Not renewing a lease

[Jennifer Pletcher]

Hi! I am a new landlord, so I have a question. We have a tri-plex, and we inherited 2 tenants when we took the house over in November of this past year. One tenant is awesome, and one is.....not. She is continuously late with rent, a constant complainer about things that are wrong, keeps having her boyfriends pit pull puppy over the "visit", smoking in the house (we have a new tenant in the apartment above her who keeps reporting her activities).....and many other things that aren't worth getting in to. We have tried giving her the benefit of the doubt, but we are all done.

If by some miracle she doesn't get evicted before her lease is up, what is the best way to explain to her that we are not renewing her lease? We are doing extensive work on the house this coming spring.....

[Steve Babiak]

You might want to consider giving an additional month's notice in advance if your lease only requires 30 days, so as to give the problem tenant enough time to find a new victim landlord.