- Jurisdiction
- North Carolina
The issue: My landlord uses a third party online payment process. The payment does not post immediately and will most likely post after the 5th day if you don't pay it on the first. Due to this, I racked up a good amount of late fees (which the office failed to notify me about). I just kept paying my rent like normal. An unrelated issue came up and they then let me know that my account has not had a zero balance in months and basically threatened eviction. They said they were being nice by not evicting me for the outstanding balance. I asked for a ledger and I see that they charged the late fees for the months it didn't post in time (that's another question for another time), but each subsequent month, they charged another late fee for the total outstanding balance. Is this legal in the state of North Carolina? I know the law states "A late fee under subsection (a) of this section may be imposed only one time for each late rental payment." But, does that apply to an outstanding balance?