December 1st, 2011
It’s the nearing the first of the month. You have a regular system with your tenant where you call them the day before and prepare a time to pick up the rent at the rental property.
For months, things worked well. You always meet at the rental property. Sometimes you set a time for 5 pm. Sometimes you set a time for 6 pm. One time you and your tenant were both running late so you set a time to meet at the front door at 7:45 pm! It’s all good.
This time you call to set up a time to pick up rent and no one answers.
You think “I can’t reach my tenant to set up a time to pick up rent, it’s shouldn’t be a big problem.”
Or is it.
You call a couple more times and no answer. You leave a couple voice-mail messages requesting a call back.
Nothing!
The First of the month comes. No contact, no replies, no nothing…and no rent!
No rent and you still have to pay your mortgage. You decide to go visit the property. You knock on the door, ring the doorbell…no one answers. You try back a few days later. You think you see a light on, but still…no one answers.
You read the Ontario Landlord and Tenant Board Website and see you can serve a form called an N-4 for non-payment of rent.
Should you fill it out and serve it? You begin to remember how good your tenant has been for the past six months. Is this a one off situation? You also begin to read the form N-4 and does it ever look serious and confrontational. The form N-4 looks to want to create a fight!
You don’t want to fight. You just want your rent.
So what should you do?
Experienced landlords discuss this in a great thread at the Ontario Landlords Association advice forums HERE
What would you do?
Tags: Landlord and Tenant Board, late rent, N4
