The Definitive Landlords Guide

First, the vast majority of residential leases are written to provide for a one-year term, and then automatic month-to-month renewal of the tenancy. Second, if your lease is silent regarding the terms of renewal, RCW In other words, if your lease does not specify the terms of renewal, and neither party provides notice that they intend not to renew more on this below then the lease will automatically renew for one payment period, which is usually a month. Thus, the only way that your lease will expire naturally is if it explicitly states that it does not renew after the initial term.

This is fairly rare in residential leases. If you have a reason to evict your tenant, and you have prepared the appropriate notice, then the next step is to serve that notice. In this section, we will explain the steps involved in serving an unlawful detainer notice. These steps are the same regardless of the kind of prelawsuit unlawful detainer notice you are serving.

Eviction Summons and Complaint. In other words, some drafting errors may be excusable, but errors in service are not. A good tenant attorney will seize on any minor flaw in the method of service to invalidate notice and get the case delayed or dismissed. Being inconsistent with enforcement sends a message to tenants that the landlord is either too distracted or too disorganized to keep tabs on their property.

The definitive guide for renting out your apartment

Worse yet, a court could potentially interpret chronically inconsistent enforcement as a waiver of the provisions that have gone unenforced. In contracts as in life: Therefore, you should almost always serve the following notices as they become applicable: There is no waiting period for these notices; you can serve them the day of the violation. The sooner you serve them, the sooner you can either bring your problem tenant into conformity or proceed with an eviction.

However, in contrast to the other notices, there is usually nothing to be gained from issuing a day notice to terminate the tenancy early. Service must be effective at least 20 days prior to the end of the rental period which is usually the end of each month. Therefore, we usually serve our day notices about 22 days before the end of the month, since service by mail adds a day to the effective service date, and the actual date of receipt does not count more on how to count time when mailing notices below.

However, when serving a Summons and Complaint Step 8 below , an adult other than the plaintiff must serve the tenant. Serving an unlawful detainer notice is trickier than you might think.

How To Be A Landlord: The Definitive Guide to Letting and Managing Your Rental Property by Rob Dix

The threshold is somewhere between 12 and 15 years old. In other contexts, the Washington State Supreme Court has concluded that a year old was of suitable age and discretion to receive service. As long as the recipient of service is of sufficient age and is not mentally handicapped, courts do not make serious enquiries into the discretion of the recipient. In most other cases involving substituted service on a minor, the court makes no reference to the discretion of the recipient.

Even though RCW Dealing with unclear cases: But do not forego the substituted personal service! If you forego substitute personal service and a court decides you could have performed it, that would likely invalidate the service by posting and mailing, because posting and mailing is only allowed when personal and substitute personal service are impossible. This section only applies if you have issued a prelawsuit unlawful detainer notice.

The kind of notice you have sent will dictate the responses that are in conformity with the notice:. What if you tenant fails to conform to the prelawsuit unlawful detainer notice at all? You can skip the rest of this section and move on to hiring an attorney, or.

However, if your tenant does conform to the notice, or partially conforms to the notice, then you may not be able to move forward with the unlawful detainer action. Most landlords consider this a good outcome because it will save them the expense and hassle of litigation. However, your tenant will still be liable for any unpaid rent, damage, or fees associated with vacating without notice, and you can pursue those via a civil action though practically speaking, filing such an action may be cost prohibitive, and it is often difficult to actually recover this money from tenants—especially tenants who already have difficulty paying their rent.

However, you can still file a civil action for damages if applicable. However, the landlord can convert the unlawful detainer action into a civil suit for damages where applicable. Hazelrigg , Wn. What if the tenant tenders full payment after the compliance period and you accept it?

You are not required to accept late payment. However, if you do accept late rent from your tenant in the full amount of what they owe, then you have typically waived your right to terminate the tenancy and so your tenant is still entitled to possess the premises as described in their lease. Therefore, you will have no legal basis to evict the tenant unless the tenant breaches the lease again. He must wait until the old breaches continue or new ones occur. In many cases, the problem tenant will drop off or mail a late rent check after the 3-day compliance period has already elapsed.

If you choose not to accept late rent, you can terminate the tenancy and move forward by filing an unlawful detainer action. This situation is a bit of a gray area, and there are no statutes directly on point. The benefit of option 1 is that, by returning the check, there is no way that the tenant can argue that you accepted the rent.

The downside is that you lose access to that money in the event you win your case. It is often difficult to recover back-rent from problem tenants, so if you return their check, you may never have access to that money again.

The benefit of option 2 is that, if you win your case, you will still have access to the late rent that you are owed. The downside is that entering the late rent directly into the registry of the court is irregular, and may not be a viable option in all municipalities. Whatever you do, avoid depositing the rent into your own account if you intend to proceed with the eviction. You are not required to accept partial payment, but it may be in your best interest to do so. Unlike accepting full rent, accepting partial payment does not automatically waive your right to terminate the tenancy.

If the court thinks you accepted partial payment for those reasons, then it will rule that the tenancy was not terminated, which will prevent you from proceeding with an unlawful detainer action. Therefore, if you intend to evict your tenant, it may be simpler to either refuse to accept partial payment, or to enter that rental payment into the registry of the court once you have filed your eviction action. After the first three steps, things start to get pretty complicated. It is usually at this point that landlords choose to hire an attorney to carry the case to the finish line.

If you are located in the South Sound area and interested in help with your eviction, we would be happy to assist. Call us at or email us online today. However, you may not be legally required to hire an attorney. If you personally own the subject rental property, you are allowed to represent yourself in an unlawful detainer action. But, be aware that the nuanced steps involved described below can be fairly daunting for those unfamiliar with the law. On the other hand, if the subject rental property is owned by a corporation, LLC, or other artificial entity, then you are legally required to hire an attorney to represent the corporation in the unlawful detainer action.

The good news is that, if you try to represent your corporation without a license to practice law, the court will likely continue that is, delay and reschedule the case to give you time to hire an attorney and cure related defects in your summons and complaint. After you have correctly issued a prelawsuit unlawful detainer notice for a legally valid reason as explained above, the next phase of the process involves initiating your lawsuit with the goal of obtaining a writ of a restitution.

As described in more detail below, a writ of restitution is the legal document that commands the sheriff to eject your tenant and restore you to possession of the premises pursuant to RCW Initiating an unlawful detainer lawsuit usually involves serving the following documents on the tenant:. However, you can file and serve these documents in different sequences depending on the strategy you are trying to pursue. The following strategies apply to any unlawful detainer action, including those dealing with nonpayment of rent. Below, I go into detail regarding the benefits and downsides of each strategy.

This strategy is not available in most other states or federal jurisdictions, but it is legal in Washington. The notice of nonpayment is another hurdle your tenant has to jump over; like the summons and complaint, your tenant must answer appropriately within 7 days RCW Even if the tenant does comply with the notice, that can be a good thing too, as described below. First, you correctly fill out a notice of nonpayment.

Then, the defendant is required to provide one of the following answers per RCW If you win the unlawful detainer action, you will be able to easily access the money in the registry, which saves you the trouble of trying to obtain and recover on a personal judgment against the defendant for the deficient rent. Even if you lose, you will likely be entitled to the rent in the registry because the tenant will owe it for the time that elapsed during the eviction proceeding.

The notice of nonpayment can be served along with a filed summons and complaint, between filing the summons and complaint and serving the order to show cause, or alongside the order to show cause. In other words, the only times you cannot serve the notice of nonpayment is before you have filed and served your summons and complaint, and after you have served the order to show cause. How does the notice of nonpayment service timeline work with the two strategies above? The tenant shall have no less than 7 days to respond to the notice of nonpayment. If the notice was served along with a filed notice and complaint, then the deadline for compliance must be the same as the date for responding to the summons and complaint.

The summons and complaint must be served together. This step will cover some tips on preparing your summons and complaint. Step 8 explains how to correctly serve the summons and complaint. The summons should not contain any details about your case or any arguments. To evict the kind of residential tenants covered in this guide those who fall under the Residential Landlord Tenant Act , your summons must be substantially in compliance with the summons form set out in RCW The form is fairly self-explanatory. Beyond the form requirements from RCW The complaint is more complicated than the summons.

A complaint is the initial document that you file with the court to begin a lawsuit, and its purpose is twofold: Second, your complaint should provide adequate notice to your tenant of the claims you intend to bring against them. We have nothing to add. The Motion to Show Cause and the Order to Show Cause are two different documents; the motion is a request that the court grant the order, and the order merely requires the tenant to come to the courthouse for the show cause hearing.

The court does not require a specific form for either the Motion or the Order to Show Cause. However, our motions and orders usually follow the format in the downloadable examples below. The service requirements for the Summons, Complaint, Notice of Nonpayment, and Notice of Default is similar to the service requirements for a prelawsuit unlawful detainer see Step 2. However, the service requirements for these documents is slightly more complicated, so pay attention to this section.

A good tenant attorney can and will seize on any minor flaw in the method of service to invalidate notice and get the case delayed or dismissed. We highly recommend hiring a legal messenger like ABC Legal to perform this work for you, even if you are trying to otherwise handle the legal side of the eviction yourself. As proof of due diligence on your part, the court will require both an affidavit of attempted service that describes all unsuccessful efforts in obtaining service, and an affidavit from you or your attorney that states your or their belief that tenant cannot be found you are not required to show that the tenant is actually evading service.

If posting and mailing used to serve the tenant, you cannot recover a money judgment. Also, no matter how you serve the notice, you must keep an affidavit of service on file if you obtain a default judgment. Depending on the service and filing strategy you chose in Step 4 , you should be waiting for a response to at least one of the following:.

However, if your tenant does correctly serve a notice of appearance, then you must proceed to a show cause hearing. Your tenant can serve a notice of appearance in the following ways as described in RCW Note once again that mere pre-litigation contact is not enough; the defendant must serve you something in writing. This information also appears above in the introduction of the notice of nonpayment. Notice that these delivery methods are almost exactly the same as those required by the notice of appearance under RCW If your tenant appropriately responds, you have to proceed with a show cause hearing.

The idea behind default judgments is that, if a defendant fails to respond within the set time, the defendant must not be interested in contesting the allegations against them. Therefore, the court will grant a default judgment in favor of the plaintiff. When your tenant has failed to respond appropriately to either document, obtaining a default judgment should be almost automatic. Read Step 9 to learn more about answer requirements and whether your tenant has met them. Alternatively, you can also default the tenant if they have answered appropriately but then failed to attend the show cause hearing.

The Definitive Guide to Evicting a Residential Tenant in Washington State

However, this rarely comes up in evictions since landlords usually cannot get the tenant out of the unit unless they follow through and get a judgment and writ. A defendant appears in an action when he or she answers,. As discussed in Step 9 , a tenant must correctly answer the summons with a notice of service to avoid default. However, even if the tenant served you an inadequate answer, that will still constitute an appearance that entitles the tenant to notice of the default hearing.

Likewise, if you have issued a nonpaying tenant both a notice of nonpayment and a summons, and the tenant has only correctly answered one but not the other, then you will have to issue your tenant a notice of default. Fortunately, there will be no way for the tenant to stop a writ from being issue if the tenant has not conformed to the response requirements under RCW The notice of default does not have to be fancy or formal unless more than a year has elapsed since you sent the summons.

The only requirements are as follows:. The notice of default and any supporting affidavit must be served at least 5 days before the hearing on the motion. Typically, you can present these documents to the judge presiding over ex parte motions and they will sign them after a few questions back and forth. You should request a writ of restitution, since that is the only legal way to eject the tenant and restore you to possession of the premises. Typically, the court will give you whatever money damages you cited in the motion for default, within reason per CR55 b 1.

That means the only relief you can request in a default is a writ of restitution to restore you to possession of the premises. If the court grants your motion for default judgment, then your tenant can still move to rescind i. However, many tenants do not know about this recourse.

And even if they did, it is often impractical to make a motion to set aside because, once the writ of restitution is issued following default, the defendant may have as little as 4 days before the sheriff forcibly removes the tenant.

Burris , Wn. Practically speaking, it is rare for the court to set aside the default unless there is a serious defect in one of the documents above. For example, CR55 c 2 specifically allows the court to set aside default judgments where venue was improper. Even if the default judgement were set aside, the court would set a show cause hearing, and the tenant would still have to argue that they are not in unlawful possession of the premises.

1. Fear of Forever.
2. How to Rent Your House to the Best Tenants.
3. Progressive Dystopia.

A show cause hearing is like an informal trial in the sense that both you and the tenant will have the opportunity to explain your sides of the case, and then the judge will make a decision. However, many of the formalities of real trial are suspended in the hearing setting. In many cases, it may be enough to state the basis of your claim e. In practice we have found that courts usually do not want a long explanation from the landlord unless the case is unusually complicated.

Beyond that, arguing an unlawful detainer action is highly case-specific. If you obtain a favorable judgment, the court will also issue you a writ of restitution per RCW If you lose the show cause hearing, you can have the judge set a trial date so you can continue to pursue the eviction in open court. However, this is usually not a cost-effective or practical option.

If the judge determines that there is a dispute of material fact in the case, she may set your case for trial to sort out the factual matters. Once the writ is issued, the only thing you have to contend with is the nitty-gritty of moving the tenant out. It will usually take days to move a tenant out once you have the writ.

The sheriff will issue the writ to the defendant. This usually occurs the day after the judgment. The tenant then has three days to vacate the premises. If the tenant has not voluntarily vacated within those three days, the landlord or his attorney must contact the sheriff to schedule a physical eviction. Depending on scheduling, the sheriff may not schedule the physical eviction for weeks. When moving the tenant out, you and the sheriff must comply with all the requirements of RCW It is usually easier for the tenant to move on rather than continue to fight.

Therefore, it is fairly uncommon to encounter the following tenant recourses. The tenant must pay this bond within three days of issuance of the writ. This rarely happens, since tenants who are deficient on their rent are usually short on cash, and so do not have the means to pay. Technically, the tenant has 30 days to appeal after issuance of the writ of restitution. Appeals are rare, since they require the tenant to pay all the costs assessed against them, and also hire an appellate attorney most free counsel available to tenants will not represent tenants at the appellate level.

This is fine if the tenant has belongings that are worth some money, since the landlord may then sell off the belongings pursuant to RCW The Definitive Guide to Evicting a Residential Tenant in Washington State Welcome to the most comprehensive online guide for Washington evictions We know from firsthand experience how frustrating and confusing evictions can be on the landlord side.

How to Use this Guide The process to evict a tenant will vary substantially depending on the reason s for the eviction and the responsiveness of the tenant you are trying to evict.

See a Problem?

If your situation does not fall into one of the 6 categories below, you probably do not have the right to terminate the tenancy: The tenant fails to pay on time; The tenant fails to comply with the terms of the lease; The tenant commits waste, nuisance, a minor i. Reason to Terminate Tenancy: The tenant fails to pay on time If a tenant is actually late on rent and does not comply with a properly served and processed 3-day pay or vacate notice, then you have grounds to terminate the tenancy and proceed with an unlawful detainer action.

Your 3-day pay or vacate notice must at minimum include: A good faith statement of the amount you believe your tenant owes. This is required because the purpose of the 3-day pay or vacate notice is to allow the tenant an opportunity to conform to the terms of the lease. Second Reason to Terminate Tenancy: Tenant Fails to Comply with the Lease If your tenant actually fails to comply with the terms of the lease other than being late on rent, covered above and your tenant fails to conform to a properly-served day comply or vacate notice, then you can terminate the tenancy and proceed with an eviction.

Did the tenant actually violate the lease? What about late fees, utility costs, or other non-rent money the tenant owes? Tips for Gathering Evidence of Noncompliance If your tenant is violating the terms of the lease, you should make sure to document the noncompliance as best you can. Your day pay or vacate notice must at minimum include: A reference to the rule or statute that the tenant has violated.

This is because the purpose of the notice is to allow the tenant an opportunity to conform to the terms of the lease. Third Reason to Terminate Tenancy: Tenant commits waste, nuisance, minor criminal acts, or unlawful business If your tenant commits waste, nuisance, minor i. These categories have a lot of crossover: Waste Waste is a reason to terminate the tenancy under RCW Nuisance Nuisance is a reason to terminate the tenancy under RCW Unlawful business Unlawful business is a reason to terminate the tenancy under RCW No-Notice Eviction for Drugs-Related Activity Nearly any kind of drug-related activity allows you to evict a tenant without notice.

To qualify for a no-notice eviction under that statute, the criminal act must: One party chooses not to renew the tenancy When a tenancy is month-to-month which often happens automatically after the one-year term of the lease has ended , either you or the tenant can choose not to renew the tenancy. However, there are some caveats: It is illegal to use the no-cause notice to discriminate or retaliate against a tenant.

A day written notice is not sufficient for all tenants in all municipalities. For example, if your tenant is disabled in a way that makes it difficult for them to move out, they may be entitled to a reasonable accommodation under federal, state, or local fair housing laws e. The lease expires naturally As with other contracts, leases can end naturally after a set period of time. The following people will be responsible for carrying out right to rent checks on tenancies agreed on or after 1st February The scheme applies to all people over the age of 18 living at a property and using it as their only or main home.

Some types of property and residential tenancy agreements are excluded from the scheme. Before letting a property to a new prospective tenant, landlords should follow four initial right to rent steps:. For more information click here. There are many different types of documents which are acceptable, including single documents, combined documents and those where a time limited statutory excuse applies. Click here to see the full list. Landlords do also have the option to appoint an agent to act on their behalf. If an agent has accepted responsibility for compliance with right to rent in writing , the agent will be the liable party in place of the landlord.

Landlords should check that the documents appear genuine and show no signs of being tampered with and that they belong to the holder. Plus, if a document is suspected of being false or tampered with, do not proceed. As long as the person provides the landlord with a Home Office reference number, the Home Office will do the check and get back to the landlord within 2 working days confirming if there is a right to rent or not.

The Landlords Checking Service can be found here or call the helpline on Some permits will expire during the term of the tenancy. Landlords should make copies of the documents and keep them with their records. If a follow-up check shows that a person no longer has the right to be in the UK, landlords should make an official report to the Home Office. The forthcoming immigration bill proposes new measures to make it easier for landlords to evict illegal tenants.

Landlords will be expected to evict illegal immigrants soon after receiving a Home Office notice that their tenant no longer has the right to rent in the UK. In some circumstances, landlords will be able to act without a court order. A new criminal offence will also target landlords and letting agents who repeatedly fail to carry out right to rent checks or fail to remove illegal immigrants from their properties.

Landlord Action can advise on the best course of action. For more information contact their advice team on