I rent out a second home in Florida. Today is Oct 16 and I have not received my usual rent payment. Tenant has not answered phone last few days. October is last month of lease.
I understand Florida legal eviction could take three months during which I would not collect rent.
Main question is, how do I make certain they are gone by Nov 1? If I demand a rent increase, plus first/last/deposit they will not be able to come up with the $ by Nov 1. Will they be trespassers after lease runs out?
Since this is a real life situation and requires advice and opinions in answers, let’s move it from General Questions to IMHO.
samclem Moderator
Taken from context, you are renting out a house in another state, and you don’t already know the relevant laws. You don’t have any way of getting ahold of a responsible party locally who can look into the matter or represent you (else you would hav done so already instead of asking anonymous strangers on a message board).
In answer to your OP: you’re screwed, and not necessarily by an absconding tenant.
Have you sent a past-due notice to your tenant? Send it in some manner requiring a signature for delivery confirmation from the tenant/occupant at the rental property address. Send it first thing tomorrow; I’d send it NextDay by FedEx or UPS.
Everything else depends upon Florida rental laws. Call a lawyer.
You might want to hire a property manager in Florida. I understand there are a lot of them. Given an incentive, they might be able to get someone out faster. Possibly the tenants are already gone.
THIS x 1000 -
A good property manager is worth their weight in gold.
I totally WOULD NOT rent a property without one.
I’d never speculate on another State, but many places at the end of the lease you can have the tenant removed pretty quickly. If they stay after the end of the lease they’re trespassing and you need to contact someone familiar with Florida law as to how you can get the sheriff or other relevant authority to remove them for you.
Some states leases apparently automatically turn into month-to-month tenancy after the lease expires, at least that’s how I’ve seen it, if that’s the case in Florida you would have to pursue a normal eviction for non-payment of rent.
Sounds to me like they already left and are assuming you’ll use the damage deposit as the rent for October.
I agree.
Damages, of course, could be a different story. I hope he has someone who can go check on the place for him.
Some states don’t allow this. I have no idea if Florida is one of them.
This was my first thought, too. I can see a tenant thinking “I already paid first-and-last-month’s rent, so why write a check that he’ll just write back to me?” And that doesn’t necessarily mean the tenant trashed the place, altho it doesn’t rule it out.
But yes, property manager for sure. Heck, we used one when we lived within 20 miles of our rental property - it was a cost of doing business and a nice insulation for us.
Or maybe…the tenant forgot to mail the check and it’s under the front seat of the car where it slid off during the drive to the post office where he mailed the other three bills that DIDN’T fall off the seat? Or they fell down the steps and are laying there, severely dehydrated and with a broken hip and the unmailed check is in their purse that is on the kitchen table along with the now dead cell phone? Or they left on vacation right after mailing out the rent check, but forgot part of the address and the stamp and the post office returned the envelope, which they will find when they walk in the door after their 21-day cruise?
Uh, yeah. That’s the most likely case when a tenant’s rent check doesn’t show up and they can’t be reached by phone. The idea that a tenant would deliberately avoid paying rent is really kind of up there in the stratosphere.
The point is that there are so many possibilities that it’s stupid to wonder why. OP needs to get his patoot down to Florida and figure this out sooner than later.
OP, did you not plan to inspect the place and install a new tenant when they moved out? You should already have been planning to head down there for that, or to have somebody check it out for you. If you weren’t already planning on doing an inspection, why not?
Thanks… I lawyered-up, letter went out today. Lease states that “with consent of lessor” it automatically turns into month-to-month. Attorney letter specifically denies consent.
Lawyer says that after the lease is up, with no consent, they are trespassing. Rent disputes are civil and the cops will not get involved. Criminal is another matter…
Do you know if they are actually still there? Is there anybody in the area that can go take a look at the house to find out if they have left?
I think I’d do that before I spent money on a lawyer drafting up a letter that might not even be necessary.
This is why it’s never a great idea to be an absentee landlord unless you have local property management. You may or may not be screwed. First, you must find out if the property has already been vacated. How? You figure it out. If it’s already vacated, then you’re home free. If not, you will have to find out if the renters will vacate or not. But it sure sounds like they’re gone and have not bothered with the current month’s rent because they’re assuming the security deposit will cover it. Ah, the jobs of being a landlord, NOT!
I went through a similar experience, but it was a sub-lease.
My leasee hadn’t paid rent for two months. Never vacated, but I couldn’t prove they were not entering the condo while I was at work. Here in MD, the laws are very heavily weighted in favor of the tenant. Meaning I couldn’t just chuck his stuff out on the street and keep the security deposit. I checked the Maryland tenant laws (through a county assistance office) and they gave me a handy little pamphlet, complete with step by step instructions. More importantly, it stated which actions I absolutely could not take to either get rid of him or recoup lost rent. I had to file a form in court, have the sherrif serve him (in absentia; they just posted the eviction notice to the door), and I was required to give him 3 months notice. He cleared out his stuff on the last day of the eviction period while I was at work. Then another registered letter to his workplace to get him to show up in court.
Bottom line: Different states have different laws, so check with the state or county to see what your rights as a landlord are. Then waste no time. Take action.
I don’t recall where the OP specifically said they weren’t in Florida. (It seems to be implied, but I can’t be sure.) If so, then I agree with the hiring of a property manager. At least that will give you peace of mind to have somebody local checking out your property in your best interest. It also might not hurt to consult a lawyer, as many will give you the first visitation free. A nice one might give you some direction as to how to proceed and not ask you retain their services.
Good luck!
What city in Florida? If it’s mine, PM me the address and I’ll do a couple of drive-bys to see if it looks like anyone is still living there. Presumably, you know someone down here, right?
I can’t imagine why anyone would buy a house in a city where they don’t know anyone and don’t live anywhere near, without hiring a property management company or a person to manage the day-to-day. Who mows the lawn? Don’t you have contractors for bug spraying, carpet cleaning, that sort of thing? There isn’t one single person in this entire state who can check and verify if your renters are still living there or have ditched?