As a landlord, you count on your rental properties to provide you with a stable source of income. You also expect the tenants to whom you lease to pay their rent on time and take the best care of the properties in which they live.
However, when tenants fail to uphold their lease contractual obligations, you have the right to take legal action against them. You can evict them legally by knowing under what circumstances Michigan law allows evictions and what kind of timeline you have for notifying your tenants to vacate the premises.
Lawful Reasons to Evict in Michigan
Michigan law does not allow landlords to evict tenants on a whim. You must have a valid legal reason to evict any of your tenants from your rental properties.
One of the foremost reasons you can legally evict a tenant involves this person staying in the rental property past the terms of the lease. If you lease to a tenant for a year, for example, and decide not to renew the lease, you can evict the tenant legally if this person remains in the property past the expiration of the lease contract.
Further, you can evict a tenant for not paying rent on time, as well as for violating the stipulated terms in the lease. For example, if this person has a pet in the home when your lease expressly states that no pets are allowed, you can evict this person without violating Michigan’s eviction laws.
You can also evict tenants for committing crimes while living in your properties. These crimes can include using illegal drugs or engaging in trafficking.
Proper Notice for Eviction
Michigan’s eviction laws also state that you must give proper notice to the tenants whom you plan on evicting from your rental properties. If you are filing to evict them because they failed to pay rent on time, caused damages to your rental property or created a health hazard in the residence, you must give them at least seven days’ notice before you evict them.
However, the laws in Michigan allow for a shorter notice if your tenants are engaging in illegal activities in your rental properties. If you discover they are using drugs or committing crimes like running a prostitution ring in the home, you only have to provide them with 24 hours’ notice.
You must provide this notice in writing. You cannot simply communicate it to your tenants verbally, either in person or via text, email or by phone. You must also indicate the reason for why you are evicting them. Failure to provide written notice could void your eviction efforts.
Court Order and Appearance
The eviction laws in Michigan likewise state that you must take your tenants to court to evict them legally from your rental properties. You cannot simply evict them without first taking them before a judge.
Your tenants, by law, have the right to tell the court their side of the case and explain if and why they violated the terms of their lease. You also have the opportunity to provide proof that your tenants failed to pay rent, committed crimes, caused damages or otherwise provided you with a legal reason to evict them.
The judge must then issue an eviction order before you can have the tenants removed from any of your properties. Without this order, your tenants have the right to remain in the residence.
You cannot order them to move out until you can prove to the judge that they have violated your lease or the lease has come to an end. If the judge issues an order, however, you can proceed with the eviction.
Access to the Rental Property
When you have an eviction order from the court, you can then legally prevent your tenants from accessing your rental property. Instead, you can have the police or sheriff remove the tenants’ belongings from inside of the residence. You are not bound to allow them back into the place to retrieve anything once you have an eviction order in hand.
Without this order, however, you have to allow your tenants back into the residence, even if you have no intention of renewing their lease. They have the right to go back into the residence and remove their belongings without you interfering or calling law enforcement on them. If you prevent them from accessing the property without an eviction order from the court, you risk violating Michigan’s eviction laws.
Screening Your Tenants
You may think that Michigan’s eviction laws are relatively straightforward and therefore easy to navigate. You may have no idea of how complicated they can be to follow if and when you have to evict a tenant. You may alternatively have already tried to navigate the Michigan eviction legal process and prefer to avoid having to go through the same process in the future.
You might minimize or eliminate the hassle of ever having to evict a tenant again by having your rental property applicants carefully screened prior to you leasing to them. As much as you want to trust applicants and take their words at face value, you still have to protect yourself legally and financially. You cannot risk leasing to anyone, no matter how trustworthy and complacent they appear to be.
You may also admit that you lack the objectivity and talent for screening your own applicants. Instead, you can hire an outside screening company like Upside Investments to screen your applicants for you.
Upside Investments thoroughly checks out each of your tenant applicants for you so you avoid the risk of leasing to the wrong person. It helps you lease to good tenants who will uphold their contracts and reduce or eliminate the need for you to file an eviction order against them.
Your rental properties can provide you with lucrative income when you lease to the best tenants. You have to follow through a complex legal process to evict tenants legally from your properties. You may save yourself the time of evicting tenants when you have Upside Investments screen your rental applicants first.
