Alright, as a property management company in San Diego, you’ve done a good job of qualifying your tenants and you’ve done your best to build a good business relationship with them. Most of them like you and respect you, as San Diego property management, and understand the nature of your relationship. But there’s always going to be a small percentage of tenants who turn bad. It probably has nothing to do with you whatsoever. Their circumstances have changed and they can no longer pay the rent. Or perhaps they brought with them baggage from the past so far back and so remote that you had no possibility of discovering it, and now it’s come home to roost. Anyway, you’ve got a problem tenant on your hands. It’s time to employ the “3 I’s formula”, in keeping, of course, with sound principles of human relations:

Interaction. That means talk to the tenants. Anything is more cost effective than eviction. You want cooperative tenants, especially on the way out.

Incentives. Because cooperation is always cheaper than force, offering an incentive for a tenant to vacate is usually a cost-effective thing to do.

Intimidation. Interacting with them didn’t work. Offering incentives didn’t work. It is time to try the last step before the legal process known as unlawful detainer – intimidation. Now intimidation doesn’t mean you have any dangerous confrontations with them and it doesn’t mean you hire any shady characters to change their attitudes. Nothing illegal or unsavory. But there are ways to get the point across that you are in the right and you will prevail. Though they are being uncooperative and are in possession of the unit for the time being, you are strong and you will not back down.