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How To Evict A Tenant Swiftly And Easily Right Now

By: Teo Zhenjie
Submitted: 07:10AM on Thursday 20 November 2008

If you are a landlord or property manager, knowing to how to evict a tenant quickly and effectively is crucial for helping you avoid massive headaches and financial losses. Find out how to master this important skill with this step by step guide.

When Are You Allowed to Evict Your Tenants?

Before you learn how to evict a tenant, it's more important to see if you can and should evict him in the first place. The following are the most common reasons for evicting someone from your rental property:

1. Non-payment of rent. This is easily the common reason for tenant eviction.

2. Your tenant causes health or safety problems for others or your rental property.

3. Your tenant breaks the terms of your rental agreement.

As evicting your tenants can be a lengthy and messy affair, it's always a good idea to try more peaceful methods such as sending them reminders or warnings.

1st Step: Send Your Tenant a Written Notice to Quit

In most areas, you will have to give your tenants a last chance before you are allowed to take legal action against them. This written warning letter is known as a notice to quit. Your tenants will be given a time limit to perform certain tasks or else they will have to leave your rental property.

If you want to learn how to evict a tenant, you will have to know that there are 2 common flavors of notices to quit: Pay or Quit, Comply or Quit.

As you can tell from the name, pay or quit is a written notice warning your tenant to make his rent payments or leave your property. When your tenant receives your comply or quit notice, he will have to start behaving and fix up any mess that he has caused as soon as possible.

Depending on where you live in, you generally have to give your tenants 3 to 7 days before you are allowed to go to court and file an eviction lawsuit.

2nd Step: File an Eviction Lawsuit Against Your Tenant

If the time limit for your written notice to quit is up and your tenant is still defiant, then you can head to your local authorities to take legal action against him. This is the second step on how to evict a tenant. The courts will issue your tenant with a summon giving him a date and time to turn up for a court hearing so that they can hear his side of the story.

From my personal experience, most tenants will automatically move out of your rental property once they receive this court summon. This will actually save you a lot of precious time and expensive legal fees.

Naturally some tenants will be aggressive to the end and will turn in court to try worm their way out. That's why you need to have all your important documents ready so that you have solid evidence for evicting your tenant.

Useful documents include your tenant's rent payment records, police reports, property repair bills and written notices to quit.

One important thing you should know when learning how to evict a tenant is that you are generally given the right of self help even after you win the eviction lawsuit. This means that you can't change the locks on your property by yourself or cut off the electricity supply to chase your tenant away. A government employee has to do it for you.