As a landlord, you may want to evict a tenant from your property. It is still your property, even though they’re paying to use the space, and there are situations in which you can tell them they need to vacate it by a certain time. This doesn’t happen overnight, but it is possible.
What you’re wondering is if you need to have any sort of a valid reason to do this. Say that you and the tenant simply don’t get along. Could you evict them for that reason? Or what if you found another tenant who says they’ll pay twice the rent? Could you evict the person who is in the space in order to get more money for your rental?
You need to have a legal reason
The first thing to note is that your tenant signed a lease, which is a binding contract. You cannot kick them out in the middle of that lease because you want to put someone else in the space or because the two of you don’t get along. They have a right to stay there as long as they haven’t broken the terms in the contract.
If they do, that opens up the doors for an eviction. The main reason that this happens, naturally, is that people haven’t paid the rent on time or they’re unable to pay it at all. But you may also evict people who have only made partial rent payments, who are involved in domestic violence or criminal activity, or simply because the lease ran out and they refused to leave – just to name a few reasons.
If you do evict someone, you need to know exactly what steps to take.