My name is Tiea Vincent and I'm the broker and owner of Roundtable Property Management. And we're going to discuss what to do when your tenant stops paying rent.
Communicate
The first thing you want to do when the tents are paying rent is talk to them. Reach out to them. Try to communicate. Text them, call them. Email them, whatever you need to do to get in contact with them and find out what's going on. Oftentimes, the tenant may say, you know, my paycheck was little shore or something came up. I'm going to have the rent by the tent if they are promising to pay within, say, two weeks. It may be something that you want to work out with them versus putting them through eviction or starting the eviction process where you're going to start getting filing fees and attorney fees when you could have just waited maybe 10 days or so.
3 Day Notice
Whether they answer your phone calls and text or whether they don't, you definitely want to make sure that you put a three day notice on their door. This is a legal notice required by the state of Florida that gives them three days to pay their rent. This doesn't mean that you'll evict them in three days. It just means that you could start the process within three days. For example, if you were to post the three day notice on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday will not count as the three days. Also, if Monday happens to be a holiday, it will not count either. So your day count would start on Tuesday.
Is the tenant Communicating with you?
Once you've delivered the three day notice, you have to decide if they are communicating. Maybe you create some type of payment plan with them. But if they're not communicating, they're not talking to you and letting you know what's going on, it's time to go ahead and for them to an attorney. That attorney is going to need your three day letter. They're going to need a copy of the lease. Even if the lease has expired and the tennis has gone month to month, they still need a copy of that lease. They're also going to need a copy of the tenant statement, something that's really important as you want to make sure when you're delivering that three day, you're only putting rent on the three day. So if you have built in late fees into your agreement with them, you don't want to put the late fees on the three day. You're only doing a demand for the rent only.
Need more help?
At roundtable property management we have attorneys on hand that can do evictions at any time. If you don't want to go through the process yourself, you're welcome to contact us with any questions and we can actually do the eviction process for you or try to help communicate with your tenant, even if we're not managing the property. If you have questions about that process or anything else with property management, feel free to reach out to me. My number is below.
