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I am so nice that I let the tenant move in without a lease agreeement. I want to go back and do one now, but the tenant won’t sign it. Guess what? The tenant did not pay the 1st month rent! It’s now 20 days late! He did pay cash for the security deposit.

Since no lease agreement exits, what is the right process to quick this tenant out?

You’re so nice? Nice is not the first word that comes to mind. In fact, nice is not even the top 2 words that come to mind. The word STUPID does. What in the world were you thinking? If you can’t make better decisions as an owner who rents out his home than this, you NEED to hire a property management company. A good property management company will cost anywhere from 5% to 10% of the monthly rent collected. If you don’t have a paying tenant, they don’t charge you a management fee. Let’s say your home rents for $900 a month, this means that a property management company would charge you anywhere from $45 to $90 a month. You would still get to keep over 90% of the profit. So what’s your problem? Stop being stupid. Now what can you do to try and fix the mess you caused?

If there is no lease, the court in your area may define this as an “at-will” non-written agreement. Tenant-at-will agreements are month-to-month agreements that can be verbal agreements.

Serve the dead-beat tenant with a 3 day notice to pay rent or quit. Do not try and salvage the relationship with this tenant by trying to get him to sign a lease agreement. For example, you can’t serve a 3 day notice to pay rent or quit and then kick him out because he refused to sign your lease agreement. The court will see that he paid the rent and yet you still kicked him out. Forget trying to salvage the relationship with this tenant. You need to kick him out for non-payment of rent.

After a total of 30 days has gone by without the full months rent being paid, file an eviction notice with the court or hire an attorney eviction service to do it for you.

Never do this again. Once you kick this guy out, with your next tenant make sure you ALWAYS have them sign a lease agreement. A lease agreement isn’t about being nice or not. A lease agreement is about putting a set of rules out on the table that protect both you and the tenant and give a clear course of action if either you or the tenant violates his part of the agreement.

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To kick out a tenant you first must give them a Notice of Termination.

You can kick tenants out who are on a month-to-month lease simply by giving your tenant 30 days’ advance written notice. The form is called a 30-Day Notice.

First though, you need to check your local laws. For example in some cities in California, the following special rules apply to 30-day notices:

1 – Subsidized housing programs may limit allowable reasons for eviction, and may require that the notice state one of these reasons.

2 – Some rent control cities require “just cause” for eviction, and the landlord’s notice must state the reason for termination.

3 – Some reasons for eviction are unlawful. For example, an eviction cannot be retaliatory or discriminatory.

Forms very from state to state but there are basically three types of Notice of Termination forms you use, depending on your circumstance, to kick tenants out.

1 – Pay Rent or Quit notices: This notice is given to a tenant who hasn’t paid the rent. The Pay Rent or Quit notice tells (more…)

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