Thoughts on cancelling the lease of frequent delinquent late payers

I’ve always been of the mindset that I don’t care in the least if someone pays late all the time and is constantly in eviction court, so long as they eventually get paid up and cover court costs before the balif shows up. It all ends up even in the end, and its not my job to judge.

In instances where a resident has a house that isn’t terrible though, I’m considering rethinking this. If someone is constantly behind on rent, they likely aren’t keeping their house up, and seem much more likely than the average resident to abandon a house years down the road that is a total wreck (letting roof leaks run, not take care of the furnace, etc)

The exception would be if the resident is in a 1960s-1970s home in mediocre shape, as I really don’t want that person to leave and have to deal with taking the home back and tearing it down or fixing it up.

Do any other park owners have a policy they feel strongly about on how to deal with a resident who frequently falls behind on rent and is in and out of eviction court?

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My community rules and my business practices are strictly enforced. Residents that pay late create work and cost money. I do not tolerate late payments. 3 strikes and they are out. I do not take ownership of homes, residents are responsible for selling their own home and when evicted are still responsible for lot rent until the home is sold and a new owner takes over lot rent. All my residents know the rules and as a result I have no late payments.
The reason tenants pay late is because landlords allow it. When they know the consequences they will find the money and pay on time or sell and move before they get evicted.

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Ditto what Greg said!

3 lates in a year and we terminate the rental agreement.

Do it once and the word gets out you don’t play. If you continue to allow late payments their friends in the park will start paying late too.

My pet peeve is when someone doesn’t respond to our 3 day notices.

Demand for your spaces is great! When people are dying to get in, you know you have a good thing and you can keep everyone in line.

When you have 50% empty POH with 30% to remodel and rent is $750 for both home and lot, you are maybe losing even if you keep them filled for a year. If you are too much of a har*ass, vacancy will increase and you will sink the ship.

The problem with the problematic late payers is their lives are chaotic and they’re getting others to pay for them (Charity, social services, friends and family etc) when problems come up. You can reckon each case on its own merits. A plan to catch up which is not based on hope is a priority for a workout. Perhaps a workout will increase occupancy as you get satisfied customer referrals. If there is a lot of “churn” in your park you need to do something to not let people roll right over you to economic ruin. So YMMV.

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@Noel_S - I agree with what’s been said by the others. I had the same concerns and they’ve said the same things. I turned over the on-site managing to someone else and am just doing the office stuff and court papers, etc. This is a no-nonsense guy and basically feels the same way as the others here. So we’re making better progress with the tenants. He doesn’t take any guff from them, either, and they don’t like that.

Many of the tenatns made a habit of paying when they felt like it, and then say that they had other problems to deal with, so that cut into their rent funds. We’re going to evict 2 more soon. Word got around quick. They even tried to badmouth me, and now they’re badmouthing him and trying to pull the same stuff with him and think that I don’t know what’s going on (little do they know).

Anyway, it’s slowly improving because of this stance. You allow that kind of behavior and everyone in town will know about it. They come from the “wrong” side of town a lot, thinking that they’ll get in there without a problem but now that we’ve been doing background checks and calling employers, etc (even checking facebook to see if things jive), we’re getting better clientele.

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Noel,
to save the headaches, check your state minimums, fix your rules and enforce those rules. You own a business, not a charity, allow the residents to be all on the same page as far as that goes, and it will improve and you will save having to chase the residents having issues. I have found the ones that pay late do so just because they can get away with it, not because they can’t pay on time. Do not allow their housing payment to be the last on their monthly list. I have a good list of ways to get people to pay on time when they start with the excuses. Please, anyone that needs them reading this, shoot me a message and I will try to respond asap with that list. You can text me as well at 253.632.1846.
Not accepting late payers as a thing is not being mean either, like I said, you have a right to your $$ first, after all, if it was an apartment, or a mortgage on a house, they would get evicted, straight away, so please do not let your money be any less important for your business. :slight_smile:

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It all depends, how much is your time worth?

We charge $50 for being late. We send out Pay or Vacate letters on the 6th every month. As long as they pay rent in full and their late fee, in the set amount time I really don’t have a problem with it. The late fees collected makes it worth my time; it takes about 2 hours a month so that’s about $150 an hour.

That being said if it goes to eviction court and the judge decides to evict them we give them the boot. We used to try to set up payment plans but that is a pain and we have had very little success collecting. A tenant willing to not pay their bills and then file and go to court is not a very good tenant in my opinion.