Can I include a late fee in the three day notice?

Question

We are looking to serve our tenant with a 3 day notice for not paying rent for Dec (25 days past due). This will be second notice to pay or vacate. The first one was for 2 months late (Oct/Nov) but did not include late fees. She paid the 2 months rent w/o late fees. Now I would like to include late fees from the previous 2 months plus for Dec. Can I do that? Also, we ended up using a lawyer for the first notice (we were not in the state). Can we include the fees we paid to the lawyer as well?

The lease expires on Feb 1st and we have no plans on renewing or re-renting. Is it even worth it? On the other hand, ideally for our situation, we would like for the tenant to be out by Jan 19th...

Answer 1

You can only charge a late fee if you included that in your rental agreement.

You can only collect legal fees if you evict and win in court. Since you did not go to court you can not charge the fees, they are part of what you are awarded by the judge.

Answer 2

First about the previous late fees. If you never notified them or tried to collect then when they were due you will have a hard time trying to collect them retroactively.

For this month I would add the late fees as long as your lease actually states that there is a late fee. if your lease says nothing about late fees then you are stuck.

for lawyer fees it is the same. Do you have it listed in your lease that the tenant is liable for all legal fees? If you do have it in there then you can present them will the bill but the fact that you are coming to them after you accepted payment and did not present them with the bill may work against you.

Answer 3

what does the lease say about the rent amount?

mine used to be written that the rent was 1250 and a discount of 50 was allowed if the rent was received by the 5th of the month.

otherwise, you're stuck with what your state/province's laws provide, which is likely nothing.