TexasCHLforum.com

When I was 18, one of my first jobs was working for a company that did repos and evictions. Yes, there are companies that actually do that. Most of the cases we got were really bad offenders...people who had not made mortgage payments in years and were using lawyers to block evictions and people who were hiding vehicles. We would get called by the Sheriff's department who, in the case of the home evictions would set up an appointment, and we would meet him at the property. If the party being evicted did not show up, which was usually the case, the officer would force entry and we would pack up their stuff, take it to storage and change the locks. The sheriff would stay there until we left.

In the case of cars, the Sheriff would give us all the info he had, and we would go try and find the car. I don't know exactly what the law states, but our company policy was that we could not take the car off personal property. Even if we drove up and could see it in the driveway, we could not take it. We had to wait until someone drove it to a public place. In many cases, we would stake out the car until someone took it to Walmart or a restaurant, wait for them to go inside and then grab the car. Right before we would take it, we would call dispatch and tell them where we were and that we were taking it, the dispatcher would send a page (remember those) to the Sheriff's officer who instructed us to get it so he would know what was going on, and we would back a truck up to the car and snag it. It would literally take us about 20 seconds to get the car and get out of there.

I was young and just did what I was told without asking a lot of questions, so I don't know if there is a law against going on to someone's personal property, or if it was just a safety issue. Granted, the cars we picked up had been virtually stolen, as payments had usually not been made in over a year and the drivers were hiding the vehicles, so these were not your run of the mill repos.