Evicting a Tenant for the first time.

Houston, Texas
Houston Real Estate Forum
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Evicting a Tenant for the first time.

Alan Melendez
Member since 2022 · 2 posts · 0 votes

Good evening everyone,
I’m in the process of evicting a tenant of mine for failure to pay August & September. I went ahead and filed a couple weeks ago and have court early next week.

The Tenants are now reaching out to me saying they can pay Octobers rent.

My question is will myself for accepting rent for October cancel out the eviction process I have in place ?

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  • Richard F.
    Honolulu, HI · Member since 2008 · 3k+ posts · 2k+ votes
    15h

    I can't speak to Houston for sure, but generally speaking, yes. You would need to start over with the process based on the new amount of arrears. Also, you should have a priority of payment schedule, if allowed locally, that specifies what gets paid first out of any payments accepted...late fees, rent, past due repair charges, or whatever.

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  • Henry ClarkPro Member
    Developer · Member since 2020 · 4k+ posts · 4k+ votes
    15h

    Look at your contract. Do you have a late fee or eviction processing fee? If not add them for the future tenants. Can you use the deposit for the current rents per contract? Repair delay fee, say if it takes more than 2 weeks. etc.

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  • Drew SygitBusiness Member
    Property Manager · Royal Oak, MI · Member since 2012 · 12k+ posts · 9k+ votes
    2h

    Why would you accept October rent when they are NOT addressing August & September?

    First, check your lease.
    It should state that any funds received are applied to past due amounts before being applied to current amounts.
    - Tenants often think they can dictate how their payments are applied, usually in an attempt to avoid eviction.

    I've been doing this for 30 years and would NOT handle an eviction myself, despite knowing 90%+ as much as the attorneys I hire.

    If you hire an attorney that specializes in evictions they'll actually be pretty affordable.

    If you insist on learning the hard way, a quick Google search states you can accept partial rent payments without stopping the process:

    https://www.justanswer.com/law/vgbqt-tenant-partial-rent-payment-texas-rv-lot.html

    Here's some info on the eviction process written to inform tenants, as owners are expected to be business people and already know all this:

    https://texaslawhelp.org/article/eviction

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