Quote:
Originally Posted by Naomi4u
Here's a question: How long does it take for an eviction to hit your credit report? Maybe she could get a new place before it does. Google says a minimum of 60 days.
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I don't think it would be accurate to state that there's a specific, minimum amount of time before an eviction judgment would show up in a credit report. The judgment might only show up in a credit report if the landlord decided to have it recorded, which he may or may not do. The judgment, if recorded, would show up the next time the credit bureau bought records from the government agency that maintains the records of judgments.
If I were a tenant in Texas with an eviction judgment, I'd be concerned with being blacklisted by Texas Apartment Association properties. Pretty much all decent multi-family complexes in the state are TAA members. They maintain their own, private database and information is entered into the database whether or not a landlord gets a judgment recorded. If a person can't lease with a TAA property (or a small property that's not a TAA member), then they might have to live in an inferior property and pay more money for what they get.
I'd also be concerned with information being collected and reported by private companies other than credit bureaus that sell such information, such as
www.PublicData.com. Anybody with a few bucks and some basic information about a person can buy a subscription to one of these private companies and find out whether a person defaulted on a lease. That information is also easily-obtainable on the web sites maintained by most county governments in Texas. For example, if I know your name and that you had an eviction judgment in Dallas County (whether or not that judgment was recorded), I can find that out in 30 seconds, no sweat.
From a practical standpoint, what this means is
a tenant should default on a lease only as a last resort. Most landlords don't want to arbitrarily soil someone's credit history -- they want to get paid the rent they're due. If a tenant simply cannot pay their rent, I think they should do their utmost to work with the landlord to vacate the property to the satisfaction of both sides.
One final note: If a person has an old eviction judgment that they want off their record, I'd suggest they negotiate the amount to be paid with the landlord, then once a settlement amount is agreed upon, enter into a written settlement agreement which includes a term that the landlord will no longer report information regarding the tenant to either the TAA, credit bureaus, or companies that sell the information. If I'm negotiating a payoff of an eviction judgment (which, coincidentally, I'm doing right now for my free-spirited, yet financially-irresponsible, sugar baby), I want the landlord to cease reporting information about my client upon the payment of the
first payment on the balance. Of course, if my client (or me, in the case of my sugar baby) defaults on making the payments, the landlord has the right to again report the information. The tenant has
some bargaining power because the landlord rarely receives a penny when a tenant defaults on a lease, so he'll make concessions to get paid pennies on the dollar.