I drove home to my apartment complex today and saw some property of an evicted tenant sitting outside of one of the garages in the complex.  With the tenant being evicted and their property still on the apartment grounds, are the goods fair game?  There are 2 motorcycles and other items sitting there.  Does the owner of the bikes still have legal ownership or does the apartment complex now have ownership since they were evicted?  The apartment complex says they don't care what happens to them, but couldn't they sell them and make up some of the lost money for the eviction?  I need advice...

No, they can't sell it.  They have to leave it outside for at least 24 hours before they can do anything with it, at least here in Illinois.

As for the general public, if it's outside by the dumpster, it's open game.  I know when we've bounced people out of here, I'll go pick around it for anything good.

I have an eviction date to get rid of one of my tenants on dec 2nd. If shes not out by then I'll have the court send a baliff over to my property to hold the tenant back while I throw her shit in the front yard. If anyone takes anything its not up to me.

Simple... if it is not yours, don't touch it.

It belongs to the former tenant.  It is not fair game unless it has been placed by the former tenant in the dumpster.

Your former tenant is down, don't kick him.

OK, here's what I did.  I took what items were outside and put them into one of my garages.  When the evicted people call on the whereabouts of their stuff, I'll have the apartment complex call me and arrange a time when they can come and get it.  That's the most I can do.  If I leave the stuff out, it will be gone in the morning.  I called the local Cop Shop and talked to an on-duty officer and she said that was a cool thing to do.

Ya! What you did was the right thing to do. The stuff would have been stolen by lesser people.

Taking someone's stuff when they are down on their luck is just plain wrong and cowardly to boot.

That was a very decent thing to do.  You certainly had no obligation to do that, but it was a very compassionate act on your part.  Shows a lot of character, IMO.

Here in NY, the landlord has an obligation to secure the property of an evicted person for a period of time , even after the eviction; they CAN'T simply leave it on the curb where it can be damaged or looted. If they did that, the tenant could take them to small claims court for the value of the damaged property.

You can't just grab the stuff  sitting on the curb,because the tenant hasn't surrendered ownership of his or her personal effects simply by virtue of being evicted. I cannot believe that any other state would treat it any differently.

Here in South Carolina, the property is fair game for anyone once it's put on the curb.  A few years ago when I needed the money, I helped a friend with about two dozen evictions.  Typically, we'd work hard to get the property from the apartment, which could be on the second or third floor, to the curb then often some of the tenants who knew how to "work the system," would them load the stuff into their truck.  We legally had to move the stuff out of the apartment, so they took advantage of us to get us to carry the junk out for them.  It sucked to do work like that for a deadbeat, but it's the law.z

You are a good man, WillysWagon.

The hard part now is to get ahold of the owners.  Since they were evicted, I'll ask the apartment complex to call the tenants emrgency contact.  This is the best way I can think of to get hold of them.