Collecting late rent can be actually frustrating if you are a landlord. Collecting money from someone who is using your rental property is the main reason why you lent your property in the first place.
Getting money out can be a real problem when the tenant starts the eviction process. Tenants usually get angry when they get a notice that the eviction process has begun. Certain tenants decide to abandon the process whereas others fight the eviction. Landlords can even decide to leave as soon as possible without inflicting any damage to the property.
One scenario that you might not consider is when the tenant tries to get in touch with you about paying the rent late after the eviction process has begun. Here are certain things that you can do in order assess what is best for you:
Partial Payment Before Filing
The hardest part of navigating a late rent pay is when tenants offer to pay partial rent and promise to pay you the rent much later in the future. If you decide to pay the rent late, you are deciding to waive off the eviction process. For instance if you are deciding to send the notice to the tenant on a Monday and accept the partial payment on Wednesday, the Monday notice will not be valid. If they fail to pay the 2nd part of the late rent on Wednesday, you will not be able to revert the Monday notice. You will have to start the process all over again. However ultimately you will decide whether you want to get the partial payment or quit the timeline. If the tenants are good ones or they are barely late, there have been some outside circumstances and then you can decide to give them a break. However ultimately it is your property and you will be able to negotiate and decide how much longer you want to delay the payment. The tenant can however fail to meet the negotiated deadline or make the rent payment in full, the landlord can always decide to start the eviction process from the missed date and not the date on which the payment was actually or originally missed.
Pay or Quit Notice
The quit notice is sent to the tenants when the payment is late. The notice will give the tenant the much awaited time to pay the late rent before the landlord takes the next step to file the paperwork with the court. It all depends on the state. The time period might be somewhere from 3 to 14 days. When you get the payment in full with the late fees, it will mean that you are getting rid of the eviction process. Basically, accepting the payment will waive off your right to process the eviction of the tenant for the non-payment of the rent.
You can even accept the late rent payment and fees if they are paid in full irrespective of whatever happens. As long as the tenant decides to pay by the notice’s deadline, the landlord must receive the payment and he will then have no right to file anything in the court.
If you have started the eviction process with the court, your tenant might still call and offer to pay the rent. If you get the payment in full or even late rent payment, the court will dismiss your eviction process. If the process is evicted, you can basically decide to start the process again. Certain landlords do not accept the payment after there has been a filing in the court. However others might decide to get the payment in full. Certain landlords become happy to get the rent payment either it is partial or it is full and till the eviction process starts. If you deny the late rent payment and don’t accept it, the process will continue and your rights will continue to keep going. However it is on the landlord to reject the rent payment after the papers have been filed.
Several countries have clearly defined laws that permit landlords to accept partial payments of late rent without fully waiving their rights to the eviction process. Some countries just allow the landlords to get partial payments without waiving their rights to the eviction process. You must get all the information you can on eviction laws in the country in order to see exactly what is being done and you cannot accept late rent payments following the beginning of the eviction process.
The Final Choice
It is finally up to the landlord to make the eviction process and payments. It is their personal view according to the situation that emerges. While it is on the landlord to decide the decisions they want to make it varies by case to case. It is a better idea to decide the procedure that you follow with each tenant.
It is not a good idea to delay the eviction process over and over again as it can leave you with a string of partial payments. It also sends a very bad message to the tenants as in this way you will be pushing them to the limits. They say it is much better to go through the eviction process and try to get some really good tenants instead of messing around with tenants who will make you very frustrated with late rents.
Eventually, the whole process can be really frustrating, but ultimately it is the landlords choice as to what to do. If you can easily accept late payments, you can easily decide to go for the late payments if you do not want to get the eviction process started. On the other hand, if you however do decide to begin the eviction process all over again, the process can become very frustrating.