You pay the rent or your gone.It's that simple.Even if a property is paid for many landlords stress they have to pay the bank and that gets tenants to pay up.Sometimes not filing eviction but putting the paper on the door will get them to pay.Professional tenants will check at the court house to see if you actually filed.Usually the judge will set up a payment plan to pay some each month on the back rent along with regular rent to catch up.That is usually cheaper for a landlord then them moving and having to recondition and lose rental income waiting for lease up again.If you start going soft that is when the knife goes in the back.When landlords get burned out form doing it for years they start to get mentally drained and let things start sliding.Doesn't matter if you have a 2 unit,20 unit,60 unit apartment or own 10 houses scattered about.If you start to let things slide then tenants talk especially if you are renting other properties to their friends or family.They will talk to each other and start testing the waters coming up with only have the rent or an excuse for no rent etc.

Add to that the fact that the market is very soft, we have decided to do the right thing. 1.

Within 15 minutes of the tenant calling me I was at the unit cleaning it up with my own towels etc.

At any rate I will try to do it softly and with out needing legal act but I will start documenting everything.

Also, I don't want to send a message to other tenants in the building (or other potential tenants in my farm area) that I am soft and they can get away with this going forward.

Their parks look like they threw the towel in now.

Do you know how much money you owe family, friends, hard money - soft money loans?

Towels, linens, etc need to be washed and restocked/reset, not just cleaned and folded. 

Well that's exactly how it will come across to your tenants, no matter how you "soft sell" it.That is a recipe for tenants to potentially make life difficult for you as an owner........can you imagine their friends and colleagues they talk with and their well meaning friends telling them how "unfair" it is that your landlord won't let them have pets.....but the landlord can?

The language in your note sounds soft and ambiguous.