Every Champaign-Urbana landlord dreads the possibility of having to evict a tenant. It’s one of the reasons the tenant screening process is so important. You want to make sure you’re placing a well-qualified resident with a history of paying rent on time and taking care of properties.
Through our personal experience as real estate investors and our professional experience as a Champaign-Urbana property management company, we know that even good tenants can turn bad. If you have a lease in place with your current renters, you need a good reason to evict them. Today, we’re talking about the reasons you might decide you need to serve an eviction notice to reclaim possession of your Champaign-Urbana rental home.
Evicting Champaign-Urbana Tenants for Nonpayment of Rent
The most common reason to evict a tenant is for nonpayment of rent. Your lease agreement should include your rent collection policy, which tells tenants:
- The amount of rent that’s due every month.
- The date that rent is due to be paid and whether there is a grace period.
- How rent should be paid (online, in-person, check in the mail, etc.).
- The penalties and consequences of late or unpaid rent (late fees, eviction, etc.).
If your tenant does not pay rent by the date that it’s due, you might want to contact them to see what’s happened and when you can expect the payment. Before you actually file for an eviction, you’ll need to serve a Five Day Notice to Pay Rent or Quit the Premises. This gives your tenants the opportunity to pay rent in full before you file for the eviction in court. Your notice needs to include the tenant’s name, the address of the residence, the amount of rent that’s overdue, and the date by which the full amount must be paid.
Evicting Champaign-Urbana Tenants for Lease Violations
Not paying rent is a clear violation of the lease agreement. But, it has its own separate rules and process for eviction.
Lease violations outside of the unpaid rent are additional reasons you might evict your Champaign-Urbana tenants. When a tenant violates the lease agreement, it could be for any number of reasons. Maybe there’s an unauthorized pet in the home or a tenant is smoking when the unit is a non-smoking unit. You might find that illegal activities are happening or there are additional people living in the unit who were not screened or listed on the lease.
In these cases, you will need to serve your tenant with a 10 Day Notice to Vacate. In this notice, you will state your intent to terminate the lease agreement. Explain why the lease has been breached and what, if anything, the tenant is expected to do to come into compliance with the lease.
If your tenant corrects the violation immediately, you can move forward. If there’s a refusal to correct the lease violation and comply with the contract and the tenant still doesn’t move out, you will have to go to the courthouse and file for a Forcible Entry.
These are the two main reasons you will have to evict a tenant from your Champaign-Urbana rental unit. We recommend that you get some help from a local property management company if you find you have to remove a resident. Eviction is a complicated and emotional process, and having a team of experienced Champaign-Urbana property managers taking care of the details will reduce your risk of expensive mistakes and heaps of stress.
Contact us at Ramshaw Real Estate, and we’d be happy to help.