All Forum Posts by: Jonathan Blanco

Hi Jonathan! We manage in Jacksonville and South Florida. We like to keep it simple and instead of using a percentage, we do $100 on the 6th and $5 a day after that. It caps at $225. This way they have a significant reason to pay on time as they would get the $100 right off the bat and then increases slowly. We also post notices on the 6th and that's another $50. We don't do this to be mean or to make money, we do this to entice the tenants to pay on time. That's our #1 goal. In a perfect world, they would all pay on time and we would not many anything off posting fees or late fees. And no one will go to jail for late fees. Just make sure you're using a lease written by an attorney or work with a property manager to place your tenants for you and use their lease. Our lease has so much in it to protect owners and us. I hope this helps!

Nobody is going to jail for charging high late fees.

I typically charge 10% of rent for late fees, and I give them until the 3rd.

I'm pretty sure in Florida, it's 20% of the late rent can be charged in late fees.

So $75/day is fine but it would have to max out at $240. You can't show up to court where their rent is $1,200 but you have $2,000 in late fees.

Plus, when/if you file for eviction, the attorney will help you process it properly. 

Typically a seven day notice is used for non compliance, and not for payments. The three day notice is designed for that. And, the lease is the gospel. So it depends on what is in the lease as far as what happens with late fees, and also with a failure to pay them. Same goes for the grace period. There is no requirement legally, what matters is what the lease says. 

We manage 250 properties in Florida (mainly the greater Tampa Bay Area) and fortunately have less than a 1% eviction rate due to our diligence in the screening process , along with being proactive and communicative. When we do have to go through the eviction, we do everything for our landlords and they pay our evictions team around $550. Eviction is done in 4-6 weeks, including the coordinated Sherrif visit. 

I'm in the Tampa area.  By law tenants have until the 5th of each month to pay.  Landlord's can then give 3 day notice after that.  If you don't pay or vacate they can proceed with eviction.  The Sherrif takes about 2-3 weeks to do set out from what I've heard.  

Not sure what his pricing is now,it's been a while 

Seward Law Office, P.A. at 813-252-6789

 Yes $650 for the whole process. Eviction attorneys are a lot cheaper than people think.

What part of Florida are you in?

Last fees must be paid in order to cure the default.

Yes you can issue notice to cure not paying late fees.

Yes after a certain period of time you can refuse payment and proceed with eviction.

Thankfully, Florida is very landlord friendly.

Find a good eviction attorney and prepare to file, they should also be answering your questions for free.

I've done evictions in Florida where my attorney charged me $650, so it's not as pricey as you may think.

Within my 20 years of experience managing rentals, I’ve had to deal with both collections and evictions plenty of times. For debt collection, we’ve had good results using Hunter Warfield—they’re pretty effective and know the rental space well.

For evictions, I usually recommend a law firm that specializes in landlord-tenant issues, and I also know a low-cost service that helps with filings (they’re not lawyers, though). If you want the names or more info, feel free to inbox me—happy to share!

– Jorge