UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi Folks

My new tenant moved in to my property a few months ago.  She doesn't work and is claiming housing benefit.  However, she tells me that she has only received 5 weeks rent from the council (she has actually given me 5 weeks rent).  I have tried to get in touch with the council about this but they say that they cannot discuss the tenant's application with me. 

I have tried knocking on the door of my property where the tenant is living and phoned her on several occasions, but she does not answer the phone or open the door when I go round, although I know for definite that she is inside the property.

Can someone please be kind enough to advise me the best course of action to take.

Thanks in advance for your response.

Geek84,

There is no hard and fast solution unfortunately.

Email or write to the tenant regarding the rent arrears how much and how long over due etc. - I would do this at least once a week.  With each letter increasing in the level of severity - failure to pay rent by such and such date will result in legal action being taken against you to recover the property and arrears.

Once you hit two full months of arrears (One month and a day), providing there are two full months of arrears outstanding you are able to serve the section 8 grounds 8,10 and 11.  either instruct a solicitor or a company like landlord action.  they will complete the notice and apply to the courts for possession.  Landlord Action costs around £500 for the entire process.

Be prepared not to receive any rent for the remainder of the tenancy (worst case scenario).  Its likely though you will get dribs and drabs each month, until you can eventually serve a section 21 and get possession at the end of the fixed term (plus the extended time frame for he bailiff warrant as the tenant is unlikely to vacate on the expiry of the section 21).

Good Luck

Hi Alanf,

Wayne is correct there is no easy solution to this.

However you can do a couple of things to help. You can arrange an inspection of the property, set a date and time and if the tenants has an issues with this date then to call you. If you don't receive a response then you can assume everything is good to attend to inspect the accommodation.

With regards to a section 8 notice this can be served at any point as long as the tenant is in arrears with their rent (not just two full months). The only time you can take it to court is once she is in two full months, this is the only time the court will action anything. However the fact you have served the notice shows the tenant that you mean business and that you will go to court if you need to. This will most of the time resolve the issue, if not it means that you won't have top wait as long before going to court.

I would always suggest trying to resolve it with the tenant first before serving notices etc, but if you are not getting a response then you are well within your rights to do so. I would however document everything you do so that when you go to court you will be able to show the judge how you tried contacting the tenant to resolve the situation.

I hope this helps you and good luck. 

Hi Folks

Just to give you an update on this –

The tenant has been living in my rented property for over 3 months now – she moved in beginning of September.  I have has some rent from her (about 5 weeks).  She continues not to answer my phone calls or open the door when I go round.  I have written to the council last week informing them of the rent arrears.  I have got a short term tenancy agreement with her that is for 12 months. 

I have now lost all patience with her and thinking of giving her notice to leave the property.  However, I am not good at writing letters.  Is anybody aware of any template letters that I could use that may be freely available over the internet?  Do I need to serve a minimum of 4 weeks' notice?

Also, on that agreement, there is one point that I am not sure of – it states that "The landlord may only terminate the tenancy in accordance with the provisions of the Housing Act 1988".  Could someone be kind enough to explain what that means and what this Housing Act is about?

Thanks in advance for your response.

What that provision of the tenancy agreement means in a nutshell is if you require possession of the property you will serve a Notice first and then get a court order (and if necessary a bailiff's warrant) to evict the tenant, which is what you are doing.

I can e-mail you a template Section 8 Notice, which you would need to complete or I can complete it for you for a small fee, whichever you prefer.

For grounds 8, 10 and 11 (the arrears grounds) the notice period is 2 weeks. You can then issue possession proceedings. Just be aware that if the tenant reduces the arrears down to below two months' rent by the time the hearing takes place, the mandatory Ground 8 will fail and all you will be left with are the discretionary Grounds 10 and 11 which, in my experience, are often not enough to persuade a judge to evict the tenant so you may only end up with a suspended possession order. However, this may be enough to scare the tenant into paying up.

One other point, does your tenancy agreement contain your name and address for service of documents in England and Wales as required by Section 48 Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 or have you served a notice containg this information separately? This is important as legally, tenants cannot be compelled to pay rent unless having a clearly stated name and address, either of the landlord or the landlord's managing agent.

Hope this helps and good luck.

I have a template youi  can use. email me and i will send it. there are two one during tenancy period and one after. you need to serve correct one before the next complete period of tenancy. notice is two months and then you can apply for  court order.
also after eight weeks you can get direct housing benefit you need to do a statement right back to beginning of tenancy and then go to see housing benefits manager and prove rent owing. it should tie in with the payments they have made although you should never ever take a housing ben tenant without getting them to sign the landlord section that allows you to speak to housing benefit direct.

send copy of rent arrears statement to tenant by recorded delivery and demand full payment and state that you will be applying to court. ask them to also authorise access to speak to hb. have you secured deposit with deposit protection service?

tell them also that you will be applying to the court for the arrears outstanding and will obtain a county court judgment which will allow attachment of earnings and benefits. 

take the initiative and try calling at random times when you may catch them off guard! dont just sit back and wait these people do this professionally and hardly ever pay rent so have no sympathy at all if they wont even talk to you.

if arrears over eights weeks speak toi hb urgently and get direct payment.
   

Good morning Folks

Thanks for your replies, so far.

The problem is rhat the tenant seems to living somewhere else at the moment(she gave me the address & I actually visited her last week).  She said she will be moving into my property in the next week or so, after she gets custody of the kids.  She was not prepared to hand over the keys since she is adamant that she wants to move in.

However, as you know, she has been living there for almost 2 months and not paid a penny!  Another problem is that every time I phone up the Housing Benefits they say thst they have not received any application from her (she told me she made the application for HB before Xmas).  When I asked her about this (last week), she said there was a mistake in the paper work & she had to apply again.  She is not prepared to give me the date or the reference number of her application and said she will sort it out. 

If she hasn't made any applicatioj then can I still get the HB to pay rent direct ot me after 8 weeks?

Another twist to this story is that I met a solicitor (a friend of a friend's) who said I cannot change the locks since that would be against the law & she could take me to court).  I did explain to him that she has signed a short term tenancy but not paid a pennmy up to date.

I'm so confused about this.  Can someone please be kind enough to advice where I go from here?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

Can you prove she is living elsewhere?
are there any of her things in your property?
if there are no belonggings in there and it "appears" she never moved in then i would take the risk of changing locks. a police officer told me (who was also a landlord) that if there are no signs of sctivity in the house and it appears they have left then you can change the locks after 48 hours. he said what he would od is actually stay in the property himself for that period  so you can prove that no one entered the property.
if she has not made an application for hb then no you cant get any payments!

it sounds suspiciously like she has been hanging on to your property to get her kids back and in the meantime living in a cheaper property where she is probably getting housing benefit? has she changed name on any bills in your property ie council tax.
if your housing benefit section are friendly then they may tell you if she has an application in or not?

She would have a reference number from the housing which gives you access to her claim. Without this number the HB will not talk to you. Does it state in the agreement that the property is not to remain empty for more than 30 days? This is a breach of the agreement and invalidates the insurance. You could question wether or not she was a crank. Maybe she has signed tenancies with 20 landlords this week.
I would be wary of advice from a copper. What they would do and get away with because of their status may be a little different to the scum bag landlord that we are often considered. Did she tell you she was not moving in before signing up? You could argue that she did not start her tenancy by not paying and not moving in and not being contactable. Has she changed any of the utilities over? Has she given you a deposit? If you issue a letter to an empty house, in law it is deemed to have been delivered (if there is proof of delivery I take a photo of the letter going under the door as signed for cant be signed for). Do you have your own keys?

One thing you needed to have done was to lodge the deposit (with the D.P.S.) if you took one from her as you could be fined if you did not.  The other thing I wanted to tell you is that she may have abandoned the property due to not moving in thus gives you the chance to take back the property due to abandoment, check your tenancy agreement.
I think its best for you to see a solicitor, it may be costly now but cheaper in the long run.  Some solicitors give free advice in a 15 minute section.

Good luck.

Hi folks

I'm just giving you an update on my situation and would like further advice from you kind folks out there, in terms of what I need to do next-

I have now found out that my tenant (who signed a short term tenancy agreement in November 2012 and has never paid any rent or deposit, and had assured me that she had put in a claim for Housing Benefit), had in fact never put the claim to HB, and hasn't paid a penny towards the rent or deposit up to date.

She has in fact only put in her claim for Housing Benefit from the end of January 2013.  She now claims that 'something went wrong with the first application' and that I should now get some sort of rent payment within the next 4 weeks.   Do you think that is possible?

Assuming that I do get the rent payments from January this year, what about the period when I didn't receive any rent – November 2012 to January 2013.  Is it worth approaching the HB people and showing them the short term tenancy agreement in an attempt to persuade them to back date the rent due?  Of course, they might say we only received the application in January this year, so we can't do that.  If that happens, should I go through the courts in order to obtain the rent covering the period November 2012 to January 2013?  Of course, in that case the tenant might say to the courts that she has not got enough money/savings, so cannot pay up or the court may give her some ridiculous order to pay off £2 per week to make up the rent arrears.  If I decide to take this route, how long would it take and would I incur any costs?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

I would definitely bother with approaching the HB people.
Honestly the best way I think I can help you in this situation is to spread the love.
I recently started using this start-up program that gives tenants a score and keeps track of any interaction I have with them online.
I have had absolutely no problems with any of my 4 properties I own and would like to share this with you.
Its also free to sign up. Let me know what you think!
https://www.trustedtenant.com/
-Cheers

Thanks Lucas