Tenant from hell.

turkolina

Hello.

Hope someone can help. We have a rented property where we rent rooms out. It has been rented for two years and we have had perfect tenants and to be honest I am a perfect landlord noone needs to ask twice for anything to be done.. More fool me!

A new lady (not for better wording) 35 years old moved in, in July she at first was lovely although i have never used contracts ( i know i am so stupid) everyone gives 2 weeks deposit and 2 weeks notice eitherway. To date everyone has been fine with this.

Recently all the other tenants in the house have complained about said lady that she is very loud at night and has no respect for others.. A spindle in the stair case has disappeared completely and noone has a clue where.. I have a house manager only that he does the garden for me and has one of the rooms.. He also collects the rents etc and is an angel. He fixes the fences bla bla and an all round brilliant tenant.. I was on holiday for 3 weeks and she caused a massive arguement with her boyfriend who at 2 oclock in the morning was trying to escape from her room (hmmmm coke normally does it !!) He left a notice in her door to say having spoken to me she has two weeks notice..

I told him i would then deal with the situation when i came back from holiday.. When i returned I had a letter from the local housing trust to say the notice was illegal as she never had my address within 14 days of moving in.. Well i sent it via mail as she moved in the day after i gave birth by cessarian and was in hospital for a week.. I wouldnt have thought it would be necessary to send this letter by special delivery and have a note to say address received! Her deposit has also been put into the Deposit Protection Scheme.. The housing officer said because she hadn't received this information that the notice was invalid.. I have tried to send her another letter with a copy of this but it has been returned to me not collected.

I have just been told my 60 year old mother has less than a year to live with cancer and with a 4 month old baby my world is falling apart.. I dont know what to do to get this woman out.

I really want to go to the house and offer her some money to get out.. Her rent was due last Thursday but because mum has been in hospital haven't even been to the house for the rent.

Can i get a section 8 if she has a Periodic statutory tenancy as the housing officer says and give her 2 months notice.. i doubt she will pay but id rather she gets the hell out.. Can i then withhold her deposit if she doesn't pay although this won't cover all the amount missed.

If she does accept money to get out what do i need to get from her in writing to prove that she agrees to this?

I hope someone can help me with this.. This site has been so good for me just to clear my head in the last few days just watching the nice hamper threads.. I wanted to make one for my mum.. I hope she gets to enjoy it..

thanks again..

EliteHeat

My experiences of working in HMOs are that without exception they are miserable hell-holes that I would not put a dog in. Yours, from your description, is like nothing I have seen before.

I can't see how this tenant can be described as a "tenant from hell". She had a row with her boyfriend and you accuse her of being on coke, A spindle went missing under mysterious circumstances and for some reason she is assumed to be the culprit, maybe she needed it for some illicit drug making activity.

You seem to have acted in an extremely unprofessional way; not sending important documents via recorded delivery, getting the bloke who mends the fences to give her notice to quit. It sounds to me that she is simply ensuring that all legal processes have to take place in the right order, whilst you seem to think that they do not.

Finally, whilst I have every sympathy for your personal circumstances, what the hell does this have to do with the tenant?

mizzbiz

I don't think not telling her which TDS it's in will stop you getting her out. The main thing is that you protected it, although even not doing this hasn't always gone in the tenants favour in court.

I certainly wouldn't give her money to get her out. Use the fact that she's not giving you money as the basis to evict her.

SweetPea23

EliteHeat wrote: »

My experiences of working in HMOs are that without exception they are miserable hell-holes that I would not put a dog in. Yours, from your description, is like nothing I have seen before.

I can't see how this tenant can be described as a "tenant from hell". She had a row with her boyfriend and you accuse her of being on coke, A spindle went missing under mysterious circumstances and for some reason she is assumed to be the culprit, maybe she needed it for some illicit drug making activity.

You seem to have acted in an extremely unprofessional way; not sending important documents via recorded delivery, getting the bloke who mends the fences to give her notice to quit. It sounds to me that she is simply ensuring that all legal processes have to take place in the right order, whilst you seem to think that they do not.

Finally, whilst I have every sympathy for your personal circumstances, what the hell does this have to do with the tenant?

My dear lord, how rude are you???

EliteHeat

SweetPea23 wrote: »

My dear lord, how rude are you???

There is nothing, absolutely nothing rude in my post.

Try to remember that people run HMOs to maximise their profits and for no other reason. They are running a business which directly effects peoples lives, it is not a hobby or an irrelevance that you can defer to the oddjob man.

And, as far as I am aware, MSE is not designed for mutual support without criticism when there are obvious shortcomings, not to mention quite outrageous accusations.

IT_nerd

More like Elitestheat..
Back off. There's way too much landlord bashing, but people forget that most tenants are !!!!ing !!!!!! too.
It goes both ways, but it seems like jumping on "Lets all hate landlords the kill puppies for fun" bandwaggon is the in thing on this forum. And it's !!!!!!!!.

scrummy-mummy

Whilst Eliteheats response might appear rude, he is unfortunately quite right.

Just because the OP is a 'reasonable landlord' and likes to operate under an informal arrangement does not mean that they can effectively ignore due legal process. And one cannot escape the issue that the OP did not appear to deal with their tennant themselves but rather left someone else to do their dirty work (for whatever reason). As an mature adult tennant this would rather nark me off.

Unfortunately some landlords and tennants will use the law to their advantage and whilst this is downright irritating for the 'innocent party' it is just one of those things.

Sometimes people will be awkward for the heck of it, others because they feel they are legally in the right. Whilst the OP has every right to feel annoyed and upset about this, they have no right to call their tennant a tennant from hell, merely (a) because of this (b) based on hearsay from other tennants and i expect that this is that Eliteheat took excpetion to rather than the fact that the OP is a landlord.

Blackpool_Saver

Um, you have NEVER used contracts...

I am very sorry you find yourself in this situation but because you have not done the correct thing I think you will have problems.

I hope you can get it sorted but I think you have more chance now if you don't come down heavy handed with you also being partially in the wrong.

sooz

If you've been renting this HMO for the last 2 years, I'd expect you to either have a better grasp of your obligations as LL, or delegate to a professional (not your odd job man)

You need to have a written contract, both for your sake & the tenants
You need to provide them with certain information, including your address & the prescribed information about their deposit.
Depending on the rental period, your two weeks notice sounds highly suspect.


As it is an HMO, you may also need to have your property licenced. Even if you don't in your area, at present, you need to have your name & contact details, & out of hours emergency contact number on a formal notice in a communal area, such as the hallway.

EliteHeat

scrummy-mummy wrote: »

and i expect that this is that Eliteheat took excpetion to rather than the fact that the OP is a landlord.

Quite right and also to the whole tenor of the post; I'm nice, the house is nice, the other tenants are nice and then this horrible woman moved in who I just assumed was going to be nice like everyone else. She may or may not be doing drugs, but what the hell, I'll just throw that one in.

My experience of HMOs is that they are filthy, ill-maintained, house the almost or soon to be destitute or disadvantaged in some way, have every available space taken up with a bed and are seething hotbeds of bullying and intimidation.

The very fact that there appears to be a favoured tenant there who appears to be the LLs stooge fills me with horror.

The brutal fact is that if your can squeeze 6 beds into a 3 bedroomed house and rent them out for £50 a week each then you are on to a bit of a winner compared to renting it out to a single nominated tenant.

Add to this that there is often no unified voice from the tenants to express their complaints then it is easy to see how these places degenerate into the squallor that I used to see every day.

I apologise if anyone thinks I am being rude.

sooz

Wow, I guess in your line of work you've been in a lot of filthy hovel-like HMOs.

Not all are like that, & particularly with the new Housing Act, a lot of properties which were previously considered 'house shares' now fall under this category. Where I live, a couple renting with a friend, in any size of property, regardless of the number of floors, is a licensable HMO.


But yes, when renting a place by the room, in general it disintegrates into a filthy hovel, whether it was one to start with or not . When people don't choose to live together, they have little incentive to clear up, or do anything in the communal areas.