Rent due today. No check.

[Richard Sanchez]

Hello BP, Today is the first month of the lease where tenant was to pay by either mail, person, online. I was at the property doing a quick fix a few days before rent was due and tenet said they mailed the check. It is due today and no payment. According to the lease they have two days before any late payment fee is added (probably should have done same day in retrospect). My question is should I issue a "pay or quit" notice end of day or should I wait another day since snail mail take 3-5 days? Any advice or recommendations would be appreciated. This is my first rental. Thank you.

[Christine Kankowski]

If it is not late until day 3, you need to wait, in my opinion, until day 3 to post the notice, especially since they said it was mailed. 

We have a property mgmt company, so we make it due on the 1st and offer several ways to pay on time- online tenant portal can also do auto-pay, 7-11 cash payments get directed to us and credit card payments. 

We call them at the end of day 1 and let them know late fees will be posted to their account in the morning, but we would prefer if they could log in and pay.   The nice thing about online payments is they can pay after banking hours, when they are on vacation, etc.