3/18/20
Dear Property Owners,
New developments are occurring daily, both in the number of cases of the coronavirus, and the impacts on various parts of the economy. Today President Trump announced that HUD is to suspend all foreclosure and eviction activities until the end of April. While this mandate only affects FHA insured mortgages and not all owners and renters, it has already prompted questions about evictions in general being temporarily suspended. Some cities such as San Francisco have indeed issued city wide suspensions on evictions.
Here is what we do know. Montgomery and Harris County courthouses are no longer hearing eviction cases. This has just occurred this week, as we had one eviction case due to go to court today and received a note stating it was postponed indefinitely. Any new filings will likely not be given a court date for over a month.
We also know that this pandemic is having an impact on some of our tenants already and will continue to impact more and more families in the coming weeks. We have had some tenants inform us of job loss or inability to work due to their offices being closed. It is a very unfortunate situation that will not be getting better in the next couple weeks.
So what can we do? Some owners have reached out to us about giving small rent concessions in April to any tenants that pay on time. Other owners have said they will waive late fees as long as rent is paid by the middle of the month. Please contact our office to let us know if you would like us to proactively reach out to your tenants and offer anything like this or other ideas you might have.
As tenants call us and express issues paying rent, we will be contacting owners letting them know as much about their tenants’ situation as possible. We will still take the necessary steps to try and get tenants to pay and to set up the possibility of eviction should it come to that, but it is a discussion we’ll have with individual owners before taking full steps towards eviction.
Stay tuned, as we’ll have further updates including about the federal tax payment deadline being extended by 90 days and how are maintenance vendors are dealing with the current situation.
Thanks as always for your business.
