Evicting a Renter in Fairfax, VA

[Anonymous]

How about you two pick better tenants?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How about you two pick better tenants?

In my case, the person is a professional in his 50's, family man, earning $250k+ per year when commissions are factored in. That's the issue though -- he's in a business where you do 1-2 transactions per year and take a massive commission on those.. but meanwhile his ex-wife is having all his wages garnished for child support, so he has no free cash. Of course, I learn about all this only after he moved in, since that didn't show up in a credit report.

[Anonymous]

I guess you have to stop relying on the crutch of the credit report. It takes creativity and perception.

[Anonymous]

Hope the tenant doesn't trash the place on the way out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess you have to stop relying on the crutch of the credit report. It takes creativity and perception.

Except that fair housing laws kind of limit creativity in that regard.

[Anonymous]

This is why we never bought rental property.

[Anonymous]

There's some organized families in Alexandria and Fairfax County that are professional deadbeat families. They send their relatively young family members in (who have undeveloped but not bad credit history and no criminal record) to secure leases. Their well dressed parents often accompany them to further showcase they have family resources. Then after a couple months, they move their family in and stop paying rent. And the different nodes of the families run their own businesses so they can validate employment for one another, and spin up fake web presences if need be. Some even have a family attorney to help them when they eventually are before eviction proceedings.

I won't name names here, but one family has done this well into the double digits over the last 10 years, and even fooled professional management companies, particularly in Alexandria.

I'd just say, make sure you have Renters Unit-Owners Insurance to cover damages and lost rent if a tenant trashes the place on the way out, and if you get in the rental game, make sure you can go 3-to-4 months without rent in case one of these pros gets you. They are VERY hard to spot.

[Anonymous]

With regard to being uncaring about seizing vehicles, understand that Virginia has strong protections for the poor. A vehicle valued under $6,000 is exempt should the debtor put in the right paperwork:

http://law.justia.com/codes/virginia/2014/title-34/section-34-26/

On top of that, anyone evicted also is more or less guaranteed to be able to walk out with at least $5,000 in other property.

If a deadbeat chooses to dodge rent for months while driving an expensive car, maybe they deserve to have it seized. But also realize that there are tons of other issues with seized automobiles (other liens, etc...)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's some organized families in Alexandria and Fairfax County that are professional deadbeat families. They send their relatively young family members in (who have undeveloped but not bad credit history and no criminal record) to secure leases. Their well dressed parents often accompany them to further showcase they have family resources. Then after a couple months, they move their family in and stop paying rent. And the different nodes of the families run their own businesses so they can validate employment for one another, and spin up fake web presences if need be. Some even have a family attorney to help them when they eventually are before eviction proceedings.

I won't name names here, but one family has done this well into the double digits over the last 10 years, and even fooled professional management companies, particularly in Alexandria.

I'd just say, make sure you have Renters Unit-Owners Insurance to cover damages and lost rent if a tenant trashes the place on the way out, and if you get in the rental game, make sure you can go 3-to-4 months without rent in case one of these pros gets you. They are VERY hard to spot.

Seems like a very strange way to live.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Yes, we have a property manager. Credit was check (just over 700). HHI was close to $200k. Accounts were paid on time. Monthly debt was low. So by all accounts, we should have had no problems.

I read the info posted on Fairfax Co website about the eviction process. There was no mention of how long it takes to get a court date. Seems like once the court date is set, eviction is 45 days or less.

I've heard the court date can take 3 weeks. I'm hopeful the Sherrifs office will serve the eviction paperwork sooner than 30 days.

Stop guessing and lawyer up.

[Anonymous]

Indeed it is a strange way to live. They're gypsies more or less. Cheating landlords while running unlicensed businesses that peddle cheap services and products. They have quite the operation in Falls Church, and Alexandria.

[Anonymous]

I know exactly one of the gypsy families you're talking about, the Demetro family. One of my landlord friends had issues with them, and I did a little digging online.

Do the following steps.

1) Goto: http://www.courts.state.va.us

2) Click "Case Status and Information"

3) On the new page, under "General District Court", click on "Case Information"

4) A Terms and Conditions page will appear. Enter the CAPTCHA test.

5) Select "Fairfax County District Court" in the dropdown on the side, and then click "Name Search" under "Civil"

6) Enter "Demetro" in the "Last/Business Name" field and click Search.

You'll see Unlawful Detainer cases (evictions) against several members of this family: Anthony Demetro, Bobby Demetro, Christina Demetro, Edilte Demetro, James Demetro, Jimmie Demetro, Lisa Demetro, Madison Demetro, Michael Demetro, Mike Demetro, Nick Demetro, Nina Demetro, Pamela Demetro, Patricia Demetro, Sandra Demetro, Sarah Demetro, Shawn Demetro (a real pro here), Steve Demetro, Steven Demetro, Terry Demetro, Thomas Demetro, and Yaz Demetro.

Run a search for Alexandria, and you'll see largely the same batch of people running up Unlawful Detainers in Alexandra: Bobby Demetro, Michael Demetro, Pamela Demetro, Ricky Demetro, Sam Demetro, and Velvet Demetro. What's impressive here is they are fooling established management companies.

There's 30+ of these cases in Fairfax County, and another 8 or so in Alexandria. So maybe about 40 cases in the last 7 years. That's about six evictions a year for this family.

Purely my guess... This probably is an organized gypsy family ring that fakes employment information and other background references to landlords in order to get leases. They then stop paying rent, while the slow eviction process moves forward (60+ days). If they are good with excuses, they can get away with several more months of free rent.

I'd also guess they are not a poor family. Here's a wedding video from 2008. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iJtIxjIydI . There's a couple more online as well. My guess is they can live quite well considering all the rent they haven't had to pay.

I'm not telling you to rent or not rent to anyone in Fairfax County with a last name of Demetro. I'm merely showing you an online tool, demonstrating some results, and posing a guess as to what's behind the data. I'll let you decide what to do with this information. Just make sure you run very thorough due diligence on anyone you lease to. My friend did do some due diligence, but clearly it wasn't enough.

[Anonymous]

Aris Chronis (lawyer in Arlington) will do an eviction quickly, cheaply, and highly professional.

[Anonymous]

Yup true. I think the best thing anyone can do is to make these people famous.

[Anonymous]

Holy crap re: the gypsy family. People actually live like this? It sounds exhausting. Maybe someday they'll finally be locked away for fraud or something.