Tenant/Landlord Relationships: What an Asheville Attorney, a Magistrate, and a Housing Advocate Told Property Owners

An attorney, a small claims magistrate, and a housing advocate who face each other in court walked Asheville landlords and tenants through North Carolina's Chapter 42 at Tenant/Landlord Relationships, AVLmeetup's September 2023 event at Hi-Wire Event Space. The panel covered the parts of landlord-tenant law people get wrong: security deposits, verbal leases, emotional support animals, and what actually happens between an eviction judgment and a lockout.

Key Takeaways

Joe Knight, the magistrate who hears Buncombe County small claims, said that of the people evicted in the county over his 16 years on the bench, there is a 99 percentile chance he signed the judgment, and that lockouts happen in only about 5 to 7% of those cases.
North Carolina's security deposit accounting timeline changed from a single 30-day window to a 30-day interim accounting and a 60-day final accounting, a shift Knight called "a gift to the landlords by the legislature."
After a landlord wins an eviction judgment, tenants get 10 days to appeal and the lockout itself typically takes another 7 to 20 days, depending on the county and when the landlord files the writ of possession.
Benjamin Many, an attorney at Stone and Christy who has handled more than 1,000 landlord-tenant cases, said the two most common points of contention are simple: failure to pay on the tenant side, failure to fix on the landlord side.
Suing a former tenant for money owed in Buncombe County costs about $252 in additional court costs and can be filed under the same case number as the eviction, but any money judgment stays on a person's credit report for 10 years, and Knight put the actual collection rate at "minimal."

Chapter 42 and the Rules Nobody Reads

Knight, David Bartholomew of Pisgah Legal Services, and Many all agreed on where landlords and tenants get into trouble: nobody reads Chapter 42 of the North Carolina General Statutes. "There is a list of things that landlords are responsible to do, and you cannot contract around them," Knight said, adding that Chapter 42 also lists tenant requirements. Many put it more bluntly: "Just because you put it in your lease doesn't mean that's the way it's going to go." He has watched clients write what he called "bonkers things" into leases and assume a signature makes them enforceable.

Bartholomew connected the legal gap to the housing market: rising mortgage rates and housing costs were driving up both failure-to-pay evictions and holdover cases, since landlords with an underpriced lease have new incentive to re-rent at market rate.

Evictions: What the Court Actually Does

Knight said the most common misconception about evictions is that the court itself puts anyone out. "The court does not evict people," he said. "The court authorizes the sheriff's department to do the lockout, which is the eviction." Bartholomew added that skipping that process, locking someone out or cutting power, is illegal and something his organization will sue over, since a rental is somebody's home.

Security Deposits, Verbal Leases, and Pets

Many made the case for always taking a security deposit, even though it is technically not the landlord's money: it is often the only guaranteed recovery if a tenant stops paying or damages a unit, since a landlord may never locate that tenant again. Knight put it simpler: a deposit "offsets the cost of turning over a residence."

On verbal leases, the panel was unanimous. "Don't do a verbal lease," Many said, "although, hey, a verbal lease might be better than something you pull off the internet..." Knight explained the tradeoff: an oral lease limits a landlord to the statutory eviction remedies, nonpayment of rent and criminal action, no matter what side conversations happened. He also told a cautionary story about a law school friend whose tenants moved in with multiple cats; by the time he found out, the flooring, subflooring, and part of the joists had to be torn out because cat urine had seeped into the unsealed basement concrete.

Emotional support animals got the most hedging of the night. "All pets are emotional support animals," Knight said, arguing North Carolina still lacks clear legal distinctions between ESAs and trained service animals. Bartholomew noted federal law limits service-animal protections to dogs and miniature horses. Many's advice: be reasonable, expect to pay for damage, and "err on the side of approving."

Questions

What's the benefit of cash for keys versus a full eviction filing? Knight said one local owner has used it successfully, usually paying multiple months of rent to get a tenant to leave voluntarily, though it is not free money either way. Many and Bartholomew both framed it as a cost-benefit decision against a court filing's time and cost.
With a verbal lease, what obstacles come up? Knight repeated the tradeoff outlined above. Many's answer was direct: "Don't do a verbal lease."
Do you have to wait 10 days for rent to be sent in? Knight said that with an oral lease, a landlord is stuck with holdover notices or the 10-day demand; a written lease can spell out different terms, such as the default clause in the AANC lease letting a landlord file for eviction without further notice.
If you take a tenant to court, how do you recover those costs? Knight walked through Buncombe County's process: once you have an eviction judgment, you can file a separate money-owed claim under the same case number, adding about $252 in court costs, and the tenant must be personally served. Many cautioned that winning a money judgment is very different from collecting it, since a renter typically owns no real property to attach.
Any insight on managing a tenant landlord relationship with government-backed housing, like Section 8? Knight said those vouchers come with their own leases that can override a landlord's standard lease. Bartholomew added that rent is tied to income rather than the market, so it keeps arriving even if a tenant loses a job. Knight added a case-law warning: once a landlord has given notice to vacate, they cannot accept rent from either the tenant or the government afterward. Many summed it up as "guaranteed money" for landlords willing to learn the extra rules.

The panel closed on a one-word test for a healthy landlord-tenant relationship: "clarity" and "be reasonable" among the answers. AVLmeetup's next meetup, on short term rentals, picked up the following month at the same venue.