Hello everyone and Welcome to another episode of Selling Greenville your favorite real estate podcast here in the upstate of South Carolina I'm your host as always Stan McCune I am as you know a realtor here in Greenville and all of my contact information is in the show notes should you need to reach out to me for any reason and as well just just a reminder as always if you haven't given a rating or review to the show I would really appreciate if you could do that we have a few of them the more we have the marrier it makes me feel better makes me feel like this podcast is worthwhile so I'd appreciate if you guys could just take a moment to Click Five Stars share some kind words with the rest of the people reading those reviews to let them know hey this is a podcast worth listening to I'd appreciate that today I'm going to be talking about something that I have never done before I actually had to go to North Greenville Summary Court for an eviction hearing and the reason why I don't normally have to do this I have rental properties and and we've had to evict before but the reason why I don't normally do this is because my property manager actually usually fills in for me and in this case she was filling in for me but felt like I needed to be a part of it in case I needed to provide any supporting documentation because we had a unique situation and so I figured you all would be interested in this for to to take a step back I get this question from time to time how is South Carolina and how is Greenville from the standpoint of evictions is it more tenant friendly is it more landlord friendly and generally speaking it is more of a landlord friendly area there is a lot more common sense down here that is typically exercise when it comes to evictions If a landlord provides adequate data that they have done their thing and that they've gone about things the right way usually they're just going to side with the landlord they're not going to just let the tenant just have an you know hold a landlord hostage for no good reason now we had some some quirks during Co did hear some some instances in which evictions were were not able to be done due to the rules that were set in place with the eviction moratoriums and and all of that but even so there were instances in which that that was not the case as well there were instances in which we had evictions that were still happening during covid that you know where tenants did not have an excuse based on covid and judges were were still generally being favorable to that generally speaking there there were of course exceptions to that as well what happened in the instance where I had to attend court yesterday was a particularly unique one so I purchased a property recently that was an extremely unusual type of situation in itself where I had someone contact me that was like hey I just need to sell this property off ASAP I'm willing to sell it for pennies on the dollar I just I need the money I need to move on I'm going out of the area and this was a lady that had just gotten this property from her divorced husband it was part of the of the divorce settlement so so I look at the property with her and you know we go through it there's all sorts of just garbage all all over the place in the proper she she was not living in the property nobody was living in the property there was there was a dog in the front yard interestingly chained to the fence very friendly dog but the the property was just full of garbage all over the place and so we start talking about okay what what is the deal with all this stuff and she tells me that well actually my my ex-husband's sister has all this stuff and she actually is claiming to me that she had a verbal lease in place with her brother where B whereby she was basically using this house as storage she wasn't living there she she apparently had a verbal lease in place to use as storage well well we all know that that's a bunch of Croc there is no way she's paying her brother to Leisa house to have a bunch of garbage in I mean literally it was just a bunch of garbage nonetheless when you have someone in South Carolina where we are a verbal lease State you can have a verbal lease it doesn't have to be written someone claims that they have a lease agreement if you go in that property and start hauling their stuff out they can take you to court well guess what I'm not a big fan of being sued so I had to go about this the right way I purchased the property and I went ahead and had my property manager immediately give 30 days notice once the 30 days notice was up we started the eviction process well there are some quirks with doing this when you've got someone that is not living in the property that you're trying to evict them from like this is all screwed up and it was challenging just to find a constable that would even serve her at her residence that she lives at nonetheless we were able to do that and that led to her then disputing the eviction and asking for a hearing so that's what we did we me and my property manager we go to the North Greenville Summary Court yesterday we get together we are sitting there in the lobby talking and in roles the lady and her son in what looks to be like basically a brand new BMW I mean it is it's not it's not like a seven series or anything like that but it's a nice car I mean it's it's definitely you know a $40 $50,000 car it looked Immaculate nicer than my car nicer than my property manager's car I mean that was the nicest car in the parking lot by far was this lady's vehicle that she drove up in so she and her and her son come in and we you know enter the the courtroom so the judge walks in young guy I don't even know what his name is kind of doesn't even really matter he starts collecting information we make our case give him some of the supporting information including this the certified mail where the original notice was sent and then they make their case well their case was again people that had just driven up in a what looks to be like a brand new BMW they make the case that they a can't pay rent they don't have enough money to pay rent and they need the contents that of that they have that are in the building okay in this house they need that stuff reminder it's all garbage in there it's 100% garbage it's been sitting in a house that is not air conditioned or or heated so who knows I mean it's probably got stuff growing in it by this point it's it's a joke it's a joke but they they claim that they need that stuff but they also don't have enough money to get a U-Haul in order to haul the stuff away now they will have money they their paycheck comes in the first of the month so they said that they will have the money the first of the month so we were actually in there for quite some time I thought it was going to be pretty quick but the the judge was really agonizing over this he was really and and of course the the lady and her son both claimed to be disabled the lady came in a wheelchair I I don't know you know whether that's whether she was pretending or not I'll assume that she wasn't again it's hard to to trust someone when when they have a really nice vehicle and they're they're claiming that they can't rent a U-Haul which does not cost that much money to rent a U-Haul locally nonetheless the the judge really agonized over it and it he made a decision that was very surprising to me so he looked at the certified mail where the notice was sent and and again it was confusing whether it should be sent to the house itself whether it should be sent to the the property where this woman lives he identified that the ZIP code on there was not correct now in Greenville we have 29611 29609 and 29607 zip codes all converge kind of near the same spot there's like one little area in West Greenville where where kind of all those zip codes kind of converge to a certain extent and my property manager had put 29611 on it then apparently the post office had changed it to 29607 but the legal address was 29609 so the judge said this is actually not a valid 30 days notice but he wanted to I think he he sat there and he realized what these people were saying I mean I I can't tell you how many times he asked them now you haven't paid rent in April you haven't paid rent in May you haven't paid rent in June and you haven't paid rent in July and you can't afford it in August he he literally asked them so why didn't you save the money you would have been paying for rent towards getting a U-Haul all these months hwell that's a great question maybe because they weren't paying rent before that they just had their stuff in there and there was never a lease you know in agreement to begin with there was never a lease in place to begin with they were never making rent payments she was she wasn't paying her brother to have garbage in this house that house was just sitting vacant it was just you know there was nothing going on with it anyway he asked multiple times the judge asked multiple times he he went through it and and multiple different way ways tried to ask them why they couldn't pay their rent and of course they didn't have an answer they didn't even they couldn't even say how much the rent was that they were paying before so it was all I think he could tell he was standing there and he could tell this was all basically a joke but at the same time they were asking for basically a couple of weeks to get their stuff out he's looking at it seeing that the address was ever so slightly off and of course they're claiming that they never saw the mail you know it was not delivered to them and you know they can make those claims so he decided to basically in in my opinion meet us in the middle which at the end of the day I'm okay with it's it's not my preferred solution but I understand I I understand where they're coming from and as long as they get their stuff out and don't push us further it's fine and even if they don't were protected so so what he said was basically the 30 days notice is n and void because it was sent to the wrong address which I thought that that was kind of a kind of a cop out but whatever the the ZIP code listen mail is delivered with the wrong ZIP code all the time as as long as there's not an identical address somewhere else in the same city with a different zip code and there isn't you can look it up there isn't nonetheless he said the 30 days notice is Nan void but he's counting the 30 days starting with when we made the eviction and not going to force us to file a different eviction so basically he's saying in essence you can't evict tomorrow but I'm going to let you evict after 30 days after this eviction was filed which was on July the 6 and so he's basically giving them until August the 6 and if they're not out by August the 6 we they allowed us to actually pre file the RIT of eviction in the event that they are not out by the six we can basically set out their stuff on the first business day following and they were fine with that I was not as fine with that but it is what it is we're we're able to work with it it's just a couple of weeks basically from from today and and and we'll work with it but this is that that was a very interesting decision I I didn't know to expect that in case you're wondering the courtroom in case you're trying to picture what this is like it's a massive courtroom but it was just five of us me my property manager the lady her son and the judge we all just there the the the lady multiple times interrupted the judge and he had to correct her which I think was also something that he wasn't super thrilled about you know of of course you know could tell that this was not a situation where she knew how to compose herself and that that type of environment Sun was the same way but the good news is that we are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel here we had to go about it the proper way even if it was none of it was true you know which I personally don't think any of it was true I don't think that they ever had a least agreement in place I think that they that they did receive notice as a matter of fact my property manager had verbally told them and and here's kind of the the frustrating thing is you can have a verbal lease but you can't have a verbal termination to the lease the termination has to be in writing and it has to be received when you give them 30 days notice you can't verbally tell them that we had verbally told them that multiple times but without them receiving the mail they can claim well I didn't know I didn't I didn't receive 30 days 30 days notice and so and and of course technically they don't have to receive it technically again if you if you send it certified and they don't accept it then my understanding is that the courts are fine with with ex with moving forward under the assumption that they rejected that that they should have received it that you made a good faith effort to inform them and at that point then the eviction is valid but this is the situation where we're at so I've actually been working on this property since the beginning of the year they the lady that was selling it first contacted me at the beginning of the year but we had a lot of different things to go through because she had the divorce element she had a death in the family that caused some some consternation whatnot then she she got pregnant just all sorts of things and so I've been working on this since the beginning of the year I just want this house so I can I can flip it make it usable again it's an eyesore on the street and oh and by the way the dog I didn't even mention the dog they just leave that dog out there that dog you know I I could probably have a case for that dog being neglected and I'm considering you know making that case but the dog is neglected they have a a lock on the gate so that you know we can even enter the property it's all very very frustrating and this is this is the way it is though at the end of the day when you are investing in real estate there is a lot of quirks there are a lot of quirks that you have to deal with there is a lot of weird little twists and turns that you run into and this is one of them my first time in an eviction Court type of setting and it was interesting we kept it cordial nobody you know nobody said anything bad about anyone else I think the judge would have had issues with that if we had but they didn't do that we of course didn't do that we stuck to the facts we stuck to the book we did everything the best we could and here we are we're a couple weeks away if they don't have their stuff out then we are going to put it out at the street and call a day and that'll be it so I hope that that gives you some insight Short episode today but I hope that that gives you some insight a look into my life a look into the life of a real estate investor some of the things that we have to do a look into the life of a landlord people give landlords a bad rap a lot of times listen we have to deal with a a lot of crap as well it's obviously there are bad landlords out there but there are a lot of bad tenants so that's just something that we have to deal with that's something we have to live with it is what it is as I like to say that's that's my New Jersey coming out it is what it is you know it is what it is but that's it for today's episode if you have any thoughts questions comments feedback house you need to sell a house you need to buy all those good things my contact information is in the show notes as well as I always say leave us a rating leave a review to the show I'd appreciate that as well until next time I hope you guys stay safe stay cool stay out of the rain enjoy the rest of the week [Music]