Tenants say they're not going to pay rent, what next?

[Mario149]

2Btoo said:

Best of luck with the TDS. You may find that you don't get as much satisfaction there as you'd like. Try googling them to find out more.

For reference, I never go with the TDS Alternative Dispute Resolution system, I always take it to Small Claims Court and ask that the court should instruct the TDS to refund the amount that I am looking for. The SCC actually listens to what a landlord/agent has to say and makes a sensible decision based upon what they hear. If the tenant disputes your line then you can ask to have a hearing, whereby the tenant has to show up and explain their side of the story. I find this MUCH more likely to achieve a just result than leaving it to the TDS.

Good advice. If and when there is a next time around, I'll not be fannying around, it'll be SCC asap.

[Mario149]

MitchT said:

Rangeroverover said:

The system is loaded against landlords...

Actually, the system seems to be loaded against whoever the innocent party is. I've been a tenant for more than eight years at four different properties. The second was owned by a complete cowboy. Numerous issues, including the boiler constantly swinging between hot and cold so having a shower required you to repeatedly step out of the water as it became too hot, then too cold, to stand under. I read up on my rights, established that I had to continue fulfilling my half of the bargain even though the landlord wasn't fulfilling his, did everything by the book, lived in chaos for the duration of my six month AST and then moved out with numerous issues still not resolved. Reflecting on my own experience and reading various posts on here by landlords, and hearing stories from a close friend who's a landlord, it seems that the innocent party is always the sitting duck, not able to enforce a fair solution in anywhere near an acceptably short time frame because of long, drawn-out protocol. It's always the good people that get shat on, landlord or tenant.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

[gregs1959]

Here's an option for you to consider. !!!!

When the tenant/s are signing all the legal paperwork , I would suggest that they would sign anything where you point to !!!!

Nothing to stop you putting in an extra couple of pages stating ...... I have today decided to vacate the above property and have removed all my personal possessions.

Works for me every time ....

As long as the tenants play ball everything is ok. But if not ......

[dazwalsh]

gregs1959 said:

Here's an option for you to consider. !!!!

When the tenant/s are signing all the legal paperwork , I would suggest that they would sign anything where you point to !!!!

Nothing to stop you putting in an extra couple of pages stating ...... I have today decided to vacate the above property and have removed all my personal possessions.

Works for me every time ....

As long as the tenants play ball everything is ok. But if not ......

Il confess I used to have a sly page in there too whereby the tenant would sign a receipt of their own section 21 notice. None of them picked up on it. It was a very nice legal loophole too, avoiding the 2 month wait you could just wander down to court whenever to start proceedings. Their claims they never received the notice fell on deaf ears when a signed receipt was produced. I only had to do this once for a weapons grade scumbag who decided he was going to try and play the system.

Before anyone gets any ideas, gone are the days you could issue a tenancy agreement and eviction notice on the same day. section 21's are now void if not acted upon within 6 months

[carreauchompeur]

Thanks for the input, Hoogstraten!

[superlightr]

gregs1959 said:

Here's an option for you to consider. !!!!

When the tenant/s are signing all the legal paperwork , I would suggest that they would sign anything where you point to !!!!

Nothing to stop you putting in an extra couple of pages stating ...... I have today decided to vacate the above property and have removed all my personal possessions.

Works for me every time ....

As long as the tenants play ball everything is ok. But if not ......

licencing of landlords cannot come soon enough.......

[Mario149]

superlightr said:

gregs1959 said:

Here's an option for you to consider. !!!!

When the tenant/s are signing all the legal paperwork , I would suggest that they would sign anything where you point to !!!!

Nothing to stop you putting in an extra couple of pages stating ...... I have today decided to vacate the above property and have removed all my personal possessions.

Works for me every time ....

As long as the tenants play ball everything is ok. But if not ......

licencing of landlords cannot come soon enough.......

As ever, there's a balance to be struck - plenty of blame to go around for tenants as well. I'm all for extra and swifter recourse so long as its fair on both sides. I was owed about £3500 at one point a few months ago because my tenants blamed me for the noise a neighbour (not my tenant) 2 doors down was making. That's just mental. IMO there should be a fast track adjudication service like TDS but one that you can use during a tenancy i.e. a small claims court substitute you can use without having to wait ages.

As someone mentioned on my other thread, the innocent party / the one that plays by the rules tends to be the one that gets shafted. I can understand that if you were in my position (private landlord with one flat, not doing it as a job and using it to pay a mortgage - my mum's in this case) and you had a few instances of what I experienced you'd start to get very cynical and adhere to the letter of the law and nothing else. Equally, if you're a tenant and your landlord is not living up to their contractual obligations (leaving you alone, fixing things in a timely manner etc) you're going to do the bare minimum to cover your arse and nothing more

Edited by Mario149 on Wednesday 10th May 11:09

[superlightr]

Mario149 said:

superlightr said:

gregs1959 said:

Here's an option for you to consider. !!!!

When the tenant/s are signing all the legal paperwork , I would suggest that they would sign anything where you point to !!!!

Nothing to stop you putting in an extra couple of pages stating ...... I have today decided to vacate the above property and have removed all my personal possessions.

Works for me every time ....

As long as the tenants play ball everything is ok. But if not ......

licencing of landlords cannot come soon enough.......

As ever, there's a balance to be struck - plenty of blame to go around for tenants as well. I'm all for extra and swifter recourse so long as its fair on both sides. I was owed about £3500 at one point a few months ago because my tenants blamed me for the noise a neighbour (not my tenant) 2 doors down was making. That's just mental. IMO there should be a fast track adjudication service like TDS but one that you can use during a tenancy i.e. a small claims court substitute you can use without having to wait ages.

As someone mentioned on my other thread, the innocent party / the one that plays by the rules tends to be the one that gets shafted. I can understand that if you were in my position (private landlord with one flat, not doing it as a job and using it to pay a mortgage - my mum's in this case) and you had a few instances of what I experienced you'd start to get very cynical and adhere to the letter of the law and nothing else. Equally, if you're a tenant and your landlord is not living up to their contractual obligations (leaving you alone, fixing things in a timely manner etc) you're going to do the bare minimum to cover your arse and nothing more

Edited by Mario149 on Wednesday 10th May 11:09

absolutely - 100% agree with you. I run a letting agency business. We are regulated very heavily at present with more regulations coming in each year. Its the independent landlords that often don't know what they are doing that cause a lot of the headlines of bad landlords - they are so far behind the legislation and good practice its scary. The big elephant in the room is private landlords who are not regulated, no redress and little accountability.
As a decent Letting Agent we offer great service, redress, client fund protection and professional service which drives up the quality of lettings.

My jab in Gregs1959 direction was for the lets just sneak some extra clauses in that most likely would not stand up to scrutiny and gives landlords a poor name.

[gregs1959]

Here's my take superlightr ....

All very well you judging me ...

Believe it or not I'm a decent landlord treat my tenants very well, have someone working full time carrying out any repairs /improvements. My business model is 99% HB tenants.

You tell me this I had a tenant come through council.. Been on the streets... All well initially rent paid by council. Then he decided he wanted to go on universal credit. Ended up owing me close to £1000. Spent it and left the flat - ( bed sit wrecked).

He ended up just doing a runner and not a lot I could do about it. However I was about to help him with his moving and that would have been the end of it.

Now if he hadn't of gone and I couldn't help him move out I would have had to go down official channels :- 2 months notice. Wait for court to send papers back. Another 2 weeks before I could ask for possession. Wait for judge to look at case and possibly give upto 42 days before had to leave.

Then if hadn't left have to apply for bailiffs and all the while he's tossing it off spending my rent and theirs F ..... All I can do about it.

End of the day you've got to be prepared to fight fire with fire end of.

[Wings]

superlightr said:

absolutely - 100% agree with you. I run a letting agency business. We are regulated very heavily at present with more regulations coming in each year. Its the independent landlords that often don't know what they are doing that cause a lot of the headlines of bad landlords - they are so far behind the legislation and good practice its scary. The big elephant in the room is private landlords who are not regulated, no redress and little accountability.
As a decent Letting Agent we offer great service, redress, client fund protection and professional service which drives up the quality of lettings.

Absolutely not true, for presently there is no overarching statutory regulation of private sector letting or managing agents in England, nor is there any legal requirement for them to belong to a trade association, although many letting and managing agents do submit to voluntary regulation.

To date, the Government has not committed to the introduction of regulation for letting/managing agents in England and has pointed instead to the existing range of available powers under consumer protection legislation. However, since 1 October 2014, agents have been required to be a member of an approved redress scheme, and since 27 May 2015 they have had to comply with requirements relating to the publication of fee tariffs.

Measures in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 have given additional powers to local authorities to take action against ‘rogue’ landlords and agents. Since 6 April 2017 authorities have been able to impose civil penalties of up to £30,000 in certain circumstances, and there are now additional circumstances in which a Rent Repayment Order may be granted. In October 2017 it is expected that local authority powers to seek banning orders against landlords and agents who commit certain offences will come into force.

[andysgriff]

Can they submit a noise complaint to council?
Isnt this something that is searched when purchasing a property?
Maybe a good thing to let prospective tenants aware of.

[superlightr]

Wings said:

Absolutely not true, for presently there is no overarching statutory regulation of private sector letting or managing agents in England, nor is there any legal requirement for them to belong to a trade association, although many letting and managing agents do submit to voluntary regulation.

To date, the Government has not committed to the introduction of regulation for letting/managing agents in England and has pointed instead to the existing range of available powers under consumer protection legislation. However, since 1 October 2014, agents have been required to be a member of an approved redress scheme, and since 27 May 2015 they have had to comply with requirements relating to the publication of fee tariffs.

Measures in the Housing and Planning Act 2016 have given additional powers to local authorities to take action against ‘rogue’ landlords and agents. Since 6 April 2017 authorities have been able to impose civil penalties of up to £30,000 in certain circumstances, and there are now additional circumstances in which a Rent Repayment Order may be granted. In October 2017 it is expected that local authority powers to seek banning orders against landlords and agents who commit certain offences will come into force.

Wings - ? You have just confirmed what I said - agents must legally belong to a regulatory redress scheme - TPO

The government have legislated that agents must belong and comply with a redress scheme - if they don't they cannot be legally in business. If they don't pay the fine they get barred from being agents.

Many do also belong to NARL's ARLA etc which are trade associations but every agent MUST belong to TPO

As you also correctly mentioned there are many other Laws that apply to letting agents and landlords many with criminal liability and fines attached.

The point I was perhaps not clearly making is that Individual landlords do not have to belong to the TPO and thus are less regulated then agents are.

[superlightr]

gregs1959 said:

Here's my take superlightr ....

All very well you judging me ...

Believe it or not I'm a decent landlord treat my tenants very well, have someone working full time carrying out any repairs /improvements. My business model is 99% HB tenants.

You tell me this I had a tenant come through council.. Been on the streets... All well initially rent paid by council. Then he decided he wanted to go on universal credit. Ended up owing me close to £1000. Spent it and left the flat - ( bed sit wrecked).

He ended up just doing a runner and not a lot I could do about it. However I was about to help him with his moving and that would have been the end of it.

Now if he hadn't of gone and I couldn't help him move out I would have had to go down official channels :- 2 months notice. Wait for court to send papers back. Another 2 weeks before I could ask for possession. Wait for judge to look at case and possibly give upto 42 days before had to leave.

Then if hadn't left have to apply for bailiffs and all the while he's tossing it off spending my rent and theirs F ..... All I can do about it.

End of the day you've got to be prepared to fight fire with fire end of.

Judging you? No I'm just not agreeing with you about the clause you put in and saying it is this sort of thing that bring landlords into disrepute.

I'm sure you are a decent person but you are gloating that you sneak in a dubious clause without the tenants noticing and which almost certainly would be unfair and invalid. This does not help give landlords a good name. The tenancy agreement should be fair for both parties and legally correct.

Everything you mention about being a nice landlord is sensible for business methods of limiting your loss - not just being nice and I'm not knocking that. I'm just jabbing at the sneaky unfair clause you appear pleased to put in.

Our business model is 99% not housing benefit btw. We have had the experience of HB tenants over the years and are fortunate that we don't have to take that extra risk.