Hovsepian Raymond the Law Offices

I decided to retain an attorney and was referred to Raymond who charged me $250 consultation fee to tell me the UD is no good. Raymond suggested I accept my loss and dismiss my previous at-fault UD case and serve new notices for non-payment of rent & owner occupy. He charged me $1240 to prepare the new notices, file it with the court and served it to the tenant. This was in October 2020. By the end of January, the tenant had to pay 25% of back rent owed to be protected by the eviction moratorium. Raymond recommended that this was our best hope - so we waited. Tenant ended up mailing a check through his attorney on the last day so we were unable to pursue them further. However, the check was fraudulent & ended up being from a closed account that later bounced. Raymond said there is nothing we can do - and that our best shot is to pursue an owner occupy. On more than one occasion he recommended to settle with the tenant to get the property back and forget the $40,000 owed. After he spoke to the tenant's attorney, they requested for all rent owed to be forgiven and 60 days to move out. I refused, and told Raymond I'm ready to go to trial over this. After summons was issued for owner occupy UD, the tenant never responded with an answer. Raymond charged $260 for default judgement fees. We later obtained a writ ($358) and gave it to sheriff. Tenant challenged writ for dismissal saying they weren't properly served. Raymond charged $1526 to appear for writ dismissal hearing. After, Raymond said that there is a new settlement in play that factors in forgiving 20% of rent owed from April 2020-March 2020 and a $25,000 money judgement. Raymond then charged me $1,586 for preparing the settlement & appearing in court. In the end - it took Raymond 2 attempts to evict Paul Horne, a total of 8 months, and a total of $4,860 to settle with my tenant on the condition that I forgive almost $25,000 of civil debt in exchange for a $25,000 money judgment that I will most likely never see.