Basic Steps When You Need To Evict A Tenant
You’ve concluded that it’s time to evict your tenant, now what? First, in just about every jurisdiction in North America tenants have rights. As an educated landlord, it’s important you understand the basics of those local landlord and tenant rights.
These basics become even more important when it comes to evicting a tenant. This becomes the how and why of an eviction. Do you need to provide tenants with a 14 day eviction notice? Or is it 30 days? Does it even need to be written or does a verbal notice count?
Perhaps more importantly, are you even allowed to evict them for the reason you intend? Some regions are so biased towards protecting tenants that what you believe is grounds for eviction could get you sued for an illegal eviction attempt.
I’m all for protecting tenants rights, but the rules should be fair to both sides, and sometimes when you look closely, this may not be the case. This is even more reason for you to know the local eviction legislation before you have to need it.
As some quick absurd examples, some regions make it illegal to evict tenants in the winter. You still have to make your mortgage payments, but bad tenants get to stay on until it’s warm outside.
Other areas make it illegal to evict tenants for having pets, even if it’s against the lease or it was decided before they moved into the one bedroom apartment that you couldn’t accept their Great Dane. Some of the tenant legislation out there simply protects tenants from their own stupidity. I don’t think I can put it any other way.
You also have to understand what you cannot do to help tenants along. This ranges from threatening your tenants, which is a big no no just about everywhere, to disconnecting utilities. I’ve even heard of landlords taking away front doors “for repair” and having this take several days to complete. I don’t know anywhere where this is legal and in many places it could result in substantial fines and charges against the landlord.
Learn The Local Landlord Tenant Laws
So what can a landlord do? Well as I mentioned, first step is to learn the basic eviction laws in your area. Often you can find this out through a quick Google search for “landlord tenant rules” or “landlord tenant bylaws” and by adding your local city, town, state or province.
With any luck, there is a local government number you can call for information or at least a website or two that provides the basic information. This can put you on the right track and get you started.
Depending on where you are, this could lead to a tribunal system where they have hearings to determine whether tenants should be evicted or provided extra time. Or it might involve a much simpler system of just providing written notice that you are terminating a lease and need to include why. At this point, it’s your job to understand your options.
What Did The Tenant Say?
The next piece of advice that has become invaluable for me when evicting a tenant is to document everything. I’m not just talking about the eviction part either. I try to document all the interactions I have with my tenants. For the ultra organized, this might involve keeping files for each rental property/tenant you have.
My preference is to use email to follow up on conversations. I can recap verbal conversations in the email and any decisions that came about and send it off to the tenant. Now I have a written record I can fall back on which can be very handy if problems pop up later.
By having everything documented, it prevents an eviction turning into a he said/she said situation, especially when you can provide an email string showing everyone was aware of what was happening.
So there you have it. That is the basics of evicting a tenant. Learn the local landlord tenant legislation and document everything. If you can spend some time in advance learning the rules, it can help you avoid many problems before they even come up, but better late than never. As for documenting everything, this can be a good idea for just about anything.