When Good Tenants Become Bad – What You Can’t Do To Make Your Tenants To Leave
If you are in the rental business, sooner or later, you are going to have atenant who inexplicably ceases paying rent. Theycan give you the run around with stories about why they are not able topay and promises of a full payment plus late fees just around the corner. Or, theycan even ignore your phone calls and reject to answer the door if you come in personto try to collect rent. Bottom line is, when it comes to this point,such tenants will have to be served with a three day notice to abandon to initiate the evictions process. A landlord tenant lawyer long island can assist you with this.
While you can be frustrated and tempted to take measures into yourown hands, it is quite essentialto keep to the legal procedure for removing a non-paying renter from your property. Specifically, the law expressly bansyou from doing the following:
Removing Locks
In no way is it legal for you to remove the locks, orinstall new locks on the house to “lock out” yourrenter. It doesn’t matter if they are months behind on their rent, havetotally trashed the house and are in violation ofeach provision in the lease. They are lawfully protected against a “lock out” and can take you to court to regain entry.
Utility Shut-offs
You may not shut off the water, gas or electricity for the purposeto force your tenants to move out. Again, yourtenants, however far behind in rent they are, maysearch for legal recourse against you for this action and may collectheavy fines against you.
Taking Renter’s Property
You can not harass your tenant into moving out. This wouldinclude illegally entering the rental unit and taking their property. Only undertoo specific circumstances (abandonment) is a landlordenabled to remove a tenant’s property.
Physical Removal
Only the illegible authority (usuallythe sheriff’s office or their agents) can remove a tenant after a writ of possession isobtained from the court and the legal waiting time has elapsed. This means that you can’t hire your own help to physically move out alessee. Consult a nassau evictions lawyer for more information.
While the above list describes the main things that you, as a landlord, are not allowed to do to get a tenant to move out, it is not all inclusive. Any number of other creative strategies to compel atenant to leave are also illegal.
The one legal way to remove a tenant from your property is to go through the legal eviction process. Yes, it costs money and yes it takes time.Remember that you can deduct the unpaid rent for theperiod that your renter stays in the property during the eviction process from their security deposit.