When Good Renters Become Bad – What You Can’t Do To Force Your Renters To Vacate
If you are in the rental business, sooner or later, you are going to have a tenant who inexplicably stops paying rent. They may give you the run around with stories about why they are not able to pay and promises of an entire payment plus late fees just around the corner. Or, they can even ignore your phone calls and refuse to answer the door if you come in person to try to collect rent. Bottom line is, when it comes to this point, these tenants will have to be served with a three day notice to vacate to start the eviction process.
While you can be frustrated and tempted to take measures into your own hands, it is quite essential to follow the legal procedure for removing a non-paying tenant from your premises. Specifically, the law expressly forbids you from doing the next:
Removing Locks
In no way is it illegable for you to remove the locks, or install new locks on the house to “lock out” your tenant. It doesn’t matter if they are months behind on their rent, have totally trashed the house and are in violation of every provision in the lease. They are legally protected against a “lock out” and may take you to court to regain entry.
Utility Shut-offs
You may not shut off the water, gas or electricity for the purpose to make your renters to move out. Again, your renters, however far behind in rent they are, may search for legal recourse against you for this action and can collect heavy fines against you.
Taking Renter’s Property
You may not harass your tenant into moving out. This would include illegally entering the rental unit and taking their property. Only under very specific conditions (abandonment) is a landlord enabled to remove a renter’s property.
Physical Removal
Only the legal authority (usually the sheriff’s office or their agents) is allowed to remove a tenant after a writ of possession is obtained from the court and the legal waiting time has elapsed. This means that you can’t hire your own help to physically move out a renter.
While the above list describes the major things that you, as a landlord, are not allowed to do to get a tenant to move out, it is not all inclusive. Any number of different creative strategies to compel a tenant to move out are also illegal.
The only legal way to remove a renter from your property is to go through the legal eviction process. Yes, it costs money and yes it takes time. Remember that you can deduct the unpaid rent for the term that your tenant remains in the property during the eviction process from their security deposit.
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