Sample Past-Due Rent Notice for Tenants
When a tenant misses a rent payment, it may seem too informal or inappropriate to speak to them personally or send a text message. In these circumstances, landlords should instead send past-due rent notices to their tenants.
Not sure what a past-due rent notice is or how to write one? Read on for a breakdown of what these documents are, when they are necessary, and how to draft one for any delinquent tenants on your properties.
What is a Past-Due Rent Notice?
A past-due rent notice or late rent notice is the first legal step you must take as a landlord. When a tenant doesn’t pay their rent on the appropriate due date, you cannot immediately evict them. Instead, you need to let them know that the payment is late. After all, some tenants occasionally forget due to life circumstances, emergencies, and other events.
Furthermore, a past-due rent notice is important when establishing a paper trail. If you have a consistently delinquent tenant and wish to evict them from one of your properties, you need to establish a pattern of poor tenant behavior. This evidence is vital when acquiring an eviction document from a judge, which is necessary to legally evict a tenant.
Therefore, past-due rent notices serve two purposes:
They give a tenant the opportunity to pay rent quickly and get back in your good graces
They give you evidence of consistent or behavior for the purposes of evicting them later
When to Send a Late Rent Notice
You can send a late rent notice document whenever rent is late. However, depending on how you usually collect rent from your tenants (i.e. electronically through bank transfers, checks, cash, etc.), it may be wiser to wait one or two days past the rent due date before sending a late notice.
Ultimately, this is up to you. Many landlords have a two-day limit for late rent payments to account for mail delays. Others send written notices if rent is even a single day late from one of their tenants.
Can You Evict Tenants for Missing a Month’s Rent?
No, not normally. A single late rent notice is not enough evidence of bad behavior to warrant an eviction order from the judge. A tenant must typically miss rental payments for many months before they qualify for eviction.
However, if a tenant has missed multiple rent payments, and you send a late rent notice that they fail to reply to, this could be grounds for an eviction. As noted above, be sure to collect all previous late rent documents, including the dates on which you sent them to your tenant.
Once a judge sees all this evidence of nonpayment of rent, they may be willing to give you an eviction order. Landlord-tenant laws could vary depending on local laws to your state, however.
How to Make a Past-Due Rent Notice
Even though eviction proceedings can be lengthy and time-consuming, writing a past-due rent notice is not. Past-due rent notices are simple documents that mostly refer back to the original lease agreement you drafted for your tenants.
Because of this, it is sometimes helpful to attach a copy of the original rental agreement to a past-due rent notice. However, this is not always necessary. The key elements of any late rent notice include:
The date on which you have sent the late notice
The number of days rent is past-due
How much rent is due, including any late charges if applicable
A final due date on which a tenant must send late rent before you send an eviction notice
As a landlord, you can include as many details or extra information as you like. The important thing to remember is that:
You need to break down when the rent was do so tenants are not confused (or cannot claim to be confused in front of a judge)
You need to include the amount of rent they owe, again so they can’t claim they are or were unaware of how much money they need to send
In addition, landlords must decide when late rent is due or when the “final” due date is. The time between the rental due date and the final due date for overdue rent is sometimes called the grace period.
This may depend on how you give your tenant a past-due rent notice. If your real estate property manager gives them a notice by slipping it under their door, for example, it may be reasonable to give them two additional business days to pay rent.
However, if you mail a tenant a past-due rent notice, you must account for another day or two of travel time before they see the document. Some common notice lengths include a 3-day notice, 5-day notice, or 7-day notice.
Generally, it’s wise not to set the final due date more than a week past the date on which you send your notice to renters.
You can also take advantage of our free late rent notice template. Simply copy and paste this template into your own Microsoft Word file, then fill in the blanks or capital letter locations with your contact information and other information.
Past-Due Rent Notice Sample Template
Dear [TENANT NAME],This is a formal notice marketing that your rent is officially past-due, per the agreement made on the lease for [RENTAL PROPERTY ADDRESS].As of ##/##/## your rental payment of [RENTAL AMOUNT] is [NUMBER OF DAYS] late. Your rental payment was originally due on [DUE DATE].In addition to the standard rent payment, you now owe late charges totaling [LATE FEE] per the above lease agreement. This totals [TOTAL RENT DUE PLUS LATE FEE].If the above amount is not received in full by [DUE DATE], all legal actions necessary will be taken, including and up to eviction. Please give this matter your full attention.Sincerely,[NAME OF LANDLORD]
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