I am happy to know that your tenant eventually pays up and you are made whole. albeit late. I would just hate to see you “work with” your tenant for so long and then get screwed. I unfortunately see that happen to well-meaning landlords quite often.

Take caree and good luck.

T

My thought process was that it is more expensive to evict a tenant than receiving the rent 3 months late. Nowadays, it is very time-consuming and cost a lot of money just to clean-up and prep for the next new tenant.

The tenant is nice, only late around three times a year and always pays up at the end. I just want to add a cost for each month she is late. With the extra $50 late-fee every 30 days, I am hoping she would pay up in 2 months rather than 3 months.

I understand your point that the courts often will not allow a landlord to charge a late fee above $50 in a residential tenancy. I will try to serve eviction notice if it passes one month late.

Thanks for your opinion and time

As I mentioned in my blog post on late fees — there is no statute, regulation or case that limits the amount that a landlord can charge for a late fee. Having said that however, the courts often will not allow a landlord to charge a late fee above $50 in a residential tenancy.

There is no requirement that the grace period be 10 days. There is not a requirement that there even be a grace period. If I give one – it is no more than 3 days.

The court only gets involved if the matter is taken to court — either by the landlord trying to get a judgment that includes late fees or the tenant arguing that the late fees are excessive (most likely in the context of withholding a late fee from a security deposit).

So there is no clear cut answer.

I will point out however that if you want to increase your late fee in order to get the tenant to pay rent on time — serving them with a 5 day notice for not paying rent timely and then evicting them will achieve the same results and is pretty stright forward.

If a tenant is more than 1 month late in paying rent you should be evicting them – not trying to increase the late fee, in my opinion.

So the choice is yours and the tenant’s — whatever the both of you agree to. You do not even have to allow a grace period.

You should be careful re: using language like “postmarked by” — I once had a client lose an eviction trial because there was testimony that the tenant did mail the rent by the date listed in the rental agreement even though the landlord never received it. The judge believed the tenants testimony that he mailed it on day X and indicated that he complied with the contract by doing so and my client (landlord) could not testify that he didn’t mail it.

So you rental agreement should say that rent must be RECEIVED BY X. Its not relevant when they mailed it — what matters to the landlord is that he receives it by X.

I personally have rent due on the 1st of the month (it must be received by me by the 1st of the month) and I wil charge a late fee after the 3rd day of the month. What tenant’s don’t often understand however is that rent is still do on the 1st not the 3rd. So a landord could serve a 5 day notice on the 2nd day of the month and potentially evict them if they pay by the 3rd. Tenant’s don’t seem to understand theat even if they pay within the grace period they are still late. They seem to think that rent is not due until the 3rd. I’m not a big fan of grace periods – so I have a talk with my tenants about this situation befor ethey move in.

T

I can tell you however, that I have not seen a $50 per day late fee in the residential L-T context before.

T