As for the late fee, a lease is a contract that can be negotiated. Prior to signing. I’ve negotiated out terms that I didn’t like.
Late payments can result in costs to the landlord, including cash flow issues and increased administrative overhead.
“Can be” being the key phrase. If you’re working with a management group (that has a chain of rentals) or a landlord that has three other applicants, they might just tell you to take a hike. Also, if the thing you’re negotiating over is the late fee they’re might be worried that you’re planning to make your payments late.
OTOH, if the place you’re looking to rent has been vacant for 3 or 4 months and no one else has applied for it, you have some more leverage. However, rather than try to get the late fee knocked down from $100 to $50, you’d be way better off trying to get $25 or $50 dollars a month knocked off the rent, which could save you $300 or $600 over the course of the year.
Why would you sign the lease if the terms were not acceptable?
Why have you signed a lease without reading it and keeping a copy? Don’t you wonder now what else you may have agreed to?
And yes, as a percentage of your rent, $100 is kind of high I guess, but as someone else pointed out, you were five days late, not one.
As for the question of whether this fee is “unreasonable enough” to take to court, the idea that you should get to sign something without reading it and then complain about someone holding you to it is what’s unreasonable. Why do you want the court to protect you from yourself? Not that you have a case–you don’t.
Never sign anything you have not read and understood. Sometimes they won’t want you to read it and will just try to verbally sum it up and rush you along–don’t fall for it, take your time. Always ask for and keep a copy, don’t just wait and see if they hand you one. It’s your job to look out for yourself.
The answer could be along the lines of: “Lots of renters aren’t good about reading and understanding the terms of their lease. The first time they’re careless about the due date, we make an additional $100 - and they are impressively prompt thereafter: Double win.”
It could also be the legal maximum or going rate in the area. I looked online and it seems like a bunch of states limit late fees to 5 or 10%, but this random website suggests that MT doesn’t have a limit. Although, if I were the OP I might take a look at the landlord/tenant laws myself to verify that. Keeping in mind, though, that even if you’re right and you can get out of paying the late fee, you’ll probably get evicted in 60 days so be ready to move.
Do you not have any consumer legislation that says such charges and fees have to be “reasonable” and have some relationship to the actual costs or losses?
"*If the amount demanded by the injured party is excessive, they are unjustly enriched, and the breaching party has no obligation to pay the excess.
Any clause in a contract which makes a provision by which unjust enrichment may occur may be unenforceable at law - that is to say that if the amount is excessive, the injured party will be unable to enforce the charge in court. Any clause which explicitly provides for unjust enrichment is considered unlawful at common law."*
Good questions. I haven’t a clue. I hope someone who knows more will step in. It looks like there is a similar concept here, but I’d like to know how it is applied. It probably varies state-to-state.
The reason that the OP really should look at the lease, and check out the situation is to make sure that the front desk person didn’t make an error that cost him, or log the check improperly, or something.
Suppose he paid at the end of the day, and on the 6th, the fee really is $20, but on the 7th it’s $100 (I’ve seen leases like that), and the front desk person put the check aside, and didn’t log it in until the next day-- or if she quoted him the wrong amount-- say, maybe it’s $50 on the 6th, and $100 on the 7th, but since he only paid $25 on the 6th, he is technically still late, because he didn’t pay in full, or something like that.
He probably owes the $100, but if the front desk person caused some delay, or other error, it’s possible that he doesn’t.
He also needs to make sure there hasn’t been a permanent rent hike. We get a break on our rent because we always pay by the first; we pay $25 below the usual rate for our type of apartment, but if we are ever late, we lose the discount.
The fact that some law might exist to protect stupid people from their own stupidity is nice, I guess (I doubt any such law applies in this case), but who wants to put themselves in that a group? If you sign that you will pay on a particular date or pay a particular penalty, trying to weasel out of it later is like saying your word is completely worthless and you are mentally incapacitated to the point that some sort of guardian should be appointed.
Of course if there was an error made by the secretary or whatever, that is a different situation.
Great question. Next time I’ll take more time when reading a lease.
This misunderstanding irritates me endlessly. I would actually have less of a problem with someone who knowingly pays me 4 days late every month because I technically agreed to not charge a late fee, than someone who thinks a payment made 5 days after the due date is one day late.
Eh? What difference does it make, if payment’s one day late or five days late? 
Late is late.
In the factual world, a “grace period” just extends the due date by that amount of time. If a payment is not treated as late until the 6th, then the real due date is the 5th regardless of what arithmetic is used to calculate it. 1+4 and 5 are the same numbers.
If it’s 5 days late you have to pay a penalty for being so late. If it’s one day late you don’t. The payment was late in both cases.
What on earth is a “factual” world? :dubious: A grace period let’s you avoid paying a financial penalty unless you’re even later than the grace period. You’re late as soon as you don’t make the payment by the due date.
A non-cash penalty example - Creditors can’t report a black mark on your credit until you’re 30 days late. If you pay a bill 31 days late and your credit is ruined you weren’t 1 day late. You were 31 days late. If you managed to pay it one day earlier you would’ve avoided having your credit ruined but you still would’ve been 30 days late, not on time.
This is starting to sound like Catherine O’Hara in Best in Show arguing with the credit card company over a declined charge. “You have to send three notices. You only sent two.”
I’m going to piggy back on this…this is more vent than advice
My wife and I just recently started renting a house. We were instructed to mail the rent to the landlords office. We put the check in the mail on the 31st (as we’ve done the last two months) expecting it to arrive the next day since it’s not that far. On the 4th the landlord called to say he had not received it and he would need to charge the 150$ late fee. We convinced to wait until the mail arrive that day. If it arrived and was postmarked the 31st he would wave the fee.
When it did not arrive, he agreed to knock it down by half if we hand delivered the check to his office that evening. We did so.
Now, the original check arrived at his office on Friday (so over a week later)–post marked the 31st. So it was clearly a problem with the post office (my belief is that it was actually mis-delivered in his office building)
Of course he’s entitled to the late fee, but man…if on Monday he was willing to wave the late fee if it was post-marked on the 31st …I think on Friday he should have held to that–as I don’t believe he cashed the checks until then anyway. Oh, well.
I’ve had that issue with my mortgage - and it was a EFT from Wells Fargo to Wells Fargo mortgage. I started paying my mortgage early. I could try to beat my head against the wall - or I could say “you know, this transfer can sometimes take a LOT longer than it should - I’ll pay my mortgage on the 21st. After all, its my credit rating I’m risking and my money going to late fees - Wells Fargo probably isn’t going to be as interested in a solution as I am.”
Here is the thing with payment - your job is to make sure it reaches whatever vendor you have on time - rent, cell phone company, credit card. They have a lot of things they can do - like not opening their mail, that can cause it to be late and entitle them to apply a late fee - so unless you send it certified or drop it off and get a receipt - you don’t have a lot of recourse. It sucks, but it also sucks to be the landlord who needs the rent payments in order to pay his own bills and get them three days late. Landlords have cash flow issues just like everyone else does.
Why do you think? It’s so you don’t dick around with his money! Basically it’s to send a message that your rent is due when it’s due. Not “oh I’ll just send it next month with a small late charge”.
The grace period is so you don’t have an excuse like “oh the post office was late”.