More persons in my rental property than I thought

Flyboy152

chewmylegoff wrote: »

oh ok. my mistake. second bedrooms are only used for children.

i've been renting 2 bed flats for years and there's only me and my OH living there. plenty of other couples i know do this, in fact i'm struggling to think of anyone i know who lives in a 1 bedroom flat, and none of them have children.

the suggestion is that the LL is targeting the wrong audience because a 2 bed flat is only appropriate for tenants with children. this is nonsense.

Yeah.......because that's exactly what I wrote. :wall:

chewmylegoff

Flyboy152 wrote: »

Yeah.......because that's exactly what I wrote. :wall:

no, but it is what the post that i was originally responding to implied.

Travelling_Man

I have to say that I feel a limited amount of sympathy for the tenant as he has filled in the application form incorrectly, and for all I know, maybe deliberately so. As I pointed out in my OP, he is not a native speaker of English but an able communicator in it, so I am told. Moreover, he is a professional with a high salary, certainly an intelligent person I would suggest, and therefore if he was confused in any way by the form, he should have sought clarification from his HR department, or better still, my agent.

I myself rent in a foreign country as I live overseas and I have done both these things to make sure my paperwork is 100% correct. Before anyone asks if I have ever filled out the really important forms eg. job / passport / mortgage / tenancy / insurance etc application forms incorrectly, the answer is no and this includes forms in several foreign countries where the local language is not my first language. Sorry if that sounds holier than thou but it really isn't all that difficult. I sought advice / help / translations on those occasions, as my tenant could have done.

The poster who alerted me to the OFT guidelines has been helpful as I had not been aware of these, but I think that was my agent's job. Had she done so, and informed me that I could not really say "no children", this would have been fine. I would then have been able to make a fully informed choice of whether to let the house anyway, leave it empty, sell it, or whatever.

Of course these may turn out to be excellent tenants as some say, but I will only really know that when they move out, and I do not think things have got off to a great start.

Clearly it is possible that if I rented to a childless couple, that a pregnancy would ensue. However, in my view a baby would cause less damage than two school age children.

I am indeed an "amateur" landlord so this is why I appointed an agent to look after this property for me on their full management package. This included "full advice on renting your property". As I say, had they informed me that I could not legally say "no children" then I could have chosen not to rent the property.

The posters who said that I thought children were cretins or vermin made me smile a bit though. I am a deputy headteacher, have been in teaching for the last 17 years bar three months, since Uni, I work in an international school now, I have been successful in this career and get on fantastically with the kids, all of whom I like very much. But I do not think this has any relevance at all to my preferences when renting this property.

Eton_Rifle

lazer wrote: »

it is not the landlord's business what the tenants get up to in their own home.

There's such a double standard about this issue. It comes up on this forum all the time.

People say, as the poster does above, that it's none of the landlord's business what they do in their rented home ...

but the second the tenants next door make a noise or do anything remotely irritating, people demand their neighbour's landlord takes action and does something about the behaviour of the tenants, like a parent with a naughty child.

What people actually mean is that it's OK for me personally to do whatever I like in my rented house and it's no-one else's business as it's my home and my human rights yada yada but I insist that the tenant next door has to account for his behaviour to his landlord.

Pennylane

PasturesNew wrote: »

With holiday homes though, they have just 2-3 hours between one person leaving and the next arriving, during which time they have to get the place perfect again. It can be tight at the best of times, so try adding in fixing stains/breakages/smokey whiffs, piles of dog poo and it just can't be done.

I can see that, yes. But it is also because customers don't want to stay somewhere where dogs have also been living. I say that as someone who has owned dogs for all my adult life too!

If you stay somewhere where dogs have never been allowed they are vastly superior.

If you are talking about cleaning a mobile home in a couple of hours imagine how much time you'd need to clear a house and garden if someone had rented your house for a couple of years and they'd owned maybe 4 dogs.

What I'm trying to get across is that if caravan sites and holiday lets can decide who rents their properties, so should Landlords be able to.

Pennylane

Eton_Rifle wrote: »

There's such a double standard about this issue. It comes up on this forum all the time.

People say, as the poster does above, that it's none of the landlord's business what they do in their rented home ...

but the second the tenants next door make a noise or do anything remotely irritating, people demand their neighbour's landlord takes action and does something about the behaviour of the tenants, like a parent with a naughty child.

What people actually mean is that it's OK for me personally to do whatever I like in my rented house and it's no-one else's business as it's my home and my human rights yada yada but I insist that the tenant next door has to account for his behaviour to his landlord.

Spot on! A retired lady near me has had to endure weeks of a football being kicked into her fence and garage doors. The people opposite rent a house and their lad is about 10. She finally snapped when he kicked it into her lounge window and then she found him retrieving the ball from her garden.

She went round to tell his parents and reminded them that there is a large playing field about 500 yards away with football pitches etc. The father said he didn't like his boy going there as there are kids underage drinking. It wasn't until she got home that she wished she'd said "well why don't you go and play with him and keep an eye on him". He has promised to sort it. We'll see.

Flyboy152

Travelling_Man wrote: »

I have to say that I feel a limited amount of sympathy for the tenant as he has filled in the application form incorrectly, and for all I know, maybe deliberately so. As I pointed out in my OP, he is not a native speaker of English but an able communicator in it, so I am told. Moreover, he is a professional with a high salary, certainly an intelligent person I would suggest, and therefore if he was confused in any way by the form, he should have sought clarification from his HR department, or better still, my agent.

I myself rent in a foreign country as I live overseas and I have done both these things to make sure my paperwork is 100% correct. Before anyone asks if I have ever filled out the really important forms eg. job / passport / mortgage / tenancy / insurance etc application forms incorrectly, the answer is no and this includes forms in several foreign countries where the local language is not my first language. Sorry if that sounds holier than thou but it really isn't all that difficult. I sought advice / help / translations on those occasions, as my tenant could have done.

The poster who alerted me to the OFT guidelines has been helpful as I had not been aware of these, but I think that was my agent's job. Had she done so, and informed me that I could not really say "no children", this would have been fine. I would then have been able to make a fully informed choice of whether to let the house anyway, leave it empty, sell it, or whatever.

Of course these may turn out to be excellent tenants as some say, but I will only really know that when they move out, and I do not think things have got off to a great start.

Clearly it is possible that if I rented to a childless couple, that a pregnancy would ensue. However, in my view a baby would cause less damage than two school age children.

I am indeed an "amateur" landlord so this is why I appointed an agent to look after this property for me on their full management package. This included "full advice on renting your property". As I say, had they informed me that I could not legally say "no children" then I could have chosen not to rent the property.

The posters who said that I thought children were cretins or vermin made me smile a bit though. I am a deputy headteacher, have been in teaching for the last 17 years bar three months, since Uni, I work in an international school now, I have been successful in this career and get on fantastically with the kids, all of whom I like very much. But I do not think this has any relevance at all to my preferences when renting this property.

If your agent does regular checks, you will know a lot sooner.

Eton_Rifle

Is the house near people you know? Then you'll find out!

Two sets of tenants I have can barely sneeze without it being reported to me by the neighbours! I've never even met them but I know everything about them, how they keep the house and what their furniture is like!

If course the downside is, they probably get told all about my family in return - there's no privacy in small communities!

mrstinchcombe

No Children...

Its 2011 OP. If you want to try your luck being a landlord and get a stranger to pay off your mortgage for you then you need to play by the rules!

Enfieldian

Pennylane wrote: »

If you are talking about cleaning a mobile home in a couple of hours imagine how much time you'd need to clear a house and garden if someone had rented your house for a couple of years and they'd owned maybe 4 dogs. .

Well, if a Landlord didn't automatically redecorate when a tenancy lasting "a couple of years" ended, then I wouldn't want to be living there.....