Vancouver council candidate shares his experience evicting bad tenants during pandemic

A candidate in the 2022 municipal election is teaching B.C. landlords how to evict tenants successfully using his own experience as an example. 

Morning Lee, an NPA candidate for Vancouver city councillor, is “a successful entrepreneur and business consultant”, according to his biography on the NPA’s website. He often gives tips on the world of real estate.

For example, Lee reminded the Chinese Canadian community of the important status of non-resident property elector. In a WeChat post published Wednesday (September 14, 2022) on “Hancan Media,” Lee pointed out that you don’t need to live in Vancouver to vote in the Vancouver civic election, as long as you own a property in the city. 

Another tip Lee offered to his Chinese-speaking audience, is a guide to evicting bad tenants, which can be found on his Youtube channel, headlined, “Essential skill 1 to deal with bad tenants: How to evict bad tenants during the pandemic with ease. My personal experience. All landlords must watch series.”

This 30-minute-long video clip was published on November 24, 2021, under his Youtube channel “Morning Lee Money Me,” where he has garnered 1.09K followers.  

The saga he recounted took place in 2020 when Lee was working as a realtor for a $1.3 million house as the seller’s agent. The house was hard to sell because the tenants, a family, refused to move out, which caused a great hassle for potential buyers when taking possession. The tenants were “maliciously taking advantage of” the B.C. government’s pandemic eviction ban, said Lee in the video. When the eviction ban expired in September 2020, Lee’s team stepped in.  

Everything was done legally, emphasized Lee, and his team conducted careful research on the related regulations. When the tenants family delayed the rent payment in autumn of 2020, Lee’s team drafted a six-step eviction plan, which involved a timeline of interactions with the tenants: hand-delivering the eviction notice to the tenants; sending a 24-hour house-viewing notice; bringing prospective buyers to view the tenanted property; sending a second 24-hour house-viewing notice; viewing the tenanted house again, etc..

The plan worked out perfectly. In December 2020, the family moved out, and the new owner took possession of the house soon after.     

In addition to doing everything by the law, Lee offered specific tips to his audience. He suggested that when hand-delivering the eviction notice to the rental unit, a realtor should bring a locksmith and change the lock of the tenanted property. In the meantime, he suggested realtor the call a bailiff (police officer) to the rental property to “frighten the tenants”. In addition, the realtor should “take a shit in the washroom” to “declare sovereignty”. 

“(13:22) Actually there were no prospective buyers at that moment so one of our realtors pretended to be the buyer to view the house,” said Lee in the video. “We must do everything legally, and bringing a prospective buyer to view the tenanted house is a legal reason to enter the tenants’ unit.” 

Lee added, “I also told my colleague realtor not to panic when (pretending to be) viewing the tenanted house. You must take a good walk around the house. Why should we do that? To declare sovereignty. To declare (to the tenants) that this house is mine, not yours and I have the right to view the house. And the realtor must go to the washroom to take a shit, to take a leak, so as to tell the tenants that I do have the right. ”

Having a police officer on site in the tenanted house is an important part of Lee’s eviction strategy, which effectively carried out the obedience test over the tenants. “(18:25) Why am I so experienced dealing with tenants? I owe it to my 16-to-17-year-long-experience of running a moving company,” said Lee. He has watched multiple landlord-tenant disputes as a mover, and calling the police was an often-used tactic when it comes to tenant issues.  

Lee mentioned in the video that the tenants filed a lawsuit against the landlord some days after they moved out, which caused another round of trouble for the landlord. “(17:20) But this is not our business anymore,” said Lee as a realtor.

The tenants in this case were not flawless. They didn’t pay the full amount of rent during the pandemic and were not very cooperative in arranging house viewing for potential buyers.

In November 2021, Lee also posted an English clip “Bad Tenants” on his channel. It is about a different story that happened to his friend but is also related to landlord-tenant disputes. Lee told his audience in that video, “Bad tenants are not only bad tenants, they are bad people. ” 

Morning Lee is a licensed real estate agent in B.C. and has worked with several brokerages, including Nu Stream Realty Inc. and Royal Pacific Realty.

Affordable housing is a top priority for voters in the 2022 municipal election in Metro Vancouver, according to a survey conducted by the Mustel Group and released last Thursday (Sept. 8) .

Morning Lee was a Coalition Vancouver candidate for city councillor in the 2018 municipal election but he didn’t win.

Lee is a director of the Canadian Community Service Association (CCSA). 

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References:

Morning Lee bio page on the NPA website: 

https://npavancouver.ca/morning-lee/

吸毒者和流浪者满大街，暴力犯罪之都，亚裔歧视之都， - 这是你想要的温哥华吗？

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Euz3K7B-_7UDG1pEOjPRdg

Morning Lee: Personal Real Estate Corporation

https://www.realtor.ca/agent/2002019/morning-lee-3107-kingsway-vancouver-british-columbia-v5r5j9

2018 Vancouver civic election results
https://vancouver.ca/your-government/election-results-2018-table.aspx