What an eviction costs and how the process runs in Franklin County

The hard cost is $273: $150 to the eviction attorney and $123 to Franklin County for the filing. RL Property Management charges $199 to manage the process, so a typical case runs $472. If the resident has not vacated and a setout is required, add $80 to the county and $250 to us. Those are the filing costs only, and they do not include the rent you did not collect or the turn afterward.

Add up the statutory steps and an uncontested Franklin County nonpayment case runs roughly five to seven weeks from the day the notice is posted. Three days of notice, then a hearing set fourteen to twenty-one days after filing, then the writ, then five days after the red tag before a setout can happen. That is the floor, not an estimate of your case. A continuance, a contested hearing or a second cause of action for money all add time, which is why the attorney fee and our management fee each cover up to two court appearances.

Roughly 3.5% of rentals reach eviction, litigation or another significant dispute. It is uncommon, and it is not zero. Screening lowers the odds, and acting early lowers the cost, but any owner holding rentals long enough will eventually see one.

No. Only the deeded property owner can sign and file an eviction complaint without an attorney. Franklin County and Fairfield County state it in identical language on their own filing instructions, because it follows from the Ohio rule that an entity cannot represent itself in court. A corporation, an LLC or a trust has to be represented by an attorney at every stage, including the filing and the court appearance, and a power of attorney does not get around it. If you hold property in an entity, which most investors do, the attorney is not optional and the cost is not avoidable. That is what the eviction attorney fee covers.

If you hold the property in your own name you can file without a manager, but this is the wrong place to save money. Evictions are dismissed on procedural defects, and the most common ones are the notice: wrong form, wrong period, wrong service, missing required language. A dismissal does not just cost the filing fee, it costs the weeks you have to start over. Self-help removal, meaning changing locks or shutting off utilities to force a resident out, is illegal and creates far more liability than the unpaid rent.

Change the locks, remove their belongings, shut off utilities, or remove doors and windows. Those are self-help evictions and they expose you to damages that dwarf the unpaid balance. The only lawful path is notice, filing and a court-ordered removal.

No. There is no charge to post a 3-day or 30-day notice to vacate. We would rather post a notice early and have it resolve the situation than wait until filing is the only option left.

Then the goal was achieved, which is a paying resident rather than an empty unit. Accepting payment at that stage does have procedural consequences for the case, though. We check with the eviction attorney before accepting a payment mid-case, because in some circumstances it restarts the process.

No. Management is $117 to $184 per unit per month and covers ordinary operation. An eviction is a legal proceeding with real outside costs, so it is billed at the published amounts above rather than absorbed into everyone else's monthly fee.

Sometimes, and the arithmetic is the whole argument. A resident with a documented one-month problem and a written catch-up plan usually costs less than a filing plus a vacancy plus a turn. A resident who has stopped responding is not a negotiation, and every month you wait is another month of rent you will not recover.