Tenant always late with rent

Good morning,

tenant is always late with rent.

I send a polite daily reminder via email.

What should be my next actons be to resolve this going forward?

Thank you

Was there an agreement to pay via standing order? I would suggest this as a solution to the problem.

Late payment is a breach of tenancy agreement, I would remind them of this if they do not setup a standing order if its a continuous problem. One step at a time….

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Thank you. As you say AST states standing order. I’ll be atempting to impliment after/if I get this months rent.

I’m correct to politley remind daily? any further action I can take?

How late do they typically pay?
How many days has it been?

I would be calling to discuss myself, ask if there any issues etc. leave a voicemail if no answer. Daily emails are excessive in my opinion. A few softer emails/voicemails then gradually firmer emphasising they must make contact to update you.

Want to try to keep “friendly” communication open.

Are you being ignored?

3/4 days
This month looks like its going to be approx 12.

Normally make contact to say will be paying late, this time round I sent a reminder in advance which was not aknowledged and only few days after rent due date was I contacted to say will most likley be end of month.

Communication always open with myself of course.

Action such as late payment interest & non payment eviction, how does this work?

I had one that always paid late, so I told her she needed to set up a standing order and she has, so that seems to have solved the problem.

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I had a late paying tenant, always late but always paid. Usually only by about 7 days or so. But every month it’s stressful and just another concern as you know, it never got any better and he gradually stopped communicating. He left before I evicted thankfully.

I dont have time to explain in detail now, but if you are sure you want to evict then section 21 is easiest option (none fault eviction). Search the forum for section 21, there’s plenty of threads on how to.

Need to be certain you have complied with gas safe, deposit scheme etc.

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I think he is a payer who lives beyond their means. Hopefully I’m right. But imo this one needs constantly reminding as there are other bills which have been brought to my attention which have not been payed.

Thanks for info.

Ask them if they want to change the payment date to a different date of the month, maybe to the day they get paid to stop them spending it before rent day. Ive had this too and she asked to do this herself

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Hi @Mark97 - We’ve spent a fair amount of time at OpenRent thinking about how to prompt, remind, and make sure tenants are paying rent on time generally. Our Rent Collection product has quite a few features around this that you could draw inspiration from:

However, it does sometimes simply help having a professional service do this on your behalf, so worth considering next time you’re setting up a new tenancy.

If you do end up needing legal support, we do have a service that can help there too:

@Daz hi Daz, how do openrent deal with late payers? How are they chased?

We have a several mechanisms as we can tell things like if emails are delivered / failing, combined with SMS / push notifications (and similar failure paths there). For example, if someone’s email (or phone number) fails when we send a reminder X days before, we can automatically escalate this before it even becomes a late payment. This is hard to do as an individual not running your own email server (equivalent phone system), as failures to email/SMS are often hidden.

Once a payment is late obviously all parties are alerted to this, and we make sure such messages are received (or escalated if not) similarly to reminders.

In the future we’re looking at adding things like reporting to credit agencies to add further incentive to a tenant paying on time, but more often than not it’s just about about clear communication on when payment needs to be received by, making it easy for tenants to pay the rent, and helpful reminders (that are actually read) along the way.

These mechanisms (along with others) drastically improve the % of payments which arrive on time - something we know landlords appreciate and value!

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This would be tremendous if were to happen. Is it actually likely to?

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I don’t have a timeframe for you at the moment, but it’s definitely something we’re looking at.

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Struggling to pay the rent because of circumstances beyond their control or just poor self management.

1 visit and get a face to face understanding why. Formalise the meeting with a post meeting review letter.
2 show if needed how to set up a standing order
3 if your property is in a company name set up a direct debiit
4 check payment date vv pay date, If moving to a later date remember your financial implications.
5 notify the tenant they are in breach of the AST and their persistent late paying must stop forthwith or you may be forced to consider other options.
6 Not sure of the legalities of moving to weekly rent but if legally okay it may be worth considering Standing order mandatory to help their temp cash flow
7 If payments are still late, you have to take a balanced decision, section 21 whilst it’s still around.
8 (7) may bring forward the inevitable non payment of rent and possible court action.

You could also pay and do a credit check to gain another perspective to help your decisions.

If the person is living beyond their means, that something they can address, if they have the incentive!

If they are low income, they could be eligible for income support.

So assuming you have a btl mortgage and not illegally renting out a property on a personal mortgage ( unless authorised by the mortgage company). You have to consider your cash flow, you can be the most generous person in the world but letting property is a business, not a charity.

  1. normally gives you the answers what to do next, if they refuse the meeting or become non communicative then your route is clear.
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