By: Steven M. Williams
Question:
I had an eviction hearing this week for a tenant who owes me about six months’ rent. The tenant had refused to pay, claiming that I have refused to properly maintain the property. On the contrary, I have responded to every complaint she has made. In some cases, I found her complaints to be completely invalid. In the others, I promptly corrected the minor issues. None of these issues impacted, in any way, her ability to live in her home or enjoy the property’s amenities. The MDJ ruled in my favor, but he credited her one month’s rent “for her troubles.” How can he credit her rent when I promptly took care of all of the issues that existed, and they were all minor?
Answer:
Unfortunately, MDJs are the “kings of their castle,” and can do what they want. Sometimes they rule based on the facts, and sometimes they rule out of sympathy or based on a desire to be fair to both parties. There is not much we can do about this. Of course, you have the right to appeal if you want. However, an appeal may impact your ability to obtain an order for possession if she does not pay the judgment amount.
Question:
I recently obtained a judgment for $2,500 and possession against one of my residents. The resident did not appeal within 10 days, and I was able to get her evicted. I don’t care about the money and do not intend to bother trying to collect it. You can’t get blood from a stone. Today, which is 28 days after the judgment was granted, I received a Notice of Appeal that the resident, who no longer lives here, filed with the Court of Common Pleas. What is this all about?
Answer:
As you know, residents have only 10 days to appeal from a possession judgment. However, they have 30 days to appeal from the money portion of the judgment. If an appeal is filed within 10 days from the judgment, the resident is appealing both the possession and money portions of the judgment. In your case, the resident did not care about the possession judgment and did not want to remain in your community. However, she apparently disagrees with the money portion of the judgment and wants the Court of Common Pleas to determine whether she owes it. Her appeal has rendered the money judgment moot—as if it were never entered. Since you do not care about the money, you do not have to proceed in the appeal if you do not want to. If you do nothing, the Court will simply dismiss the case. In this event, though, understand that you will not be able to collect the money from her since she mooted the money judgment that you originally obtained.
Question:
I want to implement for our community a new rent payment policy. We no longer want to accept cash or other payments at the rental office. Rather, we want to require that residents pay either through our online portal or mail checks to our corporate office. Is there any reason why we cannot do this?
Answer:
Nothing in the law requires that you accept rent payments in a certain way. If you want to designate how payments are to be made, that is your prerogative. If you have a provision in your lease that already gives you the ability to designate the payment format, you can simply notify residents of the new requirement. If you do not, you will need to send a formal notice of a lease change. Note that this change cannot take effect earlier than the beginning of the next term or 30 days (60 days in the case of a lease term longer than 60 days) after you send the notice, whichever is later.
Question:
We have an old lease that we “adopted” when we bought this community a few years ago. We want to get all of our residents on a new lease. Do you recommend that we have a lawyer draft the lease for us? Or can we do it on our own?
Answer:
There is an old adage that goes like this: “A person who represents himself has a fool for a lawyer.” I seldom recommend that non-lawyers draft legal documents. There are too many pitfalls in doing this. As a first step, PMHA has a form lease (and other documents) that are available for its members to use. Before incurring legal fees that you may not need to incur, I recommend that you review the PMHA lease form and see if it suits your purpose.