Eviction — just a click away.
Smelling blood in the water, venture-based startups like Click Notices are collecting tidy fees to assist landlords in ousting millions of tenants nationwide.
Click Notices’ software allows landlords to set parameters for when to begin evictions, then notifies employees or subcontractors that it’s time to put boot to tenant ass.
The Annapolis, Md.-based firm charges landlords a flat fee depending on local court costs, Bloomberg reported.
Prices for these services vary from city to city. Click’s competitor, Nationwide Eviction, a Charlotte, N.C.-based firm, charges $131 for an eviction in Richmond, Va. but $825 in New York City.
The average eviction — between court costs, maintenance fees and lost rent — can cost a landlord as much as $1,700, according to TransUnion.
Toyin Bello, a former software executive, founded Click Notices in 2010 after growing tired of attempting to collect past-due rent on his investment properties. Now in eight states, the firm is looking to expand nationwide.
Click Notices already counts WinnResidential, the nation’s largest affordable housing landlord, as one client. In a two-day span in December of 2014, WinnResidential used Click Notices to begin evictions against more than 70 tenants at a single building in Maryland, Bloomberg reported.
The firm’s CEO, Eric Sigler, would not tell Bloomberg how much Click raised in its January Series A funding round — led by Sopris Capital — or how much revenue it earns, but said he believes it can be a “billion-dollar market.”
Last year, The Real Deal tallied the most litigious landlords in Manhattan. [Bloomberg] — Dusica Sue Malesevic