Drawing the line under nightmare lodger experience.

Frosti

So, my troublesome lodger has gone. She flatly refused to give me her new address (claimed she couldn't remember it). She has left some of her possessions here (which I understand from reading another thread, that I have to store for her for 90 days). Letters are still arriving - latest is one from her pay-TV service which I bet is a bill (the antenna is still bolted on to my house - I'd like her to remove it and restore the wall of course).

I know where she works - should I go and confront her about her arrears, the work needed to restore the wall, and removing her property from my home?

Also, is there an organisation that holds a lodger/tenant blacklist? I'd like to help prevent anyone else being taken in by this madam.

Finally, I am considerably out of pocket - can I claim the expenses incurred in dealing with this non-paying lodger on my tax return?

Thanks for your guidance. Oh and please, no smart comments about accidental landlords thanks; I'm in this position because I need to save money, I'm not trying to make a fast buck!

TrickyDicky101

If the rental income from the lodger was covered by the rent-a-room scheme then I suspect you won't be able to offset the costs against your other income.

Sounds like a horrible situation - I'm glad you got rid of her (eventually).

Jowo_2

Your dispute is between you and the lodger. Forget about dragging her employer into this. This would be equivalent to you accidentally bouncing a payment and having your bank manager march up to your employer to complain about it.

What expenses did you actually incurr in dealing with your non-paying lodger?

Either put it down to a learning experience and ensure you thoroughly screen your lodgers as recommended on the Landlordzone website or leave it a few months and employ a tracing agent to find her new residential address, then submit a moneyclaim online claim (small claims court) and then enforce it with an attachment of earnings. This way she'll get a CCJ against her name.

Someone like your lodger probably does this on a serial basis, knows how to go off the radar and not be found and knows how to thwart a CCJ.

Most landlords with live-in lodgers process their income through the Rent a room scheme which only requires a tax return if the rent is higher than the tax free threshold. This does not permit any expenses to be offset.

tbs624

Frosti wrote: »

So, my troublesome lodger has gone. She flatly refused to give me her new address (claimed she couldn't remember it). She has left some of her possessions here (which I understand from reading another thread, that I have to store for her for 90 days).

See Tessa Shepperson's LodgerLaw website for full info (link)

Frosti wrote: »

I know where she works - should I go and confront her about her arrears, the work needed to restore the wall, and removing her property from my home?

You may want to look at the Administration of Justice Act 1970, s40

40 Punishment for unlawful harassment of debtors

(1)A person commits an offence if, with the object of coercing another person to pay money claimed from the other as a debt due under a contract, he—

(a)harasses the other with demands for payment which, in respect of their frequency or the manner or occasion of making any such demand, or of any threat or publicity by which any demand is accompanied, are calculated to subject him or members of his family or household to alarm, distress or humiliation;
(b)falsely represents, in relation to the money claimed, that criminal proceedings lie for failure to pay it;
(c)falsely represents himself to be authorised in some official capacity to claim or enforce payment; or
(d)utters a document falsely represented by him to have some official character or purporting to have some official character which he knows it has not.

(2)A person may be guilty of an offence by virtue of subsection (1)(a) above if he concerts with others in the taking of such action as is described in that paragraph, notwithstanding that his own course of conduct does not by itself amount to harassment.

(3)Subsection (1)(a) above does not apply to anything done by a person which is reasonable (and otherwise permissible in law) for the purpose—

(a)of securing the discharge of an obligation due, or believed by him to be due, to himself or to persons for whom he acts, or protecting himself or them from future loss; or
(b)of the enforcement of any liability by legal process.

(4)A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine of not more than £100, and on a second or subsequent conviction to a fine of not more than £400.

Frosti wrote: »

Finally, I am considerably out of pocket - can I claim the expenses incurred in dealing with this non-paying lodger on my tax return?

Quantifiable ones, yes, if you are *not* using the rent a -room allowance scheme.

Browntoa

might be worth doing this

http://www.experian.co.uk/contactforms/consumer_onlinedisassociation.html

to make it clear that you are not responsible for her debts

mlz1413

Frosti wrote: »

.Letters are still arriving - latest is one from her pay-TV service which I bet is a bill (the antenna is still bolted on to my house - I'd like her to remove it and restore the wall of course).
Did you let her bolt the antenna to your wall?
Do you have a written agreement about its erection and removal?

Personnal I'd put this down to experience if L was trouble it is s highly unlikely she is going to put herself out to make good this situation.

I know where she works - should I go and confront her about her arrears, the work needed to restore the wall, and removing her property from my home?
Again put the situation down to experience and don't involve others

Also, is there an organisation that holds a lodger/tenant blacklist? I'd like to help prevent anyone else being taken in by this madam.

Finally, I am considerably out of pocket - can I claim the expenses incurred in dealing with this non-paying lodger on my tax return?
If you're not using rent-a-room scheme you can declare the income and expenses on your SA form. Do check that the expenses are claimable and that you can prove each cost.

Thanks for your guidance. Oh and please, no smart comments about accidental landlords thanks; I'm in this position because I need to save money, I'm not trying to make a fast buck!

Having a lodger can be stressful as you have found out.
Did you take references / deposit / have rules in place?
Maybe worth considering what you actually want from a lodger, ie maybe a business person Mon - Thur would be better than full time?

Frosti

Thanks for your support TrickyDicky.

Jowo I have no intention of "dragging her employer" into anything! However I would like to make sure she gets her mail and I want rid of her stuff (a. no room to store it, and b. it stinks!). As she refused to tell me where she was going to move to, the only contact I have for her is the shop where she works. (Hah - that was another lie she told; said she was the Complaints Manager whereas in fact she is just a shelf-stuffer. Ironic, given the number of complaints I have about her behaviour). So, the only place I know of where I could go to talk to her and hand over her mail would be at the shop where she works.
In earlier threads I explained the unusual expenses I occurred.
Really I just want shot of every item of hers, including the pay TV service she must have registered at my address - am I liable for that? She took the box so obviously no-one in the house is using the service. And who is responsible for the ugly antenna disfiguring my home? Can I unbolt it and throw it away (after 90 days of course)? I've also found out that she ran up quite a 'phone bill, and then there is the cost of cleaning the carpets because she allowed her pet to defecate in the house.

You are probably right Jowo, in saying she is well practised at this bad behaviour. I accept that I'm unlikely to be able to recoup the debt she owes me without forcing her to court which would take a long time, and frankly, I don't need the stress of having this drag on for months like the stink of a dead dog.. So she has probably got away with it - unless I can get her blacklisted with local landlords.
If I wasn't worried that I'd be breaking the law myself, I'd take every scrap she left here down to the tip today. Including her ruddy antenna dish. Her mail? That will be an annoying reminder for a while yet.. - I just want to obliterate the !!!!! from my home and my life.

It's actually a lovely home, in a good area, and I've done my best to ensure the comfort of my lodger. Once everything was cleaned up I re-advertised the room, and got seventeen applicants within 48 hours. Luckily my new lodger comes from a similar good background and was delighted to be chosen (she had looked at some truly awful rooms!). She has excellent references and a guarantor, and I'm as confident as I can be that she is the complete opposite of the last lodger.

Yes I have learned a lesson, and doubtless am still learning - which is why I am very appreciative of advice given kindly.

Frosti

Sorry, TBS, Browntoa, and MLZ - you posted while I was writing. Thank you all very much for your input, I will be following up the links and think I'd also better have a word with my accountant. Because of the extra expenses involved I suspect I'll be better off avoiding the rent-a-room scheme, at least this year.

Jowo_2

Stick the mail in the post as 'return to sender, not at this address'.

You are not responsible for any of her bills in her name - the account holder is.

There are no blacklists. All a landlord can do is perform thorough tenant screening - dodgy tenants often target novice landlords and prefer to go through private landlords rather than agencies who are much more likely to have stricter screeing. A landlord should get a lodger to complete a lodger application form, take up multiple previous landlord references, employer reference, ID check, electoral registration check and credit check. A company like Tenant Verify will do all this for a fee of around £30 which the lodger should pay. A inventory of the room is best (it's hard to prove damage in communal areas).

It costs around £50-£100 to pay for a tracing agent to find her onward residential address, though they recommend this is done after a few months once the tenant has updated their bank account, mobile phone details, etc. It will be harder to trace them without information commonly found on lodger/tenant application forms - full name, date of birth, NI number, telephone number, bank account details, etc.

It's fairly cheap to raise a MCOL (moneyclaim online) but gets dearer to return to court to ask for an attachment of earnings or enforcement via a bailiff, though these expenses are added to the claim for the defendent. You would need invoices, preferably supported by an inventory to support a claim for damages.

And then when the claimant gets the CCJ, all it takes is for the defendent to change address or employer and it starts all over again.

Frosti

Sorry, I have to resurrect this thread! :mad:

Having put all of ex-lodger's letters back in the post 'RTS' nothing more arrived for a few weeks, then the other day I got a whole pile of mail. It didn't occur to me that some might be for ex-lodger, so I did what I usually do; took it all out of the envelopes and made the contents into a pile to go through. Then found my glasses, and realised some of the letters were actually ex-lodger's..

Two from bailiffs, and one from a solicitor about a CCJ. Well, I 'phoned all three and had my address taken off their records for ex-lodger.

Today two more letters have turned up, which my son opened (not realising he shouldn't have done so - as I've said, I opened the other three by accident). They are both new bills, apparently for services taken out after ex-lodger left my home! :eek:

How can I stop her doing this?

..Son knows where she worships, and thinks we should go to her church and talk to the pastor; try and get him to use his influence with ex-lodger to stop her behaving in such an un-Christian way. By the way, I am still getting automated messages from this church advising about times of prayer-meetings etc. Son thinks we could use this as an excuse for visiting the Pastor, to ask him to remove our land line number from his data base as we don't belong to his church.

Is this a good idea, or would it come under "harassment" as detailed in Tbs624's post?

I wasn't able to complete the Experian form as suggested by Browntoa, as I simply do not have enough of ex-lodger's details.

I'm also not sure that I want to chase her through the courts as it's more cost, effort and stress. The solicitor who is dealing with the CCJ against ex-lodger did offer to add me to his client list of people she owes money too - for a fee, of course.

It's still too soon to act on Jowo's suggestion to employ a tracing agent to find her - and I could do this myself, now, at much lower cost by simply finding her car in the car-park where she works, hiding and watching until she leaves and then following her.. . The advantage of doing it would be that I can then put her current address on any more letters which arrive for her in the near future; I'll be sure that they'll reach her - and let her know I've found her new address (which might not be such a good thing? ).
Don't worry, this is still just a last ditch idea - I'm not seriously thinking of undertaking such a sneaky course of action at the moment, :A as it just goes against all my instincts, but, I really cannot have this woman using my address for her fraudulent activities!

When you've all picked yourselves up off the floor and wiped away your tears of laughter at my stupidity for getting myself in this situation, does anyone have any more words of advice for me please?

BitterAndTwisted

Phone the organisations with which she has taken out these new services and inform them of her status as a lodger and the date she vacated your home. Give them the address that she works at and tell them to contact her there if they want. I'd be doing the same for every creditor sending mail to your address for the foreseeable future.

Trying to go through the Pastor at her church and disclosing the information you have about her could be interpreted as harassment, so although I sympathise completely with your desire to cause her discomfort, I would strongly advise you against doing this. Her past WILL catch up with her eventually, you can be quite sure of that.

I have no idea why you haven't deposited her smelly belongings at her place of work by now. Perhaps you could pop them round to her church instead?