Do You Provide A Late Rent Notice To Tenants?
If you ‘re not, you could be creating future problems for yourself! A late rent notice doesn’t have to be an eviction notice, it can simply be a written notice to the tenant explaining rent is overdue and needs to be paid.
To be truly effective, the notice should have the date, the address, the tenant’s name(s), your name and contact information and a warning that if it isn’t paid promptly, you will take the necessary steps required.
Sounds a little heavy handed doesn’t it?
Well, it’s not when you find yourself moving forward with an eviction and here’s why that late rent notice becomes so important.
A Late Rent Notice Can Become Evidence
Evidence! Yes, that’s really what you’re creating, evidence and a paper trail.
Hopefully the warning notice works on it’s own and the tenant pays up or at least contacts you with a plausible explanation, but in some cases it’s just the start of the problem.
Late rent once can become habitual or a sign of financial issues, neither of which works out well for a landlord and which is why it’s important to create that paper trail.
Landlords typically don’t start the day looking to evict their tenant, but at the same time they also need to be prepared to do it if the situation warrants it and evidence is key to successfully evicting someone.
With evictions currently taking between two and four weeks just for a hearing not having a proper paper trail or backup evidence when you start an eviction, many landlords find their eviction thrown out or delayed even longer.
I know, my tenants would never do this to me. Or at least that’s what many landlords think and by the time they find out otherwise it’s too late.
Granted it may be a one off, it might have been an oversight and it wouldn’t matter whether you provided a late rent notice or not. You would simply get paid once you reached out to the tenant.
But what if you didn’t get paid, or what if it happened again the next month and the next month and so on? You can’t back date late payment notices, you need to do it when it happens so you have the proper paperwork if the situation goes downhill.
We don’t put seatbelts on after the crash, we put them on to protect us from the potential crash and that’s how you should be thinking about notices that you provide to your tenant about late or unpaid rent.
They’re simply there to protect you in case of a crash!
If you’re considering providing an actual eviction notice to tenants Alberta uses a 14 day eviction notice for non-payment. To purchase one of these forms or for more information about eviction notices visit these links 5 Reasons Not To Use An Eviction Notice and Why Free Eviction Notice’s Aren’t What They’re Cracked Up To Be
You had tenants who breached the lease by failing to pay full rent four times during the year. They never gave advance notice of being short on rent, only told you on the due date. You issued an eviction notice via email. Now, they’re asking for a refund for the portion of the month they won’t occupy (prorated rent), even though they breached the lease and signed a new one. You didn’t seek new tenants, and November’s rent is also short. You’re questioning how they could be owed anything given the repeated breaches and unpaid rent.
Can landlord take portion from deposit in addition to damages , unpaid utilities etc
So many questions. Why would you have signed a new lease with them if they were constantly late? Did you give them written notice paying late was unacceptable each time? Why didn’t you evict after the second time? Did you provide eviction notices each time they were late? Eviction notices should be served in person, not via email although there are exceptions.
they’re responsible for rent fo 4th month, no pro-rating.
You can take fund out of their damage deposit you just have to account for all of the funds and where they are allocated.
B
Great article! Does the notice have to be on paper or can an email be sufficient?
Hey Cindy!
If you’ve established a history of interacting with your tenant via email or text then it will be accepted as properly notifying them. If you’ve been consistently delivering notices in person and never emailed them before then it would most likely get thrown out if you ended up in a hearing.
Bill