Tenant broken boiler, refusing me access to check it
Discussion
bennno said:
Any update OP?
Not really.Police came out to see us, advised us that if the tenant turns up a hour home, to call 999, and if the tenant breaks back into the property they'll be done for criminal damage.
We've heard nothing else from the tenant since Friday evening and regularly checks on the property seem to show they've not been out and caused any damage.
I've bought a 4G router and a ring camera, so I'm off down there today to put that up so we can keep on eye on the house.
On the subject of our actions. We're aware that potentially we may be opening ourselves up to legal action from the tenant, but we've tried our best to protect ourselves as best we can. We'd had enough and were not going to sit by and let someone try to withhold keys to the property in a bid to try and extort money from us, which is all they were doing. They were basically saying it's better for us to give them £100 than it is to pay bailiffs £400, which is correct, but purposefully holding back keys to a property just to get money or cause us more expense is disgusting IMO.
We've been checking the property every day since the date on the eviction notice and the property looked empty and un-lived in, and there had been no lights on. We did make note that all upstairs windows were wide open.
Then on Friday, when we messaged the tenant they confirmed that they're living somewhere else, and tried to extort money from us. When I went to check on the property I could hear running water from the bathroom (we have video evidence of that and 6 council employees as witnesses) and noticed that the bathroom window had been closed (as if to prevent someone climbing through it). At that point, I had reasonable justification to believe that the tenants were no longer living in the property, and as a landlord can enter a property in an emergency, I did. I then turned off the water and changed the locks to the prevent the (ex) tenants doing any further damage to the property.
We've got photographs of the property before they moved in, and after, and there is a stark difference. When I went into the property, there were no personal possessions (clothes etc), just part of a sofa, a bed, and loads of rubbish.
The people from the council that were with us, are part of a group that's been put together to improve the area, and they have emergency powers to enter a property, which they gave too. Combine that with the fact that the council arrange for the Police to attend and remove the lock from one of the door, to me, helps our case.
It was our sons birthday over the weekend, so we've just got on with enjoying the weekend.
We've been checking the property every day since the date on the eviction notice and the property looked empty and un-lived in, and there had been no lights on. We did make note that all upstairs windows were wide open.
Then on Friday, when we messaged the tenant they confirmed that they're living somewhere else, and tried to extort money from us. When I went to check on the property I could hear running water from the bathroom (we have video evidence of that and 6 council employees as witnesses) and noticed that the bathroom window had been closed (as if to prevent someone climbing through it). At that point, I had reasonable justification to believe that the tenants were no longer living in the property, and as a landlord can enter a property in an emergency, I did. I then turned off the water and changed the locks to the prevent the (ex) tenants doing any further damage to the property.
We've got photographs of the property before they moved in, and after, and there is a stark difference. When I went into the property, there were no personal possessions (clothes etc), just part of a sofa, a bed, and loads of rubbish.
The people from the council that were with us, are part of a group that's been put together to improve the area, and they have emergency powers to enter a property, which they gave too. Combine that with the fact that the council arrange for the Police to attend and remove the lock from one of the door, to me, helps our case.
It was our sons birthday over the weekend, so we've just got on with enjoying the weekend.
Getragdogleg said:
We've already had a pre-offer of £22k, but we turned it down.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
The council are in the process of trying to secure finances to pull some of these houses down and sell the land to developers.They've recently secure funds to pull down an old pub that's been empty for going on 20 years, so that's gone, and a few year ago they got funding to build a train station less that a mile away.
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