So You Won a Judgement? But How Will You Collect‪?‬ The SFR Show

Winning a judgment on a tenant that has trashed your property is one thing, collecting on that judgement is entirely another story. Did you know that only about 10% of judgments are actually collected?
In this episode, Steve White from RentPrep drops some serious wisdom on what you can do on the front end to increase your chances of being in that 10% of landlords that actually collect!
Website: https://rentprep.com/?utm_source=roofstock&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=steve-media-outreach-2021
The "RentPrep for Landlords" Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rentprep-for-landlords/id851540886
The "RentPrep for Landlords" Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/RentPrep
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Transcript
 
Michael:
Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of remote real estate investor. I'm Michael album, and today I'm joined by Steve White, who is the founder and CEO of rent prep. And on this weekend wisdom, Steve's going to be giving us some insider tips as to better ways to collect judgments that we have against former tenants. So let's get into it.
 
Hey, Steve, thanks so much for joining us on today's weekend, wisdom. Really appreciate you taking the time.
 
Steve
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
 
Michael:
Steve, we had you on another episode of the real estate investor, where we're talking about rent prep your company and some things that landlords can do to screen tenants. So stay tuned for that one, but wanted to give everybody a little nugget. And you've got some experience in collecting judgments, or winning judgment awards that landlords have put on tenant. So can you talk to us a little bit about some things, tips tricks landlords can do?
 
Steve
Yeah. So winning judgments is a lot easier than executing and collecting judgments, as you know,
 
Michael:
Yes, I know. I am all too familiar with that.
 
Steve:
Yeah, I hear landlords get excited all the time and say like, Yeah, we got to judgment. Oh, my God.
 
Michael:
Good luck.
 
Steve:
Yeah, the struggle has just begun,
 
Michael:
Right, really the best way to handle it. And  I'm gonna say that your strategy needs to start way earlier than you would imagine the strategy needs to start at the rental application process. I know, a lot of landlords are okay with applicants skipping information on their application. And there's a lot of information that you wouldn't think is super useful in the application process, like for example, their references, like who's going to call a reference and expect that they're going to give you a truthful, objective perspective of if this person's a good tenant or not, you know, their mom is gonna say they're lovely, and they're great. They want them out of the basement anyway. So they're just gonna be like, yeah, they're awesome. But, you know, that rental application has a future life well beyond that screening process.
 
So when you think about obtaining a judgment, or even executing judgment, some of the pieces of information that you might need are going to be hidden in that rental application. So for example, they were just evicted or abandoned, or whatever your property, where are they living now? Well, if they're short on money, they may not have a new apartment, they're probably living with whoever they listed as their next of kin or personal reference. So now, you know, now you know where to serve. And now you know where to you know where to find them at least.
 
So those personal references are absolutely worthless. When it comes to the application process. Don't waste your time calling them and asking if they're going to be a good renter, call the previous landlords, that's worthwhile, but not the references, the references are worthwhile after you've screened them, and you're trying to track them down.
 
Michael:
Interesting.
 
Steve:
Yeah, employment information, right. So you cannot garnish somebody's wages, if you don't know where they work, the court will not do that dirty work for you. So you got to k