Winter Evictions

If’ you’ve never heard the song “Hey Baby, It’s Cold Outside”, you’re missing out, it’s a classic. If you don’t know what the rules are about evicting a tenant in the winter where you live, you could be missing out on some cold hard cash, like several months worth of rent.

The rules are different everywhere and with the temperature hovering around -30 degrees Celcius (-22 Fahrenheit) with the wind chill as I start writing, I thought winter evictions might be a timely topic.

Can You Evict Tenants In The Winter?

I think the most common answer is yes, but it can depend. I know, not very definitive as far as an answer goes. Ask tenants and they will almost all answer no, but if you’re getting landlord advise from your tenants you may have a much bigger problem…

The problem is the rules vary from state to state and province to province and it would be unrealistic to know the specific answer for every city, town, state, province, district or country throughout the world. But that’s where the internet comes into play.

I did some quick research and actually couldn’t find any places that allowed tenants to stay, just because it was winter. I started by specifically looking at provinces and states that were known to be more tenant friendly and cold.  I looked at rules in New York state, Minnesota, Ontario, Quebec and Alaska to name a few and all seemed to be pretty specific.

Evictions can take place at any time of the year if tenants are in breach of the lease. Now to be fair, I didn’t check every state, province, city and town, so you’ll want to do some local research of your own just to be well educated about it!

However, just because it isn’t illegal to evict them, there is not guarantee it can be done quickly. There is a ton of leniency built into the laws when it comes to issues like compassion, hard times and basically bad luck. Here it isn’t written anywhere how much time someone has to be out of the property when evicted.

This gives judges and hearing officers the ability to make decisions based on the evidence and this could mean a quick and effective eviction in more grievous situations. While in other cases they can be given 90 days or longer, but with specific conditions in place or it can accelerate the eviction timeline. These would typically be payment conditions, but depending on the scenario they can vary.

Have you evicted a tenant in the winter? If you have leave us a comment and let us know where you’re at! Maybe we can form a mini database of info right here!

To get it started, I’ve not just evicted tenants in the winter, I’ve also done it right before Christmas and no I’m not the grinch, I just play one on TV! Looking forward to your comments.