In this solo presentation, Philadelphia landlord‑tenant attorney and property manager Kevin Moyer explains why his property‑management firm recently lost its second‑largest client: poor tenant placements. He uses the incident as a springboard to quantify the financial impact of a “bad” tenant in Philadelphia. Moyer outlines the average monthly rent ($1,400) and the current 7.7‑month eviction timeline, then breaks down the typical loss components—approximately $11,000 in unpaid rent, $2,500 in legal fees, $6,000 in property‑damage repairs, plus a month of vacancy and a month of leasing costs—totaling roughly $23,500 per unit. He translates this loss into cash‑flow terms, showing that a landlord who normally nets $500 per month would need almost four years to recover, while those with slimmer cash flows could take 5½ to 13 years. Moyer argues that Philadelphia’s extensive eviction protections and tenant‑screening regulations increase landlord risk, prompting rational owners to adopt stricter screening practices. He concludes that rigorous tenant vetting is essential to protect investments in a market where a single bad tenant can be financially catastrophic.
Chapters
Hey guys, Kevin Moyer with The Rowe Report here. As many of you know, I am a Philadelphia landlord-tenant attorney and property manager, and for my property management company, Otter Property Management, we were recently fired by our second largest client last month. So we did some reflection to figure out how this happened, and really what it boils down to are some recent poor tenant placements. And that got me thinking just how bad and how impactful a bad tenant can be for a Philadelphia rental property. So I want you guys to learn from these lessons, and let's go through the math and let's figure out ways to improve this in the future, as we want to do. So we have implemented some new stricter screening. We've been more picky on our pre-application process and for our application, and we really want to lock in and accept a little more vacancy and dial back the risk to place tenants. It's funny because this almost— this has the exact opposite effect of what the lawmakers intend by taking so long with the eviction process, putting all these tenant screening protections in place. But any rational actor, when faced with the increased risk that bad tenants bring, are going to mitigate that risk to every extent they possibly can. And that's what we are doing, and that's what we've done in 2026. But let's dive into it. What does a bad tenant really cost in Philadelphia, and what does it mean for you? So here's a quick bad tenant cost analysis that we did. Our average monthly rent that we collect is right around $1,400 on average. That includes single, that includes single room occupancy, one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom, and larger, all through Philadelphia. So we're looking at $1,400. So, and, and if you tuned in to my latest episode on the eviction timeline, you'll know that that process is taking about 7.7 months right now, start to finish, in Philadelphia. So you're looking at almost $11,000 in unpaid rent, add on $2,500 in legal fees. We have to presume $6K in property damage upon move out. And this is based on a lot of data we have. There's typically junk removal, there's typically painting, there's typically pest removal, there's typically handyman work that has to be done throughout, drywall repair and patching, lock changes. There is almost always significant damage done when we're talking about a quote unquote bad tenant, which we're describing here. In addition to the lockout timeline. So $6K to get your property up and ready for moving condition again. It's gonna take 30 days to do that, so another 30 days in lost rent, 30 days to pay your property manager to lease it for you, and you're looking at a total estimated loss of $23,480 on a $1,400 a month rental. It is literally investment destroying. If this happens on a single-family home. And what does that mean? So, so let's look at it from an investment perspective. How long will it take you to make back that money? And it's not just the gross rent, so $1,400, you know, it's, it's not going to take you a year and a half just in rent to make it back because you need to make back the cash flow difference that you're missing out on. So normally, if you're used to making— let's be, let's be generous and say you're used to making $500 a month net when your tenant is in place. So when your tenant pays you rent, let's say they pay $1,500 and you have $1,000 in expenses including your mortgage, including your property taxes, your repairs, your management fees. Let's say that you have $500 net normally, so you're normally putting $500 in your pocket every month. On that scenario, one bad tenant with the $24,000 is going to take you almost 4 years to dig yourself out of that cash flow difference. To respond to that bad tenant placement that you had. And let's say you're like more people and you have less than $500. At $350 in free cash flow, it takes you almost— it takes you over 5.5 years to recover from that bad tenant placement. Uh, let's go here to $250 a month. It will take almost 8 years if you're cash flowing $250 a month to make up for the bad placement, and then 13 years if if you cash flow like a lot of people do with a skinnier cash flow amount and put in $150 to make up for the lost cash flow that you missed out from that bad tenant. So it just shows again, when you actually put this math on paper, it is very— it is just as painful as it feels when you have to recover from a bad tenant placement. It is catastrophic in Philadelphia. Philadelphia makes it particularly catastrophic because of all the hurdles and costs they have in place to remove a non-paying tenant. If you could remove a non-paying tenant like you can in a lot of municipalities in about 21 days, uh, with fewer legal fees, obviously the damage is much less. And when the damage and risk are lower, you don't have to be as picky, your return doesn't have to be as high, your rents can be lower. It is all a balancing act, and City Council gets it entirely wrong when they keep adding more and more risk onto property owners who are rational actors. In an investment world. And with more risk comes an expected higher return and more risk aversion behaviors in the form of screening. So there you have it. That's what I've learned to really buckle down and take screening as serious as it is. It's, it's an investment make or break. One bad tenant can be on a property. So it's time to lock in. It's time to screen thoroughly. It's time to, um, protect yourself in every way that you can to avoid the catastrophic bad investment ruining bad tenant placement.
