Late Fees...

[ws6whiteshark]

What is the name of your state? MD

I wanted to get a consensus on how the LL's here address late fees when you have more then one person sharing an appartment or house. For instance, say you have 4 people sharing a 4 bedroom house and the rent is $1600 a month. Your lease states, a 5% late fee will be assessed if rent payment is more than 5 days past due. One of the tenants is late with their rent (11 days). Do you assess 5% on the entire amount since the rent due each month is $1600 or 5% on the late amount? Thanks.

S

 

[Gadfly]

I only accept one check per unit, but yes, the rent is a total amount it's either there or it's not.

 

[Alaska landlord]

If your have constructed your lease so that they all fall under the same lease and you are not leasing to each tenant individually, then they are jointly and severally responsible for the rent. As difficult as it is not to accept the 1200 I would reject payment and post a 5 day pay or quit notice (et-al). This will force all the other occupants to put pressure on the delinquent tenant to come up with the 400.00. The late charges would be on the entire 1600 amount. Basically you want to train them that you are considering all of them as one tenant

 

[Zigner]

What is the name of your state? MD

I wanted to get a consensus on how the LL's here address late fees when you have more then one person sharing an appartment or house. For instance, say you have 4 people sharing a 4 bedroom house and the rent is $1600 a month. Your lease states, a 5% late fee will be assessed if rent payment is more than 5 days past due. One of the tenants is late with their rent (11 days). Do you assess 5% on the entire amount since the rent due each month is $1600 or 5% on the late amount? Thanks.

S

You should assess the late charge on the rent that is remaining. With that said, you probably shouldn't accept partial payments of rent in the first place.

Edit:
You may want to rewrite your lease forms to be clear on how you handle this. If your lease says 5% of the rent due, and you accept $1,200 out of $1,600 then only $400 is due, thus you cannot assess a late fee on the entire $1,600. If your lease says 5% of the monthly rent, then you can assess it on the entire amount.

 

[OHlandlord]

It seems that you are charging and accepting a separate payment of rent from each tenant. Are these tenants on separate agreements? If so, you charge the late fee on the rent that is owed for that tenant. In future, change your agreement to cover all tenants on one agreement, making all tenants jointly and severally liable for the entire rent, and accept only one check (let them decide who writes it).. If they are already jointly and severally liable, quit accepting partial payments. Ask for only one check. When you don't get the entire rent, reject the partial and charge late fees on the total as Alaska LL said. When they leave, write the deposit to all the tenants on the lease and let them figure out who gets what.