As a property owner or landlord, there are lots of things you can do to push for on-time rent payments. But there will be times a tenant will still make late payments or miss rent payments altogether. It is important to know the best way to handle them in these situations. Most landlords establish a step-by-step process that the tenant can follow to ensure that their response is both timely and consistent.
Encourage Paying On Time
One of the first and most important things you can do as a Cedar Park property manager is to encourage your tenant to pay their rent on time. The best ways to do this are through regular communication and convenient online rental payment options. Staying in contact with your tenant – even if things are going fine – encourages better and constant communication when things get tricky. What’s more, you can help motivate your tenant to keep their payments on time by making rent payments easy and convenient.
Check Payment Records
If a tenant’s rent payment is still overdue, you could double-check your records and make sure that it is late and not a written error. Also, double-checking your lease documents can help determine whether your tenant is still in the agreed grace period for on-time payments. Sometimes a late payment isn’t late. It is essential to have your facts in line before you move on to the next step.
Send a Late Notice
When the grace period has passed and you still haven’t received the rent payment, you need to send a reminder to your tenant about the late rent. This can be an official or a friendly reminder, just make sure to put it in writing and document your delivery method.
Call Your Tenant
If you’ve established positive, communication with your tenant, it’s essential to continue that when handling late or missing rent payments. You can understand a lot about the situation and find out why the payment is late by simply giving your tenant a friendly phone call. Although your tenant may not want to discuss the details of the situation, typically when they are facing sudden financial hardship, even a brief conversation could accomplish a lot. Besides, be careful not to call your tenant repeatedly or demand payment. This is considered harassment, which is illegal.
Send a Pay or Quit Notice
If you have tried reminders and the rent payment has overpassed your lease’s grace period and other late payment terms, it is time to send your tenant a pay or quit notice. This kind of notice is an official document that expresses your desire to pursue action against your tenant. The notice should include the amount of cash the tenant owes, the deadline to pay in full, and your intent to evict if these conditions are not fulfilled. Make sure to follow state and local laws that govern when such notices can be sent and how they must be delivered to the tenant.
Start the Eviction Process
When all else fails, it might be the time to pursue legal action against your tenant. This is the eviction process, which needs a court ruling in most areas. In lots of places, it’s illegal to forcibly evict a tenant or even change the locks until the court proceedings are finished. The proceedings could take months and can be costly for those involved. But to avoid delays or having the judge rule in your tenant’s favor, it is essential to follow the law and the evictions process to the letter.
Keep it Professional
Lastly, it’s important to keep a few things in mind while you work with your tenant. First, don’t accept partial rent payments Take any amount of money and you will just restart the eviction process from the very beginning. Just be sure to document everything, including the phone calls. At last, it is most crucial to maintain your professionalism and adhere to the terms of your lease. You may not want to, but enforcing your lease is a crucial part of managing your rental property as a business.
Dealing with late or missing rent payments can be a time-consuming headache. That is why many rental properties owners hire property managers like Real Property Management Longhorn to do it for them. Contact us online to learn more about our quality services.
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