The Guide To Dealing With Late Rent and Eviction

Late rent and eviction often go hand in hand. When rent isn’t paid, you will most likely need to enter the eviction phase. One of the most important things I tell owners is that when you are collecting rent, consistency is key. If you are not consistent and your tenants don’t know what to expect from you, you will have issues. Rent at Advanced Solutions Property Management is due on the first of every month. It’s late after the 5th and if we receive nothing, the notice to pay or quit gets posted on the 6th. After that, the tenant has three days to respond and either pay or move out. At the end of the three days, if we have had no response, we will move into the eviction process. This is our process, we follow it every time and it helps us stay consistent.

If a tenant is late, make sure that pay or quit notice gets posted on the door the very next day that you expect but do not have the rent payment. They will hopefully see the notice and realize the importance of paying rent on time. You have to train them to pay when it is due, but you cannot train them if you are not consistent yourself.

When the rent is not paid, you have to go forward with the eviction or let them continue to be late. If you need helping making that decision, here is something to consider: once a tenant has crossed the halfway point of the month and is still late with rent, 80 percent of the time they will not be able to catch up and get current on their rent. There might be a few tenants who manage to come up with the rent and then pay their rent again the following month, but statistically if you let them go, they aren’t going to be able to catch up. This is not the fun part of being a landlord. However, when you are consistent and your process is precise, it gets a little easier.

As soon as payments stop coming in, we make an effort to contact the tenants. However, if we do not hear from them and they don’t contact us, we move forward with the eviction. We will contact the lawyer we keep on retainer for these things and we let the lawyer, who is pretty efficient, handle things from there.

Remember that consistency is the most important thing you can do when collecting rent and avoiding evictions. If you have any questions on this topic, please contact us at Advanced Solutions Property Management.