If you are in the rental business, sooner or later, you are going to have a tenant who inexplicably stops paying rent. They can give you the run around with stories about why they can’t pay and promises of an entire payment plus late fees just around the corner. Or, they may just ignore your phone calls and refuse to answer the door if you show up in person to try to collect rent. Bottom line is, when it comes to this point, such renters will have to be served with a three day notice to abandon to initiate the eviction process.

While you can be frustrated and tempted to take measures into your own hands, it is very important to follow the legal procedure for removing a non-paying tenant from your property. Specifically, the law expressly bans you from doing the following:

Changing Locks

In no way is it illegable for you to change the locks, or install new locks on the property to “lock out” your renter. It doesn’t matter if they are months behind on their rent, have entirely trashed the house and are in violation of every provision in the lease. They are lawfully protected against a “lock out” and can take you to court to regain entry.

Utility Shut-offs

You can not shut off the water, gas or electricity for the purpose to force your tenants to move out. Again, your tenants, however far behind in rent they are, can seek legal recourse against you for this action and may collect hefty fines against you.

Taking Renter’s Property

You may not harass your tenant into moving out. This would contain illegally entering the rental unit and taking their property. Only under rather specific conditions (abandonment) is a landlord enabled to remove a tenant’s property.

Physical Removal

Only the legal authority (usually the sheriff’s office or their agents) can remove a tenant after a writ of possession is received from the court and the legal waiting time has finished. This means that you can’t hire your personal help to physically move out a lessee.

While the above list describes the major things that you, as a landlord, cannot do to make a tenant leave, it is not all inclusive. Any number of other creative strategies to compel a renter to move out are also illegible.

The one legal way to remove a renter from your property is to go through the legal eviction process. Yes, it takes time and money. Remember that you are able to deduct the unpaid rent for the period that your tenant stays in the property during the eviction process from their security deposit.

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