Landlords - Follow the provisions of your lease to the letter!

Follow the provisions of your lease to the letter.

To take it a step further, prior to signing a lease with a tenant you need to have your policies and procedures down. What I mean by that is what happens when a payment is late? At what point do you start the eviction process? Write this information down, share it with your tenants prior to move in.

From the school of hard knocks we have learned that there is rarely a good reason to allow your tenants slack when it comes to leases. To date, I have only had two tenants that didn't come to me with a story about why they could not pay their rent on time. From being the in the hospital, to job loss, to not being able to find a job, etc, the list goes on.

Once you give your tenants a little slack, two things happen. 1) It sets a precedent that you are willing to be lenient, and 2) they will not be able to catch up, ever!!

When you have someone that is in financial difficulty get behind on their payments, their ability to catch up is pretty much non-existent. To top it all off, bad blood forms between you and your tenants, because they don't like having payments hanging over their head and all that frustration gets directed at you, the landlord.

So, in a nutshell, it is a no-win situation. If it becomes clear your tenants are not going to be able to make their rent payments, or are violating the terms of the lease, follow the letter of the lease! If there are late payments penalties, enforce them, if they are to be evicted, start the proceedings.

On top of that, if you do not follow the letter of the lease, you may be opening yourself up to exposure down the line in the eviction process. Plus, when you do what you set down as policy, it is out of your hands. There are no stories allowed, if you are lenient one day then strict the next; your tenants will let you know that you are a bad landlord. If you consistently do what you say, then you may not be considered nice and/or understanding, but they can't ever say you were not fair. Being fair and consistent every day is the trademark of a successful business and will eliminate a great deal of stress down the road.

www.JJakeWiley.com