UK Landlord Forum / Life

I have a tenant that owns me £5500 in rent arrears and has caused a minimum of £10,000 damage to my 3 bedroom house. Both tenant are in full time employment but refuse to pay. The house was in perfect condition when they moved in, now it is a disaster. In January, eviction notice was served for rent arrears, in March, eviction notice was served because I need to sell the house before the bank takes it off me. Tribunal case coming up mid September. However, going by the law there is no protection for landlords and will be selling my other properties when they become vacant.

The problem i have is that I know the law will not help me, has any of you took the law into there own hands and if so how ?

I am running out of patients and fed up with people destroying my family.     

If anyone has used illegal methods to get rid of tenants they are very unlikely to admit to it on here! I can understand your anger and frustration,but you will only add to your problems if you get fined or even jailed.The tribunal is very soon,so you should concentrate  your efforts on having all your evidence and information ready. It is good that they are both working,which makes it worth suing them for the debts.
I assume you have stopped paying the mortgage on the house,if the bank is taking it off you? With other properties bringing in rent,plus other income,I would expect  to have some surplus to cover such an eventuality. You really need to get some professional advice on your finances, before you make any decisions about the future. Good luck.

Hi DW

I'm sorry to hear you're losing your cool. It sounds like you are feeling overwhelmed by the situation and needing certainty am I right? I have taken the law into my own hands and filled a moneyclaim for my tenants for the unpaid rent before they were evicted, that way I was able to secure a CCJ whilst I knew their present address and as a result they left sooner than if the court had evicted them, they had enough!

Perhaps try this approach or better still hand the whole process over to someone else. That way you have a third party between you and them so its less personal. Other options are to let a disconnected third party offer money towards a new place if they surrender the tenancy and had back the keys signing this over to you. Whilst this may sound bonkers a landlord friend of mine swears by it.

Please don't do anything violent or out of character it gets us all a bad name and demonstrates you've lost control it is also a criminal offence. Have faith this will be a distant memory soon enough. I have experienced this and now use rent guarantee and other options to prevent this from happening.

If they are in full time employment why not use one of the many remedies available to you through the courts. I have had good success squeezing money out of the won't pay brigade. Private Message me if you want to discuss this.

Filing a MCOL for unpaid rent wasn't what the OP was implying by "taking the law into their own hands" I reckon. I could be corrected.

I wish I had faith in rent guarantee schemes to protect landlords.This was not my experience,so I stopped having them after the first few years of being a landlord.At the end of the day,despite all diligence,you take a risk when you hand over those keys to a new tenant.

Quote from: heavykarma on October 07, 2022, 07:51:47 AM
I wish I had faith in rent guarantee schemes to protect landlords.This was not my experience,so I stopped having them after the first few years of being a landlord.At the end of the day,despite all diligence,you take a risk when you hand over those keys to a new tenant.

I agree.
Guarantors and rent guarantee insurance schemes are bad for landlords because they offer a (usually false) level of security which can allow them to take on a tenant who can't actually afford to rent.

Which is something the prospective tenant may not actually realise themselves, believing some administrative or procedural nit-picking is all that's stopping them moving into the property they want.

I feel your pain. My 2 rentals are next door to me and the dodgy tenant who I had in one of them it was very hard not to kill him but like my solicitor said, I know it's hard but please don't do anything to him because you will screw yourself in the end. Tenant even locked himself out one day and I had to let him back in!!!! That was a hard thing to do.

Since then I have had rent guarantee and luckily not had to use it. But is it really that rubbish?

Quote from: raiden on October 08, 2022, 07:57:28 AMSince then I have had rent guarantee and luckily not had to use it. But is it really that rubbish?

Imagine that its purpose is not actually to help you... but, rather, drain money from you in smaller amounts and then do everything possible to avoid paying out when the need arises. No Insurance company offering this product (or, indeed, any) would claim they're in it for philanthropy... they're going concerns, usually with Shareholders, who want to see a positive bottom line - that implies profits a go-go. While that in itself doesn't detract from them paying out... their best bet is to place so many hurdles and preconditions in the mix so there's nearly always (not always) a get-out. Maybe the date the claim was made was on a day ending in a "y" or something.