Notice To Vacate From Tenant: Fill & Download for Free

You are in absolute control here. The landlord has made a critical mistake. Allow me to explain.The first thing to do is to pull out your lease or rental agreement and see what it says about notices to vacate. If you don't have a written, signed contract with your landlord, don't worry, you still have rights.If you are current with your rent and are not in violation of any lease terms and/or clauses, then short notices (3-29 days) to vacate are not applicable in your case.Depending upon which state you live in and the length of your tenancy, you are due either a 30 day or a 60 day notice to vacate. If you have a month to month rental agreement, the landlord can issue that at any time. However, if you have a long term lease, day #30 or day #60, whichever is applicable to your tenancy, cannot be sooner than the last day of your lease.Your landlord has made a critical mistake. By turning your electricity off, he has performed a self help eviction, which is illegal AF. A landlord cannot turn off electricity, gas, and/or water, and cannot interupt services guaranteed in the lease: trash, garbage, recycling, and compost pick up, and cable TV and internet services.To recap - you are entitled to at least a 30 day notice to vacate absent any lease violations or late rent payments. The landlord has performed illegal actions against you - short notice and self help eviction.Your next step should be to find your nearest tenant advocacy agency and make an appointment ASAP. They will be able to get you headed in the right direction to take your next step.I am not a lawyer or a RE professional and this answer is not professional advice. My experience comes from ten years of working in the family rental business and thirty-five years of experience renting in five different states.

We don’t; in fact we usually couldn’t do that even if we wanted to, as most states require us to serve a notice to vacate before we can even proceed with a formal eviction.That notice you receive directly from the landlord is not an eviction notice. Depending on where you live it might be called something like a notice to “cure or quit”, or just to “quit”, and this is the landlord telling you what you must do to avoid having a legal case filed against you. A notice to vacate is the same as a notice to quit, and this one means that you must move out (plus empty and clean the space and return the keys) within a certain number of days, usually three or five, or you will be formally evicted. A notice to “cure or quit” gives you the additional option to pay what you owe – or fix whatever problem has led to the notice – within those days, to avoid being evicted.Some landlords do actually ask tenants to move, before they even issue their own written notices, but there’s a very good reason why a lot of us don’t. If we’ve reached a point where we’d even contemplate eviction, it means we need to get rid of those people. We could ask, but we’ll have absolutely no way of knowing whether the tenant is actually going to be gone by whatever time they agreed to. If they comply, all is well, but if they don’t, we’re right back where we started. If my tenant hadn’t paid rent on April 1st (under normal non-pandemic circumstances), I could serve them with a five day notice to vacate anytime after midnight on the 2nd. If they didn’t leave by the 6th, I could then file them paperwork with the court to have them evicted. It varies by state and municipality, but in my case they’d be served with the actual eviction notice on the following business day and given a court date within a week or so – though this can take up to two months elsewhere. Typically those tenants would be physically removed by the marshals before the 20th, and unless I eventually get paid for those days through a lawsuit, I’ll have lost 2/3 of a month’s rent.If instead I had simply asked my tenants to leave within five days, their promise to do so would be meaningless in the eyes of the law. Once I determined that they had broken their promise, I’d have to start from scratch by delivering that written notice to vacate and give them an additional five days to comply. That would mean missing out on an additional five days rent, which would be hundreds of dollars in my cheapest unit. Since my goal is to have the evicted tenants removed by the twentieth so I’ll have ten days to clean, paint, and perform repairs in order to move in someone else on the 1st, those five extra days could potentially turn into an extra 25 days, since my leases start on the 1st or 15th. Even if you think these are minor issues, remember that all it takes for a landlord to avoid wasting this time is to serve a written notice immediately.Whether you’re asking about the actual filing in court or the landlord’s own notice, the answer is the same: We don’t ask because a simple verbal agreement isn’t binding in this case, which makes it way too easy for scammers to extend the time they’ll get to live for free or continue trashing a place.

Evict them and send them each a “Thank You” card.Taking over a property with tenants in place can be difficult if you are required to respect the length of their fixed term lease. You will probably want to get into both units at the same time to do whatever repairs or upgrades you have in mind, you may want to raise the rent, and of course you will want tenants who meet your requirements. Fortunately for you, both tenants did you a big favor as you can now order them to vacate instead of waiting anywhere from 90 days to two years, and you can work on both units at the same time.Your tenants knew that rent was due, and if by some chance they believed that new ownership meant that they’d get to live for free (not impossible; I had a guy who thought that living in his apartment for several years meant that he was now the legal owner), that’s on them. This is actually an excellent lesson to learn if you are new to this business, because it is a business, and this means that you must evict tenants who do not pay. When you have your rental agreements drawn up you may want to specify a grace period or a schedule of late fees, but you should never delay past that. If you allow late payments until the 3rd, you should issue a notice to vacate (or a notice to pay or vacate) on the 4th. If you’ve made no stipulations for late payment, you issue the notice on the 2nd.This might sound unnecessarily harsh, but evictions take time. The fees to file in court are generally negligible, but your lost income won’t be. You can of course bill them for the unpaid rent and sue them in order to collect, but you lose out on rent during the process while you still need to cover the cost of ownership. The only way to minimize the cost to you is to act immediately, because evicting a tenant for nonpayment can easily take up to two months. Some people would urge you to negotiate or give your tenants an opportunity to pay, and that is an excellent idea as long as you negotiate after you’ve issued the notice.Most states allow you to issue a 3 day notice immediately, telling tenants to pay or leave within three days. If they pay then that ends the proceedings, and there will be no negative consequences to them. You cannot file the paperwork with the court to evict a tenant until the three days are up, but once you do the tenants will receive an eviction notice with a court date. If you accept any payment it will end the process, which is why you should never accept partial payment as you’d then need to issue another notice to vacate and start all over again.It’s a given that the tenants will be evicted unless they can show proof of payment, and being formally evicted will go on their record and make it impossible for them to rent again, so people are usually eager to avoid this. This is another reason not to hesitate, even if you want to negotiate, as you can withdraw your petition to evict if they move out voluntarily and pay in full – just do not stop the process until the keys have been returned, an inspection of the premises conducted, and the money has been received.Evicting tenants can be intimidating, but the courts who handle these disputes are designed to allow both parties to represent themselves. The process is less formal and technical, and if you show up and tell the clerk what you need, she will help you get started. I recommend delivering a brief account of the process at the same time as the notice to vacate, explaining to your tenants how it will be in their best interest to comply. You may want to offer not to sue for the unpaid rent if they comply, but make it clear that suing for eviction or to get a judgment for money owed won’t be a big deal to you.Your tenants will most likely pay or move out, as most prefer to avoid eviction, so if you do want to gain possession as soon as possible you should see if your state allows you to issue an unconditional notice to vacate. This is the ideal solution when you want the tenants to move regardless, and fortunately one that my state allows. If you are happy to let the current tenants stay you can give them the choice between paying and vacating, whether you are legally obligated to do so or not. If they pay the rent you should take care to tell them that late payments will not be accepted in the future, because in some jurisdictions accepting late payments repeatedly will obligate you to do so in the future.Whatever you consider an ideal outcome, you should issue a notice to vacate (or pay) today. There is no downside to this course of action, and no reason for you to feel bad. Your tenants tried to take advantage of you being a new landlord by attempting to steal free housing from you, but they knew when their rent was due and chose not to pay or contact you.