In the event of trouble, talk to your landlord.
It was the last thing you were expecting. You go to work like any other day, but then you get laid off. Or you come home and find out your roommate moved out in the middle of the night. Or there’s a car accident and now you’ve got medical bills and car repair bills and time off of work…Ouch!
So you can’t pay your rent anymore. What should you do now?
Talk To Your Landlord
Maybe it’s best to start with what not to do: Don’t ignore the problem. Instead, take action. The moment you know that you aren’t going to be able to pay rent as agreed, contact your landlord. Maybe a payment plan can be worked out and you can stay where you are.
Good questions to ask include, “are there any late fees?” If there are, and maybe if this is the first time you’ve ever had a problem, maybe the landlord will give you a break on those fees if the landlord is anything like Decker Properties.
But if the situation is just completely broken, it’s still better to be candid and talk to your landlord. More than likely, this isn’t going to be the first time the landlord has encountered this kind of problem. At Decker Properties, we don’t want an eviction either. We’d rather work out our own arrangement instead of the one dictated by the court.
Sometimes it happens that rent is unpaid and the resident is just not responding to phone calls, emails or text. And that 5-Day Notice has been ignored too. Now what choice does the landlord have? This is how evictions get filed. Check back here next time to explore the gory details of the eviction process, a process you can avoid if you’ll talk to your landlord.