What to do When Tenant Stop Paying Rent

What to do When Tenant Stop Paying Rent

As a landlord, one of your priority is keeping your tenants happy and satisfied. Unfortunately, regardless of landlords all effort to make it happen, there might be times that you will meet and experience tenants who will fail to pay their rent on time or worst might suddenly just stop paying rent.

You might think that you already found a perfect tenant. But when you check the payment, the tenant failed. That's why it is always important to keep yourself calm and think of the best way on how you can resolve the issue before you end up in court.

Dealing with late payments or stop payment from tenants is not what all landlords would want to happen. What do you think is the best thing to do to avoid it? Here, we will share some ways that you can possibly do to avoid it and what to do if your tenant failed to pay the rent.

• Communication is always the key to resolve any issue. Make sure to keep communication open between you (landlord/property manager) and your tenants at all times. When a tenant failed to pay the rent, the first step to do is to talk to them immediately. Communication may fix the problem right away.
• Cosigner. It would be better to consider adding a cosigner before your tenant sign a lease. A cosigner is a person who agrees to make the payment if the borrower fails to pay. In this case, you may coordinate with the cosigner and remind them about the agreement made between you and them and their responsibility to make the payment once their borrower (tenant) failed to pay.
• Having Landlords insurance is a good idea for a situation like rent not been paid. It is an insurance policy that will help property owner from financial loses with regards to rental properties.
• Keep all records. Make sure to keep all records of communication and agreement that was made between you and the tenant. It is important to keep all records, you might need it in case it is required as evidence in court. 
• Legal action. If in case that landlord already communicate with the tenant and already given enough time to make a payment, but the tenant still fails to make any payment and still not able to resolve the issue, the landlord may first seek legal advice before taking any legal action. But hopefully, this kind of dispute will be resolved and won't reach this far. 
• Eviction. To file an eviction, you need to have all your tenant's personal information, copy of the lease agreement, record of tenant's payment including the missing rent, copy of the 3 days notice and the copy of the demand letter to pay rent.