Delinquent Rent Situation Advice

[Andrew Luong]

Hey BP Team -

Reaching out to you guys here as I've encountered this tenant situation in Sacramento for the first time.

tl;dr highlights

• Tenant is consistently late and has an excuse.  I've constantly reiterated that they should keep me posted or else a late penalty will be assessed but for the most part have been lenient
• This month comes around and I reminded them as I usually have to and mentioned that if they don't pay within a day (rent is already 4 days late past the grace period)
• Tenant proceeds to blaming the late rent on issues and it looks out of frustration they issue a 60 day notice

Advice requested

• Assuming they're moving out in 60-days, how do I get rent for this and the successive months until that time?
• Should I just go ahead and file a 3-day notice and subsequent eviction now?
• Any thoughts on my responses?

I've definitely learned much from this experience but am now in the midst of this and looking for some guidance thoughts!

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Conversation

me: 

Hey Tenant - I wanted to follow up here as the rent has been due on 5/6.  Please let me know if you're able to send it over by tomorrow, otherwise, we'd have to assess the late penalty.

tenant: 

We've been trying to get you guys to get rid of the rats since December. We pay you guys $1,100 every month and it's not fair to be living in these conditions. You guys blatantly ignored the issue for more than 5 months already. I don't know why you guys stopped taking care of the issues with this house. But, it certainly happened after (old property manager0 was no longer the manager. I haven't been able to nag you guys about it consistently because I had to focus on graduating from college. But, I refuse to have my dad work long hours to pay rent when the landowner/manager have no remorse whatsoever and are very insensitive. He wakes up every morning at 4:00am and works 14 hours shifts. It's inhumane to have us living in these conditions. This house is infested with rats, you can use the tiles in the picture as a scale to see the size of them. Last night alone we killed 5 of them. They eat all of our food and make holes everywhere. They run all over the kitchen table, the counters, the fridge, and our furniture. Every time we cook or do anything, we have to disinfect it. It's time consuming and we simply shouldn't have to be doing this. The bathroom have holes, the cabinets have holes, the walls have holes. I tried warning you guys about the damage that they were making but yet you guys ignored the issue. I have more than enough evidence of the numerous time I've tried to reach out to you guys as well as pictures to support my claim. We have kids living in this household and we can't continue waiting on you guys to fix this. So, if you'd like to take this to court then we're all for it. Otherwise, we're just asking for you guys to give us 60 days to move out.

me:

Thanks for your response and we fully understand your frustration. In response to your message, we’ve continually sent out pest control people to take care of the house and have done all we can whenever you’ve asked us for help with the rats. Sorry if you feel like we haven’t done enough.

That said, the matter regarding rent is entirely separate from the pest issue. Regardless of the current condition, rent must be paid and in full by the 7th of the month otherwise it is considered delinquent.

We understand if you think that living in the house is not up to par and that you’d like to move out. 60 days from now puts us at 7/10 and we wish you the best of luck finding your next home and will be happy to answer any references positively whenever they arise.

Sorry that this didn’t work out but if you could help with the rent and keeping me posted on any issues you see up until 7/10, we could try to help.

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In advance, thanks for your thoughts and looking forward to hearing from the brain trust!

Cheers,

Andrew