What to do when tenant does not comply with lease terms
In Florida, when your tenant has a minor violation of the lease terms, the landlord must give the tenant a 7-Day Notice to Cure. An example of this is if your tenant gets a pet when the lease says "no pets". If the tenant fails to cure, or violates the same term a second time, the landlord can then evict the tenant.
Ricardo: I have this tenant that we signed a lease and I specified that he won't take more than two cars. Now, he have a truck and the other day parked a semi-truck or trailer truck in their yard. I had to call the authorities. Finally, they moved it away. Every now and then, he returns three or four cars. I'm very upset. The second tenant is I hired someone to do the lawn in the house. Then, he said, "No, I don't want this woman in my property. You said it's not your property. I pay for that."
Attorney Tom Olsen: Ricardo, I'm going to handle part one, part two to your question I don't understand. If you're a landlord and you have a lease that says only two cars or you're a landlord that has a lease that says no pets, and the next thing you know your tenant's got three cars or your tenant's got a dog, your remedy, pursuing the Florida Statute, chapter 83, part II, is what's called a seven-day notice with opportunity to cure.
Ricardo, for you, you give your tenant a notice that says, "You're not supposed to have more than two cars. There are three cars out here. I'm going to give you seven days to fix this opportunity. If after seven days you still have three cars there, I'm going to evict you." Now, Ricardo, you might say, "Well, fine. You know what? A month from now, he's going to do this again." Well, the point is that the seven-day notice, with opportunity to cure for cars or pets, is you must give them an opportunity to cure the first time.
The second time, you don't have to give them an opportunity to cure. You could go straight to eviction. Now, what kind of landlord-tenant opportunities do they get an opportunity to cure? They're minor non-compliance of terms, like having a dog when they're not supposed to or three cars, for example. If they're doing some things, they're not given an opportunity to cure, or for example, if they're doing intentional destruction to your property, you don't have to give them an opportunity to cure if that's the situation. You just give them a seven-day notice to evict.
Ricardo, hopefully, that answers your questions for you now. Rob Solomon is our landlord, the tenant attorney. Ricardo, if you want to call him right now, get more detail or go over that part two with him, you can call Rob Solomon at my office right now. It's 407-423-5561. That's the Olsen Law Group in Orlando. 407-423-5561. My name is Tom Olsen. The name of the show is Olsen on Law. We're going to take a break. We'll be back in just a few minutes.