Towards the back of most leases, you will find clauses relating to “forfeiture and re-entry”. These will set out circumstances in which the landlords can take back the premises and end your lease. Sometimes, landlords can literally break in overnight and that is the end of that. (Although you do have some rights to apply to court to review and perhaps reverse that).
One of the circumstances which can lead to this kind of disaster, is failure to pay the rent on time. As you know, there are fixed payment date set out in the lease – monthly dates or quarter days.
You are given some leeway. You will find this set out in those forfeiture and re-entry clauses I mentioned. Often it will say that rent must be paid within so many days from the fixed payment date or else the Draconian powers I’ve just described will kick in. Often this grace period is a specific number of days or working days (that is, ignoring weekends and bank holidays).
You should be very aware of these time limits, and not run any risks of allowing your landlords to seize back the premises.
If rents are rising, and your landlord had to give you a concessionary rent when conditions were less favourable, the landlord might have strong commercial interest in being able to recover the premises and either let them to someone else, or let them again to you at a much better rent.
Even if you think that the landlord would have no commercial benefit from terminating the lease and having to rent the premises again, because rents are not that much higher than they were, bear in mind that it is also an opportunity for the landlord to insist now that you give all kinds of extra protections – perhaps an additional rent deposit or someone’s personal guarantee – as a condition for them to reinstate the lease.
Run no risks. Pay your rent within the prescribed period.