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Advice needed on tenants owing money
moneyangel22
Posts: 332 Forumite
Hi,
2 months ago I served a scetion s21 notice on my tenants because they have failed to pay the rent for the last 2 months.
They replied giving me one months notice and moved out last weekend owing the last 2 months rent.
On inspecting the property last night they have left it in an awful state. The entire house needs to be cleaned from top to bottom, there are stains on the carpets and some items have been broken/damaged. There is also a garage full of rubbish which I will need to get removed. They also erected 2 wooden structures for a dog which they did not have permission to have at the property.
Overall I will need to spend money to get the house in a fit state for new tenants. I have their security deposit, which unfortunately I did not put in a protected scheme because I did not know that I had to do that at the time. (I know, I know, I should have made sure I knew what my responsibilities were), but I am a good landlord and made sure everything that went wrong in the property was fixed asap etc.
Overall these tenants will owe me a few hundred pounds by the time I have sorted everything out and I was wondering how easy it would be to claim that back through the small claims courts?
The tenants have not left a forwarding address suprisingly so I would have to track them down first.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
2 months ago I served a scetion s21 notice on my tenants because they have failed to pay the rent for the last 2 months.
They replied giving me one months notice and moved out last weekend owing the last 2 months rent.
On inspecting the property last night they have left it in an awful state. The entire house needs to be cleaned from top to bottom, there are stains on the carpets and some items have been broken/damaged. There is also a garage full of rubbish which I will need to get removed. They also erected 2 wooden structures for a dog which they did not have permission to have at the property.
Overall I will need to spend money to get the house in a fit state for new tenants. I have their security deposit, which unfortunately I did not put in a protected scheme because I did not know that I had to do that at the time. (I know, I know, I should have made sure I knew what my responsibilities were), but I am a good landlord and made sure everything that went wrong in the property was fixed asap etc.
Overall these tenants will owe me a few hundred pounds by the time I have sorted everything out and I was wondering how easy it would be to claim that back through the small claims courts?
The tenants have not left a forwarding address suprisingly so I would have to track them down first.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
0
Comments
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Its just as well your tenants didn't know or take advantage of your failure to protect their deposit as your S21 was invalid and they can take you to court to recover the unprotected deposit and the judge could award them x3 the sum of the deposit as a penalty. Given this risk, I can't see why you would want to take legal action against them because if they discover this, they may take you to court for not protecting their deposit. Perhaps its better if you put this down to a learning experience?
Did you have a signed inventory/schedule of condition? Did you undertake proper tenant screening (previous landlord refs, credit check, ID check, current employer refs, etc)?0 -
I say keep quiet about it! Not knowing about the deposit scheme required is not a valid excuse, they will probably sue you for 3X if you start any legal action. I agree with JOWO it's a small price to pay .0
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move on and protect the next tenant's deposit0
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