I contacted our collection service yesterday, following up to see if our former manager was current on sending in bad debt files. They sent me a report of all files that have been sent in since November, 2013.
What I found really shocked me. We use a well-known national company for debt collection and out of 25 accounts sent in since November, 2013, with a total bad debt of $73,155.86, only $1407.32 has been collected. Those collections were in December 2013!!
WHAT!!????!!!
Is this typical throughout the country? Do we need to consider changing collection companies? This is a lower-income property, where most of the tenants barely qualify. We are also in a wage-garnishment state, however I don't think we can garnish for housing debt.
How are your bad debt collections adding up? I hope better than ours!