All Forum Posts by: Tim Dastis

great thanks - I was unaware that the 5 day grace was not required.  The lease simply states If any of the rent is not paid by the fifth (5th) day of the month, Tenant must pay a late fee of $ 50 as additional rent.  I use online processing or have my tenants deposit into an account so I don't deal with checks in the mail or anything like that.

 Home is in my personal name.  Late fees ($50 per month) were charged. 

At this point, I don't think I want to evict since it's probably not worth the effort, but I do want to LEGALLY have grounds to not renew their lease.  

Even though my lease says a late fee is charged if rent is not paid by the 5th of the month, can I immediately send a notice to cease for late payments on the 2nd?  Looking at the truth-in-renting it says

I dropped the ball by not sending a notice to cease when this stuff first started happening.  Now it would appear to me that I need to send the notice this month and hope they pay an additional month between now and September late, which would give me the legal ground to not renew the lease.

Thoughts on this?

thanks for the advice - reading the truth-in-renting it gives "Habitual late payments of rent" as a reason for not renewing the lease.  There's pretty specific guidelines I have to follow, including a notice to cease, followed by reminders every time we accept a late payment after that notice, but it is a valid reason to not renew the lease.  I'll start with the notice to cease this month (assuming the June 1 rent will be late) and that should give me grounds to not renew the lease.

If you think I'm getting myself into trouble with this strategy let me know!

I guess the main thing is I don't want to file for eviction (money), go to court myself or hire my lawyer (time or money), and have them show up with the rent in hand which I know they are capable of producing.

The most recent event was the window balances breaking on some windows.  I'm working on getting it fixed whether they pay or not, but the tenant has already stated they are withholding the rent until this issue is fixed.  Should I simply not fix it and evict since their argument won't hold up in court?

Wow - thanks for this info.  Currently they're struggling to pay the rent.  The fair market value (and what I rent my other unit for) is $150 or so higher than what they are paying.  I don't know if that would make them leave or not...my fear is that they will simply sign the lease and not pay the rent.

If they simply pay their rent I don't mind dealing with the small nonsensical issues they have with the unit but these are just not my ideal tenant that I'd like to have in my rental...

I purchased my first rental property (triplex) 7 months ago and have had pretty good success with it thus far minus a few hiccups here and there.  

In my one unit however I have trouble tenants who are habitual late-rent payers.  I probably have been too lenient but with juggling 3 units plus purchasing a new primary residence that needed major renovations I was a little hesitant to evict.

Regardless, here we are again nearing the first of the month and the excuses are coming in as to why rent is late.  With 4 months to go I'm not sure if it's even worth it to evict (they have 5 business days per my lease until it is late, so that's June 8 and it may not come to that).

My question really is how to end the lease and make the tenants move out.  I had a RE lawyer write my lease but it doesn't really say anywhere about non-renewal.  Here is my language:

So I could really use some guidance as to how to send a notice, let them know, etc that I do not wish to renew the lease with them and request that they move out at the lease end date, 9/30/17.  Any advice at all is greatly appreciated.  BP has been a great resource for navigating my first property! 

@Paul Le thanks for the advice  I won't be attempting to rent the place ASAP as I will be renovating the place and making it my primary residence.  I have plenty of pictures of the damage- I do have before pictures but not incredibly well documented (lesson learned) so hopefully that won't kill me

The money is likely there in the budget to do a lot of the repairs but since I am turning this into a renovation it will probably be performed by myself to save on total cost (I won't touch this money as part of the renovations of course).

Good to know.  If it came down to court I am fairly confident I would win with ease due to my lease and documentation, but it is always scary as a first time landlord.  I am currently purchasing a triplex investment property and I'm glad to have learned some lessons from this experience

@Mike McCarthy I definitely agree - the problem is I never got any of this in writing, and he is already threatening legal action if I keep his security deposit.  I'm not worried about anything holding up in court (if it even comes to that) but I want to make sure I do everything by the book to make sure I don't get screwed.

He's already made comments like "I'll just say you kicked me out" and "you're gonna end up owing me a lot more than this" etc etc so hopefully this will work out

@David 

@David O I was just referring to the as-agreed 1/2 months rent.  The tenant stated that he would pay that, but then did not.  Is it acceptable to pull that out of the security deposit?

So I called some pest control companies - since the place is vacant and there's only one bed leftover it'll be difficult to find the bedbugs if any exist.  

I agree that it is a bit shady to enforce the lease when I said otherwise.  I guess my other concern is whether or not it is legal to take the .5 month's rent out of the security deposit.  I don't want to include this amount into the deductions if it'll bite me in the *** if he decides to sue.  

Any advice on the legality?