UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi All

Not sure if this has been covered in forum, but cannot find answers.  Tenant has been pretty good payers, usually pays a few days before due date.  Last month, paid rent, less £200.  Emailed them to acknowledge receipt and informed them that the rent was short.  Asked them to please pay remainder by due date.  No response.  Tenants appear very reluctant to communicate (from previous experience).  Rent was due 4th.  Should I send reminder email?  I am prepared to give them some time if they are in financial difficulties but they do not respond to emails or calls.  How long should I give them?  And if there is still no response, should I be talking eviction?

Many thanks for reading

Should you remind them? Of course. Email is good, put a read receipt on it to give you some confidence they've at least seen it / opened it (no guarantee they've read it, of course).

Are there any potential reasons you might be aware of? Is there any disrepair they might be taking into their own hands and deducting rent for (not correctly, of course)?

If there is still no response then you are short on your rent, with no explanation, why wouldn't you be considering eviction? Are you prepared to let them stay for less money? If so, offer that now and I bet they'll communicate then.

Some people are strange... Landlords, Tenants... colleagues. I don't like to talk to people, generally.

Not responding is never a good sign.If there was a genuine short-term cashflow problem,the adult way would be to inform you of how and when they would be able to catch up,and you could decide your reaction. I would not now make an offer to give them time,they will see that as weakness.Send an email giving the date by which you want all arrears paid,otherwise you will be issuing 21. 

I'd issue the s8/s21 straight away with a cover letter/email.
An email alone is less likely to illicit a response.

Thank you everyone for your suggestions and the support.  Update - I sent the tenants another email, having read all the blogs that The Landlord has written and decided to "play nice" as he suggests.  Apparently tenants claim that they sent 4 emails over the past 2 months asking for toilet to be fixed but did not receive any replies so they had to go ahead and get it done, and deducted the amount off the rent.  I have replied to them telling them that I did not receive any communication at all from them, but OK, send me the invoice for the fixed loo for my accountant and next time, please text or phone - ! gave them 2 mobile no. and 1 landline if they do not get a response to their emails from me.  Don't wait 2 months.  All's well that ends well, this time round.

Wow... my SpideySense worked!

They can't do that, by the way... it's not on to go around deducting money for repairs in that sense. However, all's well that ends well, as you say... if you can live with it I definitely can.

Quote from: ckurimbokus on April 10, 2019, 07:39:49 PM
Thank you everyone for your suggestions and the support.  Update - I sent the tenants another email, having read all the blogs that The Landlord has written and decided to "play nice" as he suggests.  Apparently tenants claim that they sent 4 emails over the past 2 months asking for toilet to be fixed but did not receive any replies so they had to go ahead and get it done, and deducted the amount off the rent.  I have replied to them telling them that I did not receive any communication at all from them, but OK, send me the invoice for the fixed loo for my accountant and next time, please text or phone - ! gave them 2 mobile no. and 1 landline if they do not get a response to their emails from me.  Don't wait 2 months.  All's well that ends well, this time round.

By acquiescing to their actions of deducting from the rent, I think you may have unwittingly set yourself a precedent which will come back to bite you :-(