I think this review reflects my honest opinion of working with Ray on my tenant eviction during the eviction moratorium - he is OK. 3/5
I had purchased my property in 2017 with the intention to one day have enough money to renovate it and move in. I rented the property to Paul Horne in July 2017. ...Paul Horne ended up being a headache tenant for 3 years, who always paid rent late, refused to pay 3% annual rent increases or late fees. In 2019, I married and my wife was pregnant and due in August 2020 and our house was too small for my new family - so we decided it was time to move into the investment property the tenant had been renting month-to-month.
I served my tenant a 60 day notice to owner occupy and he texted me refusing to leave and threatened to sue me for mold exposure & quite enjoyment. I hired a mold inspector for $900 who found no mold in the house, but reported that Paul Horne was growing marijuana in the house. As day 60 approached to file an unlawful detainer - I was a part of the unlucky group of landlords who was halted by the eviction moratorium & covid19 pandemic. My tenant ( Paul Horne) stopped paying his $3,500 rent in March 2020. I also found out that he had a subtenant and a dog on my property that were forbidden by my lease when I went to post the COVID notice mandated by the state. He said he responded by saying he was affected by COVID and was unable to pay any rent.
I reached out to an eviction service who said I had a case for an at-fault eviction due to breach of contract, and they filed an Unlawful detainer - and the tenant answered the court that they got rid of the subtenant & dog.
Thats when I decided to retain an attorney and was referred to Raymond who charged me $250 consultation fee to tell me the UD is no good.
Raymond suggested I accept my loss and dismiss my previous at-fault UD case and serve new notices for non-payment of rent & owner occupy. He charged me $1240 to prepare the new notices, file it with the court and served it to the tenant. This was in October 2020. By the end of January, the tenant had to pay 25% of back rent owed to be protected by the eviction moratorium. Raymond recommended that this was our best hope - so we waited. Tenant ended up mailing a check through his attorney on the last day so we were unable to pursue them further. However, the check was fraudulent & ended up being from a closed account that later bounced.
Raymond said there is nothing we can do - and that our best shot is to pursue an owner occupy. On more than one occasion he recommended to settle with the tenant to get the property back and forget the $40,000 owed. After he spoke to the tenant's attorney, they requested for all rent owed to be forgiven and 60 days to move out. I refused, and told Raymond I'm ready to go to trial over this. After summons was issued for owner occupy UD, the tenant never responded with an answer. Raymond charged $260 for default judgement fees. We later obtained a writ ($358) and gave it to the sheriff for a lockout. Tenant challenged the writ for dismissal saying that they were not properly served. Raymond charged me $1526 to challenge the writ dismissal and to appear in front of a judge for the writ dismissal hearing. After the hearing, Raymond said that there is a new settlement in play that factors in forgiving 20% of rent owed from April 2020-March 2020 and a $25,000 money judgement. I accepted with the condition that the tenant move out over the weekend, ultimately because the only assurance Raymond could give about the Judge making a decision on the writ dismissal was that "the judge liked me, but thats not enough to know what he will decide". Raymond then charged me $1,586 for preparing the settlement & appearing in court. When I confronted Ray about the settlement being the tenants idea & him having not had to appear in court - he said he drafted the settlement and charges a "flat fee".
In the end - it took Raymond 8 months to get my house back