Thank you very much for purchasing our
Eviction Guide for Landlords
Using the RTDRS in Alberta
We hope you find the information useful and relevant to your situation. If there is anything you find confusing about the guide, or you feel you need more information about please feel free to contact me at bill@housez.ca.
Input and feedback from you well help make the future revisions of this guide better and even more helpful. Additionally I am always interested to hear how your eviction worked out.
I have one final favour to ask you now.
After your eviction if you could take a few minutes to let me know how it went it would be appreciated. My intent is to take some of the best stories and potentially put them either as further addendum’s to the guide or potentially a separately with a tenant story book we are also compiling.
To further help with making this process as easy as possible I have also included this bonus video that will walk you through the application form from the RTDRS that you will need to fill out if you are attending a hearing. Love to hear your feedback or any suggestions to improve it.
If you go through RTDRS to evict a tenant, does this become public record against the tenant? For example, if a potential landlord does a Google search on a prospective tenant, will this sort of thing show up?
Hi Lori,
It is public record, but it doesn’t show up in a Google search. You need to do a search at the court house to have access to the information.
Although, if you get a judgment against the tenant for outstanding monies, that shows up on their credit report for ten years! Still not in google, but it does make landlords whoa re diligent much more aware of who they are dealing with.
Bill
Hi,
Could not find any link to the forms in the email you sent, just the link to the video.
Also checked my junk mail, but not there…
Hi Lori,
I emailed the info directly to you last night, not sure what the mixup was.
Sorry for the delay,
Bill
Hi, I just purchased your eviction guide. A tenant moved in on Sept 30th even though the agreement states October 1st. I charged him a daily rate for Sept 30th. Within the first two days of moving in, he has made very inappropriate comments to me (one being sexual harrassment, and the other a racist comment). I am very bothered by this. In addition to that, he is not paying me the entire months rent when I ask for it. He pays half one day then half the next day, He has done that twice, once with the damage deposit, and the other for the first month’s rent. He doesn’t respect my home or the people living in it. I am planning on giving him notice to pack his things and leave my house. Just wanted advice if I can go ahead and do that now as I would like him out by Thanksgiving Monday.
Thanks!
Hi Christina,
Thanks for picking up the guide. Unfortunately your expectations for Monday might be a little high. He hasn’t technically broken the lease and you let him in before paying the security deposit and the rent in full. Tenants should never gain access to a new property without paying the security deposit and the rent in full first. And it should be paid via cash, money order or bank draft, never by check.
However, if he is causing conflicts with the other tenants is damaging the property or is potentially threatening you, then the rules change. The racist comment isn’t illegal, it just makes him a jerk, the sexual harassment though may be something you could involve the police with, depending on how it occurred and whether you have witnesses This wouldn’t be in the lines of the eviction, but it may give you leverage to assist him in making the decision to leave.
Handled wrong, you come off as a landlord trying anything to get rid of a tenant, so you need to be careful and if you have witnesses, that could really benefit you. So just be careful how you proceed there. In the meantime, if you do have to deal with him, make sure you are not a lone so you have witnesses in the future if necessary and if you need to push forward with any harassment charges.
Bottom line though, unless he has caused conflicts in the property or threatened you or other tenants, you may not be able to do much right now, except for document it all. He doesn’t sound like a very good tenant and he will be causing you problems in the near future most likely, so start documenting everything now just in case. If you read through the guide I explain how important this can be.
Another option to look at may be refunding him the whole months rent and security deposit if he leaves my Monday. You might be out a few dollars, but at least it gets him out.
Regards,
Bill
I paid for eviction forms via pay pal and cannot find the forms.
Hi Terry,
There should have been a link in the email you received that allowed you to download the package. I’ll email them directly, but please check to make sure the email didn’t end up in your junk folder.
Thanks,
Bill
Just as an update on this, it turns out the email ended up in the person’s junk folder. If you order any of my packages and cannot find out how to download them, first check your junk folder to see if it ended up in there by accident. Otherwise send me a quick email and I will get back to you as soon as I am in front of a computer again.
Regards,
Bill Biko
I have a tenant that I thought was going to be good. Turns out that her cheque took 8 days to come back to my account as insufficent funds. I gave the keys as everything seemed ok until I checked my account. I have purchased your guide today and I will serve her paperwork tomorrow. What is the max time that she would be able to stay legally stay in the house?
First rule of landlording, first month’s rent and security deposit need to be paid in cash!
Normally it would be about two to four weeks depending on circumstances surrounding the eviction and how much sympathy she can garner with the hearing officers. It looks like you just picked up the forms package I have, not the eviction guide. If you are using the eviction forms it may add a couple weeks to the time period.
If she doesn’t leave after the eviction date set out on the forms, you still have to go to either the RTDRS or the courts to have an eviction hearing. You can bypass this by going directly to the RTDRS and filing right away.
Side note, if the tenant you are evicting has young kids, you can automatically expect the courts to provide them with two to four extra weeks to move.
Regards,
Bill
I have a very sticky, and likely, very unusual problem. We paid the initial costs to get our kids into a house, with the written assurance that the property would become ours in the event that they were ever more than 1 month behind on the mortgage payments. We ended up paying lawyer’s fee and several months missed payments. The title to the property is now in my name and my wife’s. We have agreed to allow our daughter, now divorced, remarried and divorced again, to remain in the house for $1250.00 per month. She has unilaterally decided she will not make this payment. That could be a problem, as we never considered this “rent”. This money goes toward part of the mortgage payment and part to her thousands of dollars of debt to us. However, it recently came to our attention that there are 2 other teenagers living in the house, without our permission, and they, along with our oldest grandson, are smoking pot in the house. Can we evict them on this basis?
Hi David,
I also answered your eviction for drug question on the other page, but this extra information really helps. Hopefully your lease states who is occupying the property. If it does it’s far easier to get rid of the extra teenagers. If they are not on the lease, they cannot stay and you can give them a notice to vacate the premises.
As for the drug use, it’s far easier to evict for non-payment of rent and include the drugs as an extra issue. I see you ordered the eviction forms which might be a good way to start, but if she is never going to pay and is going to stick to her guns about that you may want to ramp this up directly to using the RTDRS process to get her out.
If there was some method you could clarify for her that if she does not pay, the debt will never get paid off perhaps you can help her realize what a great situation she is currently in, where here parents are trying to help, and that she shouldn’t waste it.
Good luck,
Bill
Hi there it was said a copy of a 14 day eviction notice would come with the eviction guide? is there a Link
Hi Ezra,
The 14 day eviction and 24 hour eviction forms are all included in the Forms section of the guide. You will find the 14 day eviction plus information on when and how to use it on page 47, 48 and 49. Before you provide a 14 day eviction to your tenant though, you may want to check this video out which explains a faster way to evict a tenant. “When Not to Use a 14 Day Eviction Notice”
Let me know if you need any additional assistance.
Regards,
Bill