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Originally Posted by the-rasta-masta

I work downtown in Finance at an Oil and Gas company, and my landlord constantly hounds me on the first of each month to come and meet him halfway across downtown to give him the rent cheque. I am busy at work with lunch meetings/deadlines, and I find it unreasonable of him to expect me to take a half hour out of my day to walk over and hand him the cheque. I always tell him I can make myself available on weekends/after work to wait at the property for him to come pick it up, and he replies that he needs to be at the bank prior to that.

You are responsible to pay the rent to the landlord on the first of the month (or the date the rental agreement specifies), banks don't wait to take out the mortgages, so I think it's obvious that the rent would need to be paid on time as well.

Unless there's some sort of provision in the agreement, how you get the rent to the landlord on time is your responsibility. Expecting Enmax to come to your house to pick up your electricity payment, or Shaw/Telus to come pick up your payment for your Internet isn't reasonable.

If I had to go to every single tenant and collect from them every month, that would eat up at least two days of each month, and I don't have that many tenants.

If you can't hand deliver it, put it in the mail (early) so that they receive it before the first of the month. Or do post-dated cheques. Or send it via courier. Or drop it off before work, or the weekend before, or any number of other options.

Post-dated cheques makes the most sense.

Originally Posted by the-rasta-masta

Yesterday I told him off by saying I find it ridiculous that he expects me to take time out of my working day to deliver a cheque for him, and that he can come to my office and I will run down and give it to him if it is so urgent. I also offered to pay via email transfer each month, but he does not accept that method of payment.

So send post-dated cheques, or send it by mail early. He's not obligated to come to you; the rental agreement includes his address where the rent should be paid to, you are responsible to make sure the rent gets there on time.

Originally Posted by the-rasta-masta

I know that post dated cheques would solve this problem, but I have been living here for 5 months now, and with a few repairs that I have been waiting on that are still not resolved, and meeting this landlord to give him rent is the only time I can get any response out of him for the entire month. (His excuses are that the repair is delayed because parts are on backorder... I need a fawcet fixed, and it seems like a fairly run of the mill fawcet...not buying this excuse.)

The repairs are a separate issue; unless said repairs are causing the property to not meet the standards of health and safety, the rent and maintenance issues are separate.

If you can't get a response out of him about repairs and he's just a bad landlord, then you can either work with him or move, but you can't tie rental payments to it.

If getting in contact with him to discuss these issues is important and you want to be able to see him face to face while giving a rent cheque, I think that's a decent idea, but it still needs to fit within giving the rent on time, so the weekend before the rent is due you can give it to him then.

Originally Posted by the-rasta-masta

Anyways, again he is hounding me today to come meet him and I wanted to get some idea as to how this issue actually boils down.... is it my perogative to "deliver" the rent to him each month, or should he be coming by the property after work hours (which I will always make myself available for)...

You are responsible to pay the rent on time to the proper address. Some landlords will pick up rent as a convenience, but any landlord that has more than a few properties that would obviously not be a reasonable thing to expect, anymore than expecting Fido to come to your house and get the $ for your cell phone.

Originally Posted by the-rasta-masta

Just wanted to know the specifics before I open this can of worms with him...

Rather than opening a can of worms, how about trying to work with him.

Give him post-dated cheques for the rent, that will resolve the whole "who goes to whom" issue.

Tell him you understand things can get busy and missed, ask if there's anything you can do to help facilitate the repair. Say that you can arrange the repair as long as the repair guy can call the landlord to arrange payment or something.

There are times when I've simply forgotten repairs that were important just because I had so many things going on.. The tenants don't see that, and it's not my intent to not repair things, it's just sometimes things get missed.

Or he could just really be a crappy landlord, in which case you can either put up with it, or find a better place and landlord.