By CREB®

Landlords play a crucial role in the rental market, balancing property management responsibilities with tenants' rights. Evictions, while often seen from a tenant’s perspective, also significantly impact landlords.

Understanding the reasons and processes behind evictions is vital for landlords to manage their properties effectively. This article explores some key principles behind what constitutes grounds for eviction and how to handle the process in the best way possible.

Grounds for eviction

There are several reasons why a landlord may want to evict a tenant from their property. Overall, the most common and heard reason for eviction is non-payment of rent. However, there are a few other grounds for which a landlord may evict a tenant:

• Breaking of rental agreement terms or conditions

• Damage to the rental premises

• Disturbing or endangering others in the rental premises

• Not maintaining clean rental premises

• Not vacating when a tenancy ends

• Interference with the landlord or landlord’s employees

• Assaults or threatens to assault the landlord or other tenant

Practice tip

All notices for eviction must be in writing. The notices must include the address, reasons for eviction, and end date of the tenancy and must be signed by the landlord. If the notice is delivered via email, ensure that you are using read receipts so there is confirmation that the tenant has received it, although the tenant can refuse the request to send a read receipt.

A physical copy is strongly recommended to be delivered via registered mail or physically to the property. If the notice was posted to the property's front door, ensure that a photo is taken of the notice posted and record the date and time that the notice was posted.

Be sure to collect and save all documents relating to the eviction, as they may be used as evidence if the matter is brought before the courts or the Residential Tenancy Dispute Resolution Service (RTDRS). Documents can include photographs, emails, text messages, recordings, etc.

Notice types for evictions

24-hour notice to vacate – This is used when a tenant has caused significant damages to the rental premises or physically assaulted or threatened to assault either the landlord or another tenant physically.

48-hour notice to vacate – This is used if an unauthorized occupant is living at the rental premises.

14-day notice to vacate – This type of notice would be used if there was a substantial breach by the tenant in the rental property (grounds noted above).

Important note: For notices about non-payment of rent, the landlord must include a statement that the tenancy will not be terminated if the tenant pays the due rent and any overdue rental payments on or before the termination date specified in the notice.

If a landlord has provided the eviction notice to the tenant, they may object to the reasoning behind it. The landlord can then apply to either the courts or the RTDRS for a court order to terminate the tenancy. Until the courts or the RTDRS issues the order, the tenant will remain at the property until the case has been heard.

This stage will be covered in a future article, discussing the differences between the RTDRS versus the courts and how landlords can effectively navigate this process.

By CREB®

With the busy spring market behind us, we are starting to see some shifts in supply levels. With 2,380 sales and 3,604 new listings, the sales-to-new listings ratio fell to 66 per cent, supporting a gain in inventory. 

Inventories rose to 4,158 units, still 33 per cent below what we typically see in July, but the first time they have pushed above 4,000 units in nearly two years. Although the majority of supply growth occurred for homes priced above $600,000, the rise has helped shift the market away from the extreme sellers' market conditions experienced throughout the spring.

"While we are still dealing with supply challenges, especially for lower-priced homes, more options in both the new home and resale market have helped take some of the upward pressure off home prices this month," said Ann-Marie Lurie, Chief Economist at CREB®. "This is in line with our expectations for the second half of the year, and should inventories continue to rise, we should start to see more balanced conditions and stability in home prices."

July sales eased by 10 per cent over last year's record high but were still higher than long-term trends for the month. Like last month, the pullback in sales has been driven by homes priced below $600,000. Nonetheless, the gain in inventory combined with slower sales caused the months of supply to rise to 1.8 months, still low enough to favour the seller but a significant improvement from the under one month reported earlier this year.

Improved supply helped slow the pace of monthly price growth for each property type. In July, the total residential benchmark price was $606,700, similar to last month and nearly eight per cent higher than last year's levels.

To read the full stats release on July's housing market for Calgary and surrounding areas, click here.