We were landlords for many years. My fiance owned his own house in a college town and we rented it, mostly to college students. We had a solid lease every time and had some good tenants and some bad ones. We heard EVERY story in the book when the rent was late.

I solved it by redoing the lease. We upped the rent and then built in a discount. IF the rent was in our hands by 5:00 p.m. the first of the month, the tenant got a discount of $100.00. The lease had only one holder. It was up to them who they shared the house with and up to them how much they charged each person. All we cared about was that the money was there the first of the month. It gave the person on the lease a taste of what we had to deal with.

There were some frantic phone calls and some long drives to our house on their part, but more often than not, the rent was in our hands the first of the month, no excuses.

You cannot be sweet when it comes to your credit and what you own. Once you have a contract with someone, it becomes business.
Put your foot down now.

It's not easy to be firm, but it's your house and your credit and until they pay it off, they play by your rules. If they use you as a credit reference, make sure that you note their late payments by reporting the date received and the date the check cleared, just like a bank would do.

The problems we encountered while renting it out were cleared up as soon as they happened, by sitting down with the tenant and discussing the situation and letting them know in a clear concise manner what was and was not acceptable.

I also made sure that we were at least a month ahead on our mortgage so if they were late, it gave us time to make sure there was $$ in our account to pay the payment.

I was still overjoyed when we sold the house. I hated being mean!