Seeking advice on violation of lease or possible eviction

[Bocondo Williams]

Hello,
I bought this multifamily property few months ago and acquired the lease of tenants. One of the tenant who pay rent on time seen smoking multiple times, I gave him a warning notice first and then after a month of so sent another notice for smoking and charged him for smoking fee as defined in the lease. This tenant has list 1 occupant in the lease while there are 3 people living in the apartment. I have also received multiple complaints about loud music from his apartment, which I have sent notice to him.

After multiple notices for smoking and noise, I decided something needs to be done therefore I sent him notice of lease violation with mentioning all 3 violations.
1. More occupants than listed in lease
2. Multiple instances of smoking
3. Multiple instances of nuisance, loud noise.

I also had a verbal discussion with the tenant about these issues but he refused to talk about any of these issues. In my notice, I gave him option to either vacate the property in 30 days or cure the lease violation and gave him 2 weeks time for curing the violation (removing extra person from the apartment). Today after 2 weeks of sending the notice and verbally telling him, when I went for inspection and found the extra person was still in the apartment. They threaten me to leave the apartment and provide them privacy and told me I do not have any right to enter their apartment. Even though I gave them 24 hour notice for the inspection as per the lease. Since the situation become very tense I decided to walk off and discuss it later.

Need advice, what should be my next step? Should I pursue to evict them? I know eviction can be expensive, but do I have reason to evict them? This property is in central Virginia.

[Brandon Dunn]

Just dismissed up an Eviction in NC today and currently am in the middle of 2 more. Never fun, but necessary. I can't speak to the specific costs and time associated with evictions in Virginia.

I will say often times residents will never make a change until they realize you mean business. Doubling down by proceeding with an eviction filing shows they aren't just empty threats. Your situation sounds like it constitutes a breach of the lease to me

Best of Luck