Bad Tenants and Poor Lettings Agents - What do we do?

jo1967

If/when your tenant is two full months in arrears you can request that payment be made direct to your LA and not to your tenant who then has to pay on to the LA. Direct payment to the claimant is the norm now & is one of the worst HB rulings I know!

I have had more tenants run into arrears this way, they claim not to know they got it, didnt question the money in their accounts but managed to spend it! Nightmare (this from a credit controller point of view).

shaven-monkey

To add some negativity you may be stuck with this tenant until the end of the contract.
The tenant is paying some of the rent, showing willingness to pay means that getting a court order for reposession will be very difficult, time consuming and expensive or just plain impossible.

"insurance is part of the fee" : request a specific statement of what the triggers for insurance payout are, with whom the policy is held and a document proving that the insurance exists while you are actually in their office. If they can't produce it, it doesn't exist. (that's somewhat confrontational but at this stage they aren't doing their chuffing job so they need to be confronted).

The insurance may just cover court costs for eviction in which case it's next to useless with any tenant who knows what they're doing.

I hope that this situation does not materially damage your daughters ability to remain at university and make a new start. If there's no threat of repossession by a mortgage company or impoverishment due to overextension of finances then you may have to chalk it up to a very expensive lesson and get rid of both tenant and letting agent as soon as is legally possible.

franklee

I'm not sure if you are saying you want to evict the tenant or try and make it work. But if you want to evict during the fixed term (with no break clause) you'd need to use a Section 8. Have a look at this and see what if any applies to your case.

http://www.letlink.co.uk/letting-factsheets/factsheets/factsheet-8---claims-for-possession-the-section-8-notice.html

Note ground 8 "that the tenant owed at least two months' rent (in the case of a monthly tenancy) both when the landlord served notice that he wanted possession and still owes two months' rent at the date of the court hearing." Note this is when rent is owed so bear in mind that rent is usually paid at the start of the month when calculating this. Your tenant may not owe that much yet but may do soon.

silvercar

Its a pain, but all tenants can fall behind with their rent. If they want to remain in the property they generally don't fall more than 2 months in arrears!

I would write to the tenant (not LA) and set out the rent owed, at least that will be a prompt to them.

You can serve a section 8 notice the minute they are 2 months in arrears ie if they already owe 1 months rent and don't pay the next month on the day it is due. The problem is that your case will fail if, by the court date, they have made some payment.

There is another ground for eviction if they are persistently late, but that is not mandatory.

Your other course of action would be to contact the council. Once a tenant owes 2 months rent you can apply to have the HB paid directly to the landlord.

Debt_Free_Chick

chief2221 wrote: »

To make matters worse, they then said that the contract does not have a 6 month clause and we cannot serve an eviction notice.

There are two distinctly different types of notice here.

A section 8 notice can only be issued when the amount of the arrears is at least equal to or more than 2 months rent. That amount must be outstanding on the day you issue the notice AND - crucially - on the day of the Court hearing. So .... if the tenant is 2 months in arrears - say £1,000 - you issue the notice ... but the tenant then pays an amount to bring the arrears under the 2 months amount e.g. the tenant pays you £20 meaning that the arrears are now £980 - the Court will chuck the section 8 notice out. The arrears MUST be two months or more at both times. Any tenant issued with a section 8 notice who gets advice will be told simply to make any payment to get the arrears under 2 months.

Once this happens, you have to start again i.e. wait for 2 months arrears, issue notice, wait for Court hearing ... if tenant pays enough to reduce the amount below 2 months .... back to the start again!!

And - to prepare for a Court Hearing, you need to demonstrate evidence of the steps you've taken to get payment from the tenant, so it's best to do everything in writing. Written reminders are unlikely to be classed as harrassment if they are polite and not too frequent - I would have thought once every 10 days would be OK, especially if the tenant doesn't even acknowledge the reminder.

Quite separately, you can issue a section 21 notice, which is nothing to do with rent arrears - it's simply a notice that the LL wants to take repossession of the property for no particular reason. But you must give 2 "rent periods" notice - a rent period being defined in the agreement, but usually starting on the day on which the rent is due. The expiry date of the notice cannot be before the fixed period stated in the agreement.

Your understanding is that the fixed period ended after 6 months, but your only option here is to read the actual agreement. Whilst it's a legal document, it's not too bad to read, compared with other legal documents. Probably no more complex than a Will.

So .... read the agreement and post the details here please - in particular, the rent period, fixed period and commencement date of the tenancy.

By the way - there is no such thing as "an eviction notice". The notices are for reposession of the property by the LL. The different sections refer to different reasons for repossession - section 8 is repossession on the grounds of 2 months rent arrears and section 21 is repossession on the grounds that the fixed period has ended (hence, we need to know how fixed period is defined in the agreement).

However, neither notice gives you "permission" to evict - if the tenant doesn't leave, then you have to return to Court to get an eviction warrant and appoint bailiffs to get access to the property. So - it's not cheap and not easy, therefore you/daughter should seriously consider working with the tenant to see how the rent payments can be managed.

HTH

ianian99

if someone gets a section 21 for no reason , can they fight it or is there no point?

Debt_Free_Chick

ianian99 wrote: »

if someone gets a section 21 for no reason , can they fight it or is there no point?

No point. Tenants are effectively "borrowing" the house, albeit with a legal agreement. A s21 notice is effectively saying "thanks for that, but I want my house back now, please". The LL has the legal right do this under "section 21 of the Housing Act" - and the Act requires that no reason is necessary, it just reflects the fact that the house still belongs to the LL and he can have it back when he wants to (well, within the Housing Act, anyway)

chief2221

Many thanks for all the advice. Ideally, if we could work with the tenant and try and sort something ou that would be in both parties interest. If we serve a sect 8 it could prove costly as DFC has illustrated.

Ho hum, kids eh?!!

ianian99

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

No point. Tenants are effectively "borrowing" the house, albeit with a legal agreement. A s21 notice is effectively saying "thanks for that, but I want my house back now, please". The LL has the legal right do this under "section 21 of the Housing Act" - and the Act requires that no reason is necessary, it just reflects the fact that the house still belongs to the LL and he can have it back when he wants to (well, within the Housing Act, anyway)

what if the landlord issues the section 21 after the tennants have repeatedly asked for repairs to be done and the landlord chooses to issue the section 21 instead of the repairs?

Debt_Free_Chick

ianian99 wrote: »

what if the landlord issues the section 21 after the tennants have repeatedly asked for repairs to be done and the landlord chooses to issue the section 21 instead of the repairs?

LL has certain repairing obligations. Depending on what they are, the local council private lettings officer/environmental health might be able to assist tenants in getting repairs done - but I stress .... it depends on what the repairs are.

If the relationship between LL and tenant sours, then the tenant is probably better off looking for another property, otherwise there's constant niggling, mistrust and suspicion.

But at the end of the day, you cannot prevent LL issuing a s21 notice. So the repairs could be done and the s21 issued anyway.

There is no security of tenure renting.