The Pulse of East Orlando Real Estate, With a Focus on Waterford Lakes

Aiming to cash in when the housing boom was at its peak, Karel Gonzalez got a real estate license in May 2005. Then came the crash, and he let it go inactive. Now, he makes money not by putting people into homes, but by booting them out.

Gonzalez, 35, a Miami entrepreneur, scratches out a living in the evictions industry. But Gonzalez isn’t a licensed attorney or a sheriff’s deputy. He is part of an enterprising group of legal free agents, sworn notaries who for a cut-rate rate help toss out deadbeat renters.

The number of local tenants removed has increased for two straight years, said Sgt. Mitchell Kogod of the Broward Sheriff’s Office — whose department receives about 400 eviction requests each week.

The entrepreneurs advertise on the Web and with crudely made sidewalk signs, offering “affordable, fast and efficient solutions.”

At least that’s the promise made by Evictions 99, a Miami-Dade outfit that offers removal services that start at — fittingly — $99. These firms help a landlord who’s owed money fill out the necessary papers and run to court to make sure they are properly filed, all in the hopes of a quick and tidy resolution.

“I owned property in the past, and when I went to do my own evictions, I found lawyers want to charge you an arm and a leg,” said Gonzalez, founder of Miami-Dade Eviction.

Come to us, his sales pitch goes, and we can do the same job for less.

He says his business has nearly doubled since 2009.

But that business model — acting as a de facto attorney, without the time and financial hassle of law school — walks a legal tightrope, and raises significant concerns that such businesses could be engaged in the unlicensed practice of law (UPL), a third-degree felony in Florida.

“It’s a murky legal line,” said Lori Holcomb, the Florida Bar’s UPL counsel. “If they’re helping them through the process — short of saying ‘here’s the form you need to fill out’ — then there’s a problem.”

Holcomb’s job description includes monitoring unlicensed practitioners. Through July, her department had received seven complaints against eviction agencies in 2011. That’s down from 23 in 2009, but up from five last year.

While there had been no complaints filed against Miami-Dade Evictions or Evictions 99, another South Florida firm — Accountable Business Services — has had three, the most recent two years ago. The North Miami-based group offers $164 evictions but makes clear on its website: “We are not attorneys; we provide paralegal work.”

To understand the difference, at least when it comes to evictions, one needs know how the process works.

The Florida Supreme Court makes do-it-yourself forms available for a wide range of common legal procedures, including divorce, child custody and landlord-tenant relations. The latter includes evictions, which require that property owners follow a multistep process. First, the landlord must notify the tenant that he or she is delinquent, then file a complaint in court, obtain a writ of possession, then finally have the sheriff remove the renter from the apartment.

The law also allows nonattorneys, for a fee, to help complete and file the paperwork, but in a limited scope. Holcomb likened the service to a game of Mad Libs, where the eviction companies fill in the blanks with the appropriate information (names, addresses, amount owed).

However, nonattorney firms wander into the practice of law when they advise their customers or change the information provided.

“The more they do, the closer they get to the unlicensed practice of law,” Holcomb said. “They can’t put themselves in position of reliance.

“The language [the eviction firms] are using in the ads are vague enough that they may be doing it right, they may be doing it wrong,” she said.

But even if they remain firmly on the right side of what’s legal, such outfits are ill-equipped to handle the complexities that can arise with what appears to be the simplest case, said Hollywood-based attorney Kevin Fabrikant. His office receives more than 100 new cases a month, due in large part to his fee, which he says is competitive with the nonattorney businesses. Of that figure, nearly a third end in settlement — an option not available to those who use his sans-credentials competition.

Plus, there’s no way around using an attorney when things really go haywire. Fabrikant represents a landlord who recently evicted a tenant from a $400-a-month unit. A few days after security removed all of the personal effects from the home — which is allowed by law when an eviction request reaches its legal completion — the renter claimed more than $200,000 worth of jewelry had gone missing and is now suing the property owner.

“We all know it’s a joke,” Fabrikant said. “But that landlord has paid me thousands of dollars in legal fees, and we’re going to trial.”

On the Evictions 99 website, the business has an eviction process flowchart advising that in many instances, hiring an attorney is a landlord’s best option. In short, if the tenant fights the eviction at any point in the legal wrangling, the business suggests consulting an attorney. To which, Fabrikant asks rhetorically: Why not just hire one in the first place and save time, and in many instances, money?

“It’s really not that hard,” argues Gonzalez, who also advertises small claims and lease agreements among his paralegal services. “You have to know what you’re doing.

“I get some people who have tried to do their own evictions, and at the end they come to us.”