I'm a very patient landlord and I believe I did a stupid thing... In New Jersey I thought that a rental agreement would become an automatic month-to-month lease until an new lease was signed. My tenants are consistently late with rent which is the reason I didn't want to lock them in for another year and thought I could leave things the way they were. We're very understanding about hard times... my husband was even kind enough to assist with employment opportunities for one of the tenants. Here's the issue now, they are late again and not returning any phone calls and show no signs of life at the premises. I've read all about "tenants" rights, do landlords have any? We can't afford two mortages! We're already out over $3,000 from the last tenant and were told not to bother trying to file a claim because we were way at the bottom of the food chain. We actually had to cancel a vacation as a result. Does anyone know about NJ real estate laws and if the automatic month to month is real and if I can send my current tenants a notice to start eviction procedures due to consistent lateness of rents? I would appreciate and guidance you can give. Thanks so much.

Yes, in NJ a tenancy automatically becomes month-to-month when the written lease expires.

However according to NJ law a landlord cannot refuse to renew a lease unless the tenancy falls under one of a list of special reasons. One of those reasons is habitual late payment of rent. In order to evict them on that basis you must first send a 30 day written notice to cease and then a 30 day written notice to quit. If they pay during that time then you cannot evict.

Another way is to give them a new lease that contains "reasonable changes" and they must refuse to accept those changes. The reasonable changes can include rent increase, assessment of late fees, rules and regulations, etc. If they refuse to accept after 30 days written notice then you can file a lawsuit for eviction.

Check out New Jersey Landlord Tenant Security Deposits Evictions (http://www.rentlaw.com/newjersey.htm) for more info on NJ landlord/tenant law. Also send away for the Truth in Renting booklet. You can find that info on that site.