As a landlord, you will run into situations when your tenants for some reason or another can’t pay you the rent when it is due.

When this happens you have two choices:

1.) Give them more time or…
2.) Ask or force them legally (eviction process) to move out.

Let’s look at these two options in more detail.

If you choose to give them more time, you should be very specific on a future pay date and then, no matter what, stick to that date. Things happen in people’s lives that cause them not to have the money and sometimes you may feel sorry for that person and you want to help them out. That’s OK, but I would suggest to you that you don’t let it go very long. The more they get behind the harder it is for them to every get caught up and the probability is that they never will and you will eventually lose more by giving them more time. So what I saying is be very careful of this choice.

The second choice is for you to talk to them about the reality of there situation. They can’t afford to live in your rental property and they should most likely be living in a less expensive place. This can be hard because a lot of people don’t want to face that truth.

Here comes the hard part. You need to be ready to make these decisions in advance and have a set of rules that you follow and then follow them. Take the emotions out the equations and operate it like a business. If you sell any other product and the customer didn’t pay, what would you do? You would give them more products, would you?

Letting them continue to live there without collecting the rent is like a business give away their products without getting paid. Any business that operates like that will be out of business!