I hope this does not sound familiar to you, but it does sound too familiar to too many landlords. The first of the month comes and rent is due, but where’s the check?
You decide to give it an extra day or two in case the mail is slow because the tenant has been great about paying the past.
A couple days go by and its the weekend… I’ll just wait until Monday you think. Monday comes and you get called out on urgent business.
In fact, its not until Wednesday that you even remember that the tenant’s rent is late and by then, its 11 at night. So, on Thursday, you finally call and get the answering machine. I’ll give him a day to get back to me.
Friday comes and goes: no call back. You decide to give it the weekend. Still no word, so you finally go out and post a notice to pay or quit. That gets a call from the tenant. That’s odd they say… it must have been lost in the mail. I’ll resend it out to you.
Well… by now you get the idea. In the end, you don’t even start the eviction process until the first of the next month (if you’re lucky) and then it takes time to do that entire process.
First off, I hope this isn’t you and I am sorry to say it has been me in the past, but let me share with you a much better solution.
What if, instead of the above you had a very non-emotional system set up. Tenants have a 30 day grace period to pay: the period from when you paid rent on the first the month before to the first of the next month. If it is not received on the first, its late.
On the second you put up a Notice To Pay Or Quit. After the legal amount of time you need to wait (usually 3 to 5 days depending on your local laws), if they still have not paid you turn their lease and the Notice To Pay Or Quit over to a Collection Attorney (links to exclusive content for our Real Estate Investor Bronze Members only) and they start the eviction and collect unpaid rent, late fees and pay the attorneys fees (as outlined in your Rental Agreement or Lease Agreement). Isn’t that a much cleaner, easy to implement system?
So, go ahead and look in your phone book to find a collection attorney and use the Collection Attorney Interview Questions as a starting point to find the right one to work with you and your properties.
Until my next post,
James
