How to Professionally Handle the Eviction Process in Melbourne, FL

If a tenant moves out before the end of the process, the process will be faster and less expensive. 

You never know how things will move along when you need to evict a tenant. Your residents can be unpredictable, especially if they’re facing financial stress and housing uncertainty. 

Today, we’re talking about how to handle the eviction process without getting emotionally involved and making some of the common mistakes we often see landlords make. Florida is a fairly landlord-friendly state, and evicting a tenant isn’t complicated. However, it can be confusing if you’ve never done it before. Even a simple mistake can set your case back and cost you more time and money. 

Reasons for terminating a tenancy include failure to pay rent, violation of a lease or rental agreement, and illicit activities. Most landlords will evict because a tenant isn’t paying rent. When that happens, the first step is serving a Three Day Notice to Pay or Quit. That essentially gives the tenants three days to catch up with the overdue rent or move out. 

Serve the tenant with the notice in person or post it to the door and send a copy through the mail. In a best case scenario, you’ll get the rent paid and nothing more needs to be done. If those three business days come and go without a rental payment or evidence that the tenants have moved out of the property, you need to begin the process of pursuing a legal eviction through the courts. 

The next step is to go to the clerk of your county and file the necessary eviction paperwork. Bring a copy of your Three Day Notice and a copy of your lease agreement. You’ll need to fill out some paperwork and pay a fee. 

The court will serve a Summons and Complaint on your tenants. They will have an opportunity to respond to the Complaint. If they do, a court date will be set. You’ll need to show up for court with all of the documentation that proves they have not followed their lease agreement by keeping up with rent. 

You may have the opportunity to avoid eviction before the court date arrives. Your tenants can ask for a payment plan or they can move out before the eviction gets to the courts. Decide whether your ultimate goal is to collect the rent and keep them in place or have them removed from the property. With the recent pandemic, eviction moratoriums have caused a huge backlog in court systems across the country, including south Florida. If you can work something out with your tenants, we recommend you try. 

Once you are able to prove that rent has not been paid and the tenants should be removed, the judge will issue a Writ of Possession and give the tenants a specific date by which they must leave. If they don’t, you’ll have to ask the sheriff to enforce the Writ and physically remove them from the property. 

It’s easy to get frustrated when rent isn’t being paid and you just want your tenant out of your property. But, it’s crucial to follow the appropriate laws when evicting a tenant. Failure to do so may make the eviction invalid. Florida law states that a tenant can only be removed if the landlord wins an eviction lawsuit in court. You cannot personally remove a tenant. You cannot change the locks or turn off the utilities. 

If you need help evicting a tenant or, better yet, preventing an eviction, contact us at RE/MAX Elite. It’s always better to have the experience and knowledge of a Melbourne property management company behind you when you’re fighting to get the rent paid or a tenant removed. 

RE/MAX Elite has been providing world-class property management service to Eastern Florida since 2006. We serve all of Brevard County, including Melbourne, SunTree, Viera, Palm Bay, Merritt Island, Cocoa Beach, Rockledge, Satellite Beach, Indialantic, Titusville and Mims.