We will be gone the week the rent is due from the tenant. He is frequently late, and we would just as soon get rid of him. If I give him a notice to pay or quit on the 4th day, is there a standard length of time I should give him to pay in full? I was thinking a week, partly because we will be back by then.

TIA

" is there a standard length of time I should give him to pay in full? "

YES! You must give the tenant 3 days notice to pay or quit before you can file an eviction suit. Take note that 3 days notice NOW does not include weekend or holidays.

Lease doesn't matter. CA law does.

You need to have a discussion with your tenant about paying the rent on time. Find out why they pay late? Are they short on funds. Waiting for a paycheck to come or some other reason. Use your skills to work it out -- that's a lot better than finding a new tenant and having a vacancy.

Robert's advice is very wise. This may be a great long-term tenant that has a problem you could fix. What if he gets paid on the 5th of every month. No surprise - he's probably out of money on the 1st. So do as Robert suggests, and ask him. Point out that late payments are no longer going to be allowed with late fees, and that continued late payments may result in a decision about continuing the lease.

Many on this forum use a "pay day payment plan". What this means is, have them pay when they have money. If they are paid every 2 weeks, then split the rent in half, add a little extra for a the hassle of extra paperwork, and have them pay rent ON THEIR PAYDAY. Get their money before they have a chance to spend it. For example, if monthly rent is currently $600, then take $300 every two weeks ON THEIR PAYDAY. Having them pay every two weeks will end up getting you about a month's extra pay per year, and you will get paid on time. If they are paid weekly, then the rent is now $150 every week, ON THEIR PAYDAY. Get their money while they have it. Many of our landlords here will tell you that their tenants love this plan because they know they can pay their rent every month, and can spend every last penny after that on stuff they want.

Another option - tell him that you from now on you will TAKE their rent, rather than having them GIVE you their rent. There are services such as clearnow that will make a monthly (or weekly, or whatever) electronic withdrawal from their checking account on the payday, so the tenant never has to remember to pay again. It is like my mortgage payment - I have it set up so that it is automatically withdrawn each month.

Talk to the tenant. Find out what might cause this each month. Implement something to take the problem out of their hands. If they refuse or don't want to fix the problem, then you may need to follow Moshe's advice and post a 3-day pay or quit notice, and be prepared to evict them.

Thanks all! We have had your suggested conversations before. When needed, I have split the rent, and at that time he was late with the second half. I then gave him a 3day notice, and he paid right away.

He is very hard to get ahold of, and is not very forthcoming with problems. I have asked him about changing the due date, splitting payments, direct deposit--nothing seems to interest him. He pays the late fee with no problem, but it is getting old.

I'm mostly interested in whether there is a law about how long I have to give him to pay up after the notice. The one I have is not a 3Day Pay or Quit. Would a week after the grace period be ok?

If 7 days elapse after serving notice, then the tenant has had (at least) 3 days notice, hasn't he?

What is this "grace period"? Did you agree on one with him? Then rent is not overdue until the grace period has expired, and THEN you must give 3 days notice, not including weekends and court holidays, before you can file an eviction lawsuit.

The tenant owes the rent+late fee until you file an unlawful detainer, then they owe rent+late+court filing fee+cost of serving them. You can file an unlawful detainer on the forth day after giving a 3 day notice to pay or quit.

Jan,

This situation is typical when tenants have figured out their land lord is a pushover or doesn't really know what he/she is doing.

Imagine if you had 100 units and half of them were like this guy: you'd do nothing all day long but run around in circles trying to keep up with the shenanigans and your faith in humanity would be destroyed (I'm guessing it isn't already).

So my question to you: why would you put up with ONE doofus messing with your life and sanity if you wouldn't put up with 50?

K.I.S.S. time. Keep it SIMPLE (silly).

When he's late there's no need to "get a hold of him" or play games or make up one-off solutions every time. No is there a need to listen to excuses. He's already got his next dozen excuses thought up and is waiting to tell you #7.

Rather, there is a process. An easy process, if you follow it...4 easy steps.

Step 1) Know CA law.

Step 2) Check your rent due ledger.

a) Is the rent paid: yes or no?

b) If no, post the required notice.

Step 3) If he ignores the notice & it expires, file unlawful detainer papers.

Step 4) Let the process work itself thru: he either pays or gets removed from the premises via a well-established legal process.

That's how a professional would do it. Professionals know the rules, develop processes to make life simple so they don't have to waste time and energy agonizing over every bump in the road, and then they follow their process every time. No exceptions. That's how they manage 300 units and still have their nights and weekends free to have fun and leisure whereas amateur land lords go into a tizzy trying to keep up with a handful of tenants who are running the show.

You can run your biz like a Pro. My only question is: why would you do it any other way? :-)

Best of luck!

Jen, the questions for me is: is it a good time for a vacancy? Is the rent at market rate? ( if not, rent increase is coming at next opportunity) Will you be able to refill the vacancy in a timely fashion? I only use month to month tenancies, so I would be wanting to give Notice to Vacate, in your situation. To my mind, this is one of the very situations where a lease (rental for a specific term, often one year, if I am using that correctly,) works against the landlord. Tenant knows he can pay late, just pay the late fee, and just keep going on with that until landlord gets fed up, and then landlord has to spend more money/ time/ effort to peruse eviction. Now,, of course, if I have a tenant that refuses to move after given Notice to Vacate, then I would be in exact same situation, spending money/ time/ effort to evict. So, MTM isn’t perfect either.

My thinking here is, you need to look up your state/ local laws that govern the time period that must be put in the Pay or Quit. And, you need to see if your lease addresses it. Both come into play. My state has some quirky laws, so I use a lease prepared by an attorney, sold at a rental forms store, in my city. A lease I downloaded off of the internet, or bought at a big box office supply store probably wouldn’t work in my area.

Might be a very good time to join the local apartment/ landlord association. My local group does a good job of educating. I let my membership lapse for a few years, and Boy! I got off-track quickly. Laws have been changing. The time period that can go into the Pay or Quit was discussed at length in the landlord bootcamp I just took through the local apartment association.

Jan,

MO! No! NO!

You should get (and pay) an attorney to do this whole matter for you. You are not able to do it yourself.

" I'm talking about giving him the notice on the 4th day, as stated in my agreement. In the notice I state he has to pay the full rent plus late fee by_____Tomorrow? One week? "

Who in the name of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob told you to do that?

If the rent is LATE (grace period, oral promises, goodwill included) then you must give

" three days' notice, in writing, requiring its payment, stating the amount which is due, the name, telephone number, and address of the person to whom the rent payment shall be made, and, if payment may be made personally, the usual days and hours that person will be available to receive the payment (provided that, if the address does not allow for personal delivery, then it shall be conclusively presumed that upon the mailing of any rent or notice to the owner by the tenant to the name and address provided, the notice or rent is deemed received by the owner on the date posted, if the tenant can show proof of mailing to the name and address provided by the owner), or the number of an account in a financial institution into which the rental payment may be made, and the name and street address of the institution (provided that the institution is located within five miles of the rental property), or if an electronic funds transfer procedure has been previously established, that payment may be made pursuant to that procedure, or possession of the property, shall have been served upon him or her and if there is a subtenant in actual occupation of the premises, also upon the subtenant. "

You are not competent to do this yourself. You cannot follow simple instructions and you are going to fail. Get (and pay) an attorney do do this for you, INCLUDING THE P or Q NOTICE.

As you can see, there are numerous tiny requirements for even this simple notice, and if you do not follow them exactly, your petition for eviction will not be sufficient and it will fail. If you continue to insist on being a cheapskate and wanting to do it for free, then you will spend money for service, filing and appearance, you will lose and you will have to pay court costs and maybe attorney fees to your tenant AND YOU WILL STILL HAVE THE TENANT IN YOUR UNIT WITHOUT PAYMENT. There are more tiny requirements that are not shown in the part of the law that I printed out for you. You are GUARANTEED to fail. Your simple statement repeated in this post in quotations, and starting with " I'm talking about ... " shows beyond a doubt that you you don't know what in the name of the Holy Covenant of Moses you are doing.

GET A LAWYER TO DO ALL OF IT, INCLUDING THE NOTICE, GET THE TENANT OUT, GET YOUR PROPERTY BACK TO PROFIT-MAKING STATUS AND USE THE PROFIT TO PAY THE LAWYER!!! and stop trying to save a nickel by trying to do it yourself.