Five-Day Notice to Non Compliant Tenant

[Regina Bailey]

I have a tenant who's been very difficult for the past several months especially when it comes to communicating with us regarding late rent payments etc. She's been a long-standing tenant who was grandfathered in from the previous owner. Anyway, for the past couple of years, when came around to notifying about her lease renewal and rent increase, she always managed to complain about repairs/issues we've supposedly neglected to fix in her apartment. At this point she says that she will not renew her lease for another year until the repairs have been fixed for which we have addressed every time. Now mind you, this is a person that never calls and reports these issues throughout the year but manages to address them around the time of her lease renewal and rent increase.

Back in March of this year, she was notified (through DocuSign) once again about her lease renewal and rent increase. The letter also mentioned that if we don't hear from her by a certain date, we will assume that the lease will not be renewed for another year. We've also tried giving her the same letter in person but have been unsuccessful. Her lease expired as of June 30th and rent was paid up until then as well.

Regarding her rent payments, they have been very stagnant...possibly every two to three months. She makes her rent payments through PayPal, so there's no way to prevent her from sending these payments. We’ve tried giving five-day notices, but this has been rather challenging needless to say. She's ignored our calls and doesn’t answer her door. We've tried sending her texting messages with the same results.

At this point, we've consulted with an attorney, and they said that the five-day notice must be given to her in person before we can give a thirty-day notice to vacate the premise. These steps must be followed before we can begin the eviction process. It's been almost a month now and I'm still trying to give her this five-day notice. I'm stumped… Does anyone have any other suggestions? I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

[Greg Scott]

Are you sure you need to hand her the 5-day notice?  Is that a local requirement?

In most places, taping the notice to the door will suffice.  We sometimes send a copy via email.  For a more difficult tenant, we might also send it USPS.  If the resident appears litigious, we've even used certified mail.

On another note, turn off your PayPal.  If you ever need to evict someone, this could blow up any future evictions.  When you accept a partial payment (even automatically) it terminates any eviction proceedings you have with that resident.