last month rent

I have a tenant that refuses to pay last month rent...he told me this to my face....he said take it out of my security deposit. In my lease it states specifically that security deposit is not to be used for last month's rent. I charge a month and a half deposit. What recourse do I have with him? Should file an eviction on him to be on his credit? This is a very nervy tenant with a bad attitude.

jerzeygirlproperties Posted on 11/15/2014 08:58 AM

A lesson to us all

I would suggest serving a three day notice to start covering your initial bases. You might even get lucky and shake him into paying by this means.

Bottom line, I don't see much decisive leverage for you that can be applied within 30 days. The fundamental lesson to this incident as I see it is the importance of choosing the right tenant to begin with.

goldenstatepm.com Posted on 11/26/2014 11:30 PM (Updated 11/28/2014 09:22 AM)

Tenant leaving last month of the lease

I had the same situation recently as Jerseygirlprops above. A tenant that has been at one of my properties for 5 years, paying on time all the time, but left 1 month before the end of his lease. He just said you have my deposit you can keep it. The fact is the deposit cannot be used for last month rent, for the simple reason is that there was a lot of paint + carpet change + missing stove that I had to pay for after they left the property to make it ready for rent again, and the deposit did not even cover all these expenses, let alone pay the last month rent!

I cannot file eviction since they already left; I am thinking there must be a way to file to their credit report that they owe money because of them breaking a lease and costing all this money to update the property. I thought about small claim court, try to get a judgement for the money I missed, and then the judgement reports to their credit report. Any thought from the group or experts here are much appreciated.

Thanks.
FJ

fjet15 Posted on 06/16/2015 12:57 PM