QUOTE (investmart @ May 1 2010, 06:42 PM) Thank you very much Greg and Carrie!
I actually heard about April from another PM that she is the best in the area as you mentioned.
What in general is a reasonable and most common paralegal service fee structure - by hour/case/day?
For example, is the following payment
by case common:
say $1500, for ending a tenant`s lease/evicting him (whether it takes the paralegal 1 day or 3 days in court/LTB)?
Just wonder how we can limit our (landlords`) cost so we don`t end up paying a lawyer or paralegal say $6,000 where we could just pay the tenant half to get him out of the apartment(?)
(obviously paralegal fee varies and depends on experience, etc.. therefore just asking for an estimate and the suggested/common fee structure)
THANKS.
Paralegals are generally quite reasonable. An average eviction is about $1000 with all fees in. This includes the 170 filing fee and sheriff if required (another 320 -380). It depends how good your tenant is at drawing the process out. If for instance your tenant appeals the order to divisional court you will pay out the Kazoo. It really depends on the individual case. Paralegals are surprisingly reasonably priced compared to lawyers however.
Paying out the tenant to move is hardly the solution you run the risk of giving them the money and they stay. Not only that there is a bit of a moral hazard there of rewarding horrible behaviour and setting this person loose on the universe expecting others to do the same.
In some cases there is no choice when the expectation is that a case would be prohibitively difficult to win. I once managed a triplex where the tenant had a very large incontinent dog in the basement apartment of a triplex. The smell was astoundingly bad. The dog would pee and it would penetrate the subfloor. Complaints to the tenant about her smell would result in a gallon of bleach being poured under the floor. That odour was possibly worse. I cannot tell you how horrible it was. In fact the two upper tenants vacated due to the odour. People coming to see the place would actually gag. Now the problem comes in when you go before the adjudicator and try to prove a smell. Furthermore they would be unlikely to grant an eviction based on smell due to the stinky nature of lots of tenants. Where do you stop? Plenty of people have stinky food etc.
We had to pay her to move and then we had to hire a moving truck to move her. Then we had to rip up the entire subfloor.
Still for a nonpayment of rent issue it is better just to kick them out using a paralegal.
Hope this helps