UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi All,

I've recently had to serve S21 to a tenant, (AST ended)  a number of reasons one being he was verbally  absusive to both myself and my husband, all because we wanted to check the property after almost 16 months of renting it out to him, we did everything correctly but refused us entry. Another reason was we found out he had being sub-letting to 4 adults and not actually living at my property. There's other reasons but these two being the most concerning.
He asked to meet to pay the first of two months rent, I was dreading meeting and having to talk  face to face with him so took my son (just incase) but he was ever so nice, no aggression at all.
He paid all but £50 of he's rent (said he could only afford to pay this amount ) I gave him a receipt wrote £50 outstanding on it ( for records).
This is when he said he will be moving out before the two months is up because he's got somewhere else to move to. I said ok but to let  me know for sure.. Do I need this in writing from him?

He's also asked for a reference!?! My first thoughts were not on your nelly! ... But then I've since thought It's the only way for sure to get rid of this guy..
Any thoughts on this?

Many Thanks in advance

You behave honourably. You don't give a good reference to pass on a problem Tenant to another poor sucker Landlord. If you decline to give a reference instead of saying something negative then that often sends a strong, enough, message.

Hi Hippogriff,
My first thoughts were to say No chance, but then I thought he'll just carry on with these problems.
I thought maybe if  he passed my details on to the next LL,I could then let them know, rather than seeing this guy again, fear of him being abusive to me again.
Just so I'm sure... if he still decides to move out without a reference do I have to get it in writing from him the day he's moving out? Or would verabally be OK?  There's a section in the agreement for him to fill in,  but I don't think he's kept it.

The only way Landlords can really help other Landlords is by sharing information on forums like this, and by being honest with references.

It is important.

You would not like to be on the receiving-end, obviously. Imagine you actually went to the trouble of speaking to a prospective Tenant's current Landlord and they said glowing things about them... but later you learned that was just to get rid of the problem, and they'd actually caused thousands in damage and had rent arrears amounting to many, many hundreds.

Now you have the problem.

P.S. - in the modern world a lot of references are done by telephone anyway. I recently received a call asking me 3 simple questions:

1) Did they pay the rent on time? Yes.
2) Did they look after the property? Yes.
3) Would you let to them again? No.

If there's a follow-on question, then you can handle as you see fit - "no comment" - is perfectly fine. You're not usually asked to write up a character statement as a reference. Most Landlords are interested in 1) and 2) for obvious reasons... but 3) is usually about relationship breakdown and matters of that nature - overly pernickety Tenants, abusive ones, ones who cause a nuisance or obstruction to a Landlord in what they need to do re. repairs etc..