Habitual Late Paying tenant! To evict or put up?

[Jacob Beg]

Hi All- I have a tenant who habitually pays late. In fact, she has started to pay in arrears. To give some background, she has been renting for over three years now. She was not the most qualified tenant at the time but had a stable job and rent paying history. At the time, I was out of the country and was keen to get it rented. In fairness to her, she use to or at least most of the time paid on time prior to the pandemic. 

During the pandemic, she started paying late and had some arrears all of which were paid up without too much hassle. However, she has fallen in this habitual routine of paying at the end of the month. I decided against charging any late fee in the past.

She is back in full time employment along with her adult children who are also on the lease and in full time employment but my contact is mostly restricted to her and she is quite unresponsive to my repeat requests that she pay as per lease. She was quite upset on the suggestion that I will start charging late fee if she continues with this. Frankly, I don't want to charge late fees either. I am also worried that the one month sec deposit won't cover any lost rent or potential damages if she moves on overnight. Falling short of not renewing the lease, what else can be done to bring her to comply with the lease. So this month's rent which was due on the 1st is not paid and with the rent being around 3K, this has the potential to balloon up quickly.

[Jim K.]

@Jacob Beg

You've allowed the behavior for a long time. It's going to be difficult to change it. I know this doesn't help you, but this is one of the worst side effect of letting late-payers stretch out the late-paying.

You could try a frank conversation about how things need to change, how you need that rent on time. How you'll be forced to charge a late fee to offer her the convenience of paying as late as she has. You just don't have the money to cover her. It's not in your budget for this rental.

But probably nothing is going to change until you have to get rid of her. And you can be damned well sure that when she goes, she will insist that she paid the rent every month "just as soon as I had it," and that should have been good enough for you. The cognitive dysfunction necessary to forget the actual terms of the lease has probably already happened upstairs for this tenant.