While Revolution takes care of everything for you when a tenant doesn't pay on time, we figured it might be helpful to provide you a timeline of everything we do to collect from a tenant who is late or simply doesn't pay what they owe. Keep in mind that everything below is based on Revolution's standard lease agreement, so if we took on a property from you that had an existing lease in place, we have to honor the process in that lease until a lease renewal is signed, so it could be slightly different in that case.
Day 1 - Rent is always due on the 1st, with a one-day grace period until the 2nd.
Day 2 - The tenant starts receiving daily emails and text messages reminding them that they have an unpaid balance that must be paid. These continue until the balance is either paid in full, or the tenant has been removed from the property.
Day 3 - If rent is still not paid by the 3rd day, the tenant is charged a late fee.
Day 4 - If the rent is still unpaid by the 4th of the month, an official "Notice to Pay Rent or Quit" is sent to the tenant both by email and by First Class Mail. This is the official notice that is required by the courts to file an eviction. By federal law (enacted in 2020 in the CARES Act), eviction notices must give the tenant 30 days to pay. This supersedes prior state laws of only 3-day notices.
Day 34 - If the rent is still unpaid, we extend an offer to the tenant for our Eviction Avoidance Program (EAP), which allows the tenant to avoid eviction by making a down payment towards their balance, and entering into a payment plan for the rest. The tenant must sign a new lease that locks in what they owe, which prevents them from claiming in court that the money is not owed.
Day 39 - If the rent is still unpaid, and the tenant has not entered into the EAP, we will send you a recommendation to offer a "cash for keys" deal to the tenant. "Cash for keys" means offering the tenant some sort of financial incentive to vacate the property voluntarily without having to be evicted. It is entirely up to you whether you want to offer this to the tenant, and if so, what you offer them. If you reject it, we will immediately file an eviction. If you approve it, we will send the offer to the tenant and attempt to negotiate a cash-for-keys deal with them for up to 9 days. If the tenant flatly rejects the offer, or we cannot come to an agreement after 9 days of negotiations, we will immediately file an eviction.
Day 48 (or earlier if you or the tenant rejects cash for keys) - At this point, we have exhausted all possible options to resolve the situation without eviction. It is time to use the legal process that the courts provide. We submit the eviction to our process servers and attorneys, and they take over the process from there.
Day 49+ - The eviction process can take up to several months, depending upon the county, whether the tenant responds to the eviction lawsuit and challenges it, whether the resident has legal counsel, how busy the sheriff is with eviction lockouts, etc. Unfortunately, at this point, the timeline is out of our hands and we are entirely dependent upon the court system and the sheriff. This is why we make every effort to avoid eviction if possible. But rest assured, our attorneys do everything that they can to move the process along as quickly as possible.
If the tenant is ultimately evicted, the sheriff will meet our eviction crew at the house, forcibly remove the tenant from the property if they refuse to vacate at the sheriff's orders, and remove all of the tenant's belongings from the property. The tenant's furniture, clothes, appliances, etc. will be placed on the curb for 24 hours so that they have time to retrieve them. At that point, any items remaining will be removed by our eviction crew and disposed of. Unfortunately, this is at the landlord's expense, but we are able to charge the tenant, deduct it from their security deposit, and send it to a debt collector in hopes of reimbursing you. It can sometimes take years to collect, but our debt collectors are quite good at eventually collecting.
If you have any questions about this process, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at support@therevolutionfirm.com
