Commercial Evictions in Maryland

I have handled a number of commercial evictions in Maryland. Most of these cases occur in District Court, which has relatively short time frames for an eviction.  If an eviction is for failure to pay rent, you can normally get a hearing within two weeks after you file suit.  An order of possession is not the same as a money judgment, however, so, if your tenant owes substantial back rent, you may want to make sure that you serve your tenant personally, in which case the court can issue a money judgment as well as an order of possession. Once you have an order of possession, if you actually have to get the sheriff to evict the tenant, this can often take several weeks to get this on the sheriff's schedule. If you are going to simply change the locks, and keep all of the tenant's property (which you can if your lease allows you this right), you can generally schedule this sooner than if the sheriff has to supervise the removal of property.

A couple of tips about dealing with tenants who can't or won't pay rent:
(1) Send notification letters by overnight delivery or certified mail whenever rent is late. State what late fee will apply and give the tenant a very short period of time to make up the past due rent and late fees;
(2) Don't let a tenant get too far behind. If a tenant is more than 45 days behind, I recommend filing an eviction action. Even if you don't have to go through with the eviction process, this will send a message to the tenant that you are serious;
(3) Begin to look for a new tenant. Tenants will try to delay you, and you want to remove any leverage that they have because they think that you would rather have some rent coming in rather than no rent for a while;
(4) Don't accept excuses--tenants have used them all, and things generally get worse, not better when a tenant gets behind.

I hope this is helpful.