Stop Coming by My House!!
Hello BP,
Wondering if anyone else has had this issue before and how did you solve it. I have a tenant that has been coming by my personal residents and putting the rent in my mailbox without my knowledge.
(back Story)
Like some of you my lease states that rent is due on the 1st and late after the 5th. For the past few months i have a tenant that have been paying the rent exactly on the 5th. The past 3 months tenant has come to my personal residents and put it in my mailbox. The 1st time this happened, i sent a notice and message letting her know late fees apply ect. when tenant responded i was then informed that the rent was in my box. Apparently they came by sometime that night. I didn't like the idea of that but didn't really make a stank about it. (obviously my mistake)
So 2nd time almost identical issue, on the 5th tenant came by after hrs with no phone call or acknowledgement that they had left payment except this time we saw the car leaving so i called (of course no answer) but left a very stern and detailed message about how this was not acceptable and no longer will be tolerated.
Well, 3rd time was just yesterday. I want to go ballistic on tenant, but would like a few suggestions before i do the wrong thing.
Yes I know messing w/ anyone's mail box is illegal and have mention this to tenant as well. We have even left self addressed stamped envelopes for them to just mail in the payment.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance
This answer got away from me so there is more than you bargained for! The first part is the answer to the question. The rest will help some of you, others will have already gotten it through your experience! LoL! I hope you enjoy it.
Here are two tips I have used successfully to keep tenants out of my remote office:
1) Make an arrangement with the local currency exchange to accept your payments and send them to you. When I did this myself, I only had 2-5 tenants near enough the currency exchange to take advantage of this. I expected to pay a small fee for this but they explained that if they did this courtesy for me, I would be inviting my tenants to cash their paychecks, buy money orders and conduct other business with them. My tenants could pay in cash instead of buying money orders and the currency exchange would either hold the cash for me to pick up when I was in town or mail me a check! BIG CAVEAT! You must explain that this is just a service and that these people do not work for you. Tell your tenants to be nice to the currency exchange staff or they will lose the privilege of paying so close to home. One of my tenants decided to rant and rave at the currency exchange staff when she was unhappy with having to pay the rent and blame them for her difficulties. Thus ended my relationship with the currency exchange.
2) Some banks will accept deposits directly into your account from your tenants. Open an account with a local bank that has branches in the tenant area and just let them deposit. Each tenant will get a deposit receipt from the bank saying they made the deposit, in what form, on what date and time. This requires that they make their deposits during banking hours. You could allow them to drop their payments in the night deposit along with the proper deposit slips provided you trust them not to make mistakes on the deposit slips for which account and who they are making the deposit, however; if you want true 24-hour convenience to a few tenants, get them an employee, deposit only, card for the ATM. I presume you don't care what time they make their deposit provided the money is there when you awaken on the 6th. If this is so, then you will no longer have to worry about, I had to work late or early excuses about why they couldn't get to the bank. Even bank holidays will no longer be an obstacle. SMALL CAVEAT: This convenience encouraged my customers to make deposits of whatever amount of money they had instead of waiting until they had it all. For example, one of my tenants never missed a payment in 6 years of tenancy although he was late several times a year. When he got the deposit card I started getting odd amounts from him. The rent was $750 per month. one month without explanation, I found a random deposit of $125 on the Friday before the end of the month, March 29th, before I could investigate on April 1st $227, Saturday,April 7th $350, Sunday April 8th $53, Friday April 20th $95. This totals $800 or the entire rent plus late fee! When he then paid me $550 on on May 4th and $200 on May 5th, followed by $250 Saturday May 19th and $500 June Friday June 1st, I was so pleased I never complained about the delay in rent. Our relationship improved and he started to do chores around the building including gardening, lawnmowing, minor repairs all saving me money. When Christmas came that year, I gifted him $250 in cash after his on time December rent. He was over the moon! I had saved well over $250 thanks to his labor and was glad to pay him for it. He stayed a further 3 years and repeated the same pattern of odd sized payments 4 times and once getting ahead by 25 days earning him a rent discount of 10% that month.
He was not the only tenant that paid in odd amounts, only my best experience. I tend to have some homes in the "hood" because of my personal mission to give back to my community and provide affordable housing to working poor people. I find that there are only 3 kinds of people that pay late, those that don't have the money, those that think they are not getting the service they are entitled to get and jerks. There are very, very few jerks. When you get a jerk, you have to discard them quickly but it can be hard to tell between which feel they didn't get service and which don't have the money because the latter will complain frequently complain on rent day to delay things. To remedy this, I always fix things at the first opportunity regardless of the timeliness of the rent. Then only those without money remain. For this group of people, consider their life and difficulty and communications. When a tenant tells me they will have $750 tomorrow after work, I take them at their word. If they are suddenly then difficult to reach, the general issue is pride and shame. In all likelihood, they were either delayed in getting the money, got a different amount of money than they expected or some other, foreseeable issue they didn't consider, interrupted their ability to pay you to the full amount they promised. Experience guides me here based on whatever they are telling me when I do catch up to them. Know what likely happened, I explain it back to them so as not to insult them or shame them.
For example, "John, yesterday you said that you would be able to pay me the full rent of $750 when you got paid today and now you left your deposit card in Jane's car and she has gone to her mother's house for the weekend, is that right? Yes? Okay John, because what happens sometimes is that people don't figure everything out in advance when they are under pressure to perform and they think they can meet a deadline that they can't. Do you know what I mean? Say a guy gets paid on Friday and has $750 rent to pay and his paycheck is only $950, right? Well, say he already skipped last month's electric bill, needs to make the car payment and hasn't shopped for groceries in over a week, right? Well that guy is in trouble he can afford to pay the rent, the car, the electric, everything if only he didn't need $200 last month when his kid was sick. So now he gets his $950 paycheck, pays the electric for both months, fills a prescription and pays the car bill and figures out he only has $650 left to pay the $750 he promised he would pay today. Now he is ashamed because he promised and doesn't want to go back on his word."
John says, "Yeah well, I had to take a furlough day I forgot about my check wasn't as big as I thought.
Then I tell him, "Look, John, these things can happen to anybody. How much can you pay me today and still have a little cash left for the rest of the pay period?"
"I can give you $600 cuz my brother says he's gonna pay back the $50 I lent him last month."
"Okay, John. Let's guess that your brother doesn't give it to you, just in case and let's leave a little cushion okay? Go to the bank today and pay the maximum you can pay and still buy gas to get to work. Will you do that for me, I'm not hung up on the $750 you promised today, you have never missed a month before now."
"Okay, great! I'm going to work the late shift and go by the bank at 4pm."
"That's perfect John! Just don't leave me hanging after we've had this talk. Just text me when it's done, are we agreed?"
"Yes"
"Great! do this and then put the rest in the bank as soon as you can."
Now sometimes that works and I get the full amount and sometimes I get whatever was left after he did his calculations. I know that if I waited any more, he will feel like he has some extra money in his pocket this week which will diminish and delay me further. I get what I can now by understanding him and since he has made the largest part of the payment, when he figures out he has $10 or $15 or the brother actually pays him back I get the rest.
In any case, I remove the embarrasment of having to face me with less than was promised and he can make the deposits on his convenience.
I hope this helps!
Holler if you need me.
Best regards,
Mark
We have 85 doors with a local Property management company and 28 doors that we self manage. The self managed doors are given a P.O. Box to send correspondence and a separate bank account to pay rent. We ask for rents to be deposited in cash or money order only. We transfer all rents to our primary accounts regularly.
Results: most rent is paid between 3rd & 5th because we ask for cash or money order. We have only had 1 check bounce. We enforce late fees on the 6th. Tenants are aware that the 3rd time they are late, we will ask them to find a new home.
They will get a phone call on the 6th and a 3 day pay or quit on the 10th. THE KEY IS CONSISTENCY and the tenants will know what to expect based on their actions.
PO Boxes are fine for collecting rent. However, in California a physical address is required for the purposes of serving personal notice. ( Summons and Complaint)
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Broker CA (#01878782)
- Pintail Property Management
Are we really discussing this......1st world problems here folks!!!!
If you don’t want your tenants dropping off rent to your personal residence then get in the 21st century and do online payment. Secondly, stop being a cheap *** and take your home address off your rental lease and get a PO Box as your business address.
Originally posted by @Lamont A.:
Hello BP,
Wondering if anyone else has had this issue before and how did you solve it. I have a tenant that has been coming by my personal residents and putting the rent in my mailbox without my knowledge.
(back Story)
Like some of you my lease states that rent is due on the 1st and late after the 5th. For the past few months i have a tenant that have been paying the rent exactly on the 5th. The past 3 months tenant has come to my personal residents and put it in my mailbox. The 1st time this happened, i sent a notice and message letting her know late fees apply ect. when tenant responded i was then informed that the rent was in my box. Apparently they came by sometime that night. I didn't like the idea of that but didn't really make a stank about it. (obviously my mistake)
So 2nd time almost identical issue, on the 5th tenant came by after hrs with no phone call or acknowledgement that they had left payment except this time we saw the car leaving so i called (of course no answer) but left a very stern and detailed message about how this was not acceptable and no longer will be tolerated.
Well, 3rd time was just yesterday. I want to go ballistic on tenant, but would like a few suggestions before i do the wrong thing.
Yes I know messing w/ anyone's mail box is illegal and have mention this to tenant as well. We have even left self addressed stamped envelopes for them to just mail in the payment.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance
Dude... Get over yourself.. I would love to be in your shoes where people come to my door and drop rent. An old, old tenant used to do that about 4 yrs ago. Just get over yourself. If you don't have bigger things to worry about, time to get busy buying/managing more properties.
Originally posted by @Lamont A.:Hello BP,
Wondering if anyone else has had this issue before and how did you solve it. I have a tenant that has been coming by my personal residents and putting the rent in my mailbox without my knowledge.
(back Story)
Like some of you my lease states that rent is due on the 1st and late after the 5th. For the past few months i have a tenant that have been paying the rent exactly on the 5th. The past 3 months tenant has come to my personal residents and put it in my mailbox. The 1st time this happened, i sent a notice and message letting her know late fees apply ect. when tenant responded i was then informed that the rent was in my box. Apparently they came by sometime that night. I didn't like the idea of that but didn't really make a stank about it. (obviously my mistake)
So 2nd time almost identical issue, on the 5th tenant came by after hrs with no phone call or acknowledgement that they had left payment except this time we saw the car leaving so i called (of course no answer) but left a very stern and detailed message about how this was not acceptable and no longer will be tolerated.
Well, 3rd time was just yesterday. I want to go ballistic on tenant, but would like a few suggestions before i do the wrong thing.
Yes I know messing w/ anyone's mail box is illegal and have mention this to tenant as well. We have even left self addressed stamped envelopes for them to just mail in the payment.
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance
You need a physical address on your lease for the tenant. The reason the tenant is doing it is because they probably got jerked around by a former LL who charged them late fees for the rent being ”late”. Or they are late and want to get the rent to you by the no late fee cut off. I would talk to your tenant. Going foaming at the mouth crazy in front of him is just going to make you look like a lunatic.
As for the “paying late” the tenant is late but you have a grace period if paid by x day no late penalty is added. What I would do is tell the tenant that regardless of the no penalty clause, the rent is still due by the 1st and it’s late anytime after that. You simply do not have a late fee charged if paid by the grace period. But that doesn’t mean the rent isn’t late.
There is no law that requires you to have a grace period. You can simply say rent is due on the first of the month and it’s oaye if paid anytime after that day by the close of business.
Be professional. Call or tell the tenant you need a face to face. Explain to him that you prefer rent to be delivered through the mail system by the correct due date. In a emergency they can drop it off. Then explain to him what the term DUE BY and GRACE PERIOD mean.
the rental agreement or lease must disclose:
(Page 19)
http://www.dca.ca.gov/publications/landlordbook/catenant.pdf
#2 General Landlording & Rental Properties Contributor
Many interesting solutions but bottom line is that the vast majority of all tenant issues are created by one person ....the landlord.
Most landlords cause their own problems by not operating as a business and being lenient with tenant practices. If you want your tenant to do something it is your responsibility as a landlord to inform and teach.
If you have a tenant problem you created it and are responsible for fixing it. If you give tenants options all you do is confuse them and you will never achieve the best result for yourself. Never give a tenant options, tell them what is expected and inforce it.
Leniency leads to confusion, confusion leads to inconsistant results which leads to unhappy landlords. The cause of 90% of landlord tennat problems faces you in th emirror every morning.