning all of this, but it's not that scary when you go through this multiple times. And Len has been doing it for 25 years and you have a lot of experience. So Len, remind me if you work with regular landlords. So if somebody is looking to start an eviction, can they reach out to you? I do.

SPEAKER_02 54:24

Yeah, I work with individual landlords. I'd recommend you get a property manager, but yes, I do work for individual landlords. They can contact me at 610-247- 1299 is my office number.

SPEAKER_00 54:37

Okay. And we'll also add your contact information in the show notes. So if anybody is interested or want to get in touch with Len, call the number and I guess he will take it from there. Len, thank you for your time. Thank you. Yeah, we're good to go at this time. Okay, let's wrap up on today's show. So as Len mentioned, you have a lot of different requirements before you can go to court and before you can evict your tenant. Make sure that all of your documents are in place. Make sure to keep good records. Property managers are always a great help with that because most of them will have good records and will have a system that can help them with that. But at least, for the very least, make sure that you have your rental license, rental suitability certificate, and the LAT certificate if the property was built before 1978, which most of the properties in our CA were. Before you can file for eviction, you will need to have eviction diversion program. And only after that is done, then you can file for eviction. With this, let's wrap up on today's episode. Big thanks to Len for sharing this time and his legal insight. So if you would like to get in touch with Len, his information is in show notes. And again, thank you for joining in. See you next time.

UNKNOWN 55:55

Bye.