You are a good property manager, and the tenant stops paying rent. What do you do?
You might want to go into prayer mode, but you have to be prepared to react quickly. Whenever your tenant isn’t paying the rent, the first thing you want to do is to contact them and find out why. It could be a simple problem they’re having, and you will be able to work with them. But, you always should file the Three Day Notice. You don’t ever want to hold off on that. You file it right away, as soon as they have not paid the rent on time. That is the beginning of the eviction process, and you want to preserve the owner’s rights and timeline. Quite frankly, the judges want you to file quickly as well, and they’ve told us that. We don’t want to evict if we don’t have to, if we’re not forced to. But we need to be prepared to evict.
I use a flow chart that shows me what happens and when it happens. I file a Three Day Notice, then I file the Eviction Tenant stops payingComplaint and then I wait to see if the tenant is going to answer the complaint, or hire a lawyer. In our particular situation, we have a good outside counsel.
We are always willing to listen but we are always running the clock as well. We are always preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.
The most important thing when you start the eviction is your Three Day Notice. It’s critical because it is a statutory form so it has to be exactly right. I always recommend using a process server to serve the notice. Don’t file it yourself, because if something is not done correctly with a Three Day Notice, when it gets in front of a judge, bad things happen.
So if you have any questions about how to handle a tenant who isn’t paying rent, please contact us at Florida Management & Consulting Group, and we’d be happy to give you more information.
Military: David Harper is a retired United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. As a Lieutenant he served in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War (1968-1969) where he was a Casualty Staging Officer ( Aeromedical Evacuation). He was tasked with moving wounded Soldiers and Marines from Vietnam to various military hospitals in the theatre and eventually Stateside. After serving in several Air Force Reserve Units he was “called up” to serve in Desert Shield/Desert Storm (1990-1991) Where he was Chief Planner on the Central Command Staff for the Aeromedical Evacuation of all US Casualties during the pre-invasion and post-invasion phases. He retired from the Air Force Reserve in 1993. Currently he is the President of the Broward County Chapter of the Military Officer’s Association of America.
South Florida Property Manager Roger Schalk is a member of the National Association of Residential Property Managers (NARPM), and the Florida Association of Property Managers (FARPM). A real estate professional for 18 years he has spent his entire professional career managing and developing company’s and their employees in customer facing roles and has successfully established himself in Property Management.