When Good Tenants Go Bad – What You Can’t Do To Make Your Renters To Leave
If you are in the rental business, sooner or later, you are going to have a renter who inexplicably stops paying rent. They may give you the run around with stories about why they can’t pay and promises of a full payment plus late fees just around the corner. Or, they can simply neglect your phone calls and reject to answer the door if you come in person trying to collect rent. Bottom line is, when it comes to this point, such renters will have to be served with a three day notice to leave to start the eviction process.
While you can be frustrated and seduced to take measures into your own hands, it is quite essential to keep to the legal procedure for removing a non-paying renter from your property. Specifically, the law expressly forbids you from doing the next:
Removing Locks
In no way is it legal for you to remove the locks, or put new locks on the property to “lock out” your tenant. It doesn’t matter if they are months behind on their rent, have entirely trashed the house and are in violation of every provision in the lease. They are lawfully protected against a “lock out” and can take you to court to regain entry.
Utility Shut-offs
You can not shut off the water, gas or electricity in an attempt to make your tenants to move out. Again, your renters, however far behind in rent they are, may search for legal recourse against you for this action and may collect heavy fines against you.
Taking Renter’s Property
You can not harass your tenant into moving out. This would include illegally entering the rental unit and taking their property. Only under too specific circumstances (abandonment) is a landlord enabled to remove a tenant’s property.
Physical Removal
Only the illegible authority (as a rule the sheriff’s office or their agents) is allowed to remove a tenant after a writ of possession is received from the court and the legal waiting time has elapsed. This means that you can’t hire your own help to physically move out a occupant.
While the above list describes the major things that you, as a landlord, are not allowed to do to get a tenant to move out, it is not all inclusive. Any number of other creative strategies to harass a tenant to leave are also illegible.
The only legal way to remove a tenant from your property is to go through the legal eviction process. Yes, it takes time and money. Remember that you are able to deduct the unpaid rent for the term that your tenant stays in the property during the eviction process from their security deposit.
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