Tenant not paying rent and never has done !!!

anselld

Do as GM states in post 25.
Have you served S8 yet?

rpc

She is taking you for a ride. Are you enough of a mug to let her?

armour

Hi Geek 84,
Assuming the tenancy started at the end of November, you could have have reasonably expected to have recieved 4 times the monthly rent from her by now (1 month's deposit + monthly rent in advance end of Nov, Dec, Jan).
Do you think there is any chance of you ever recieving this? - I would doubt it.
Hopefully you used a 6 month AST (or a 12 month AST with a six month break clause).
Damage limitation is the name of the game now.
You need to PROPERLY serve a section 21 notice BEFORE two months prior to the end of the rental term (or break clause).
I would advocate meeting with her and personally handing the notice to her (getting a signed receipt). At the same time you can assure her that, if the arrears are paid, you won't enforce the section 21.
Of course, the arrears won't be paid and you'll have to start the legal process on expiry of notice.
Best of luck.

theartfullodger

Geek: Please answer G_M's wise questions...

G_M wrote: »

There was a legalistic arguement earlier in the thread about rent frequency and S8 arrears criteria. This is relevant.

OP: what does the tenancy say about rent? Is it
* £X per month (or 'monthly')
* £X per week
* £X every two weeks

or what?

My advice in this situation would be to serve a S8 as soon as validly possible (which depends on the answer to the Q above.)

This in itself will incentivise the tenant to start paying rent! And if they don't, then you can evict, learn a serious lesson (you really did lay yourself open to this) and move on with a new tenant.

Cheers!

BigAunty

geek84 wrote: »

...

She has in fact only put in her claim forHousing Benefit from the end of January 2013. She now claims that ‘something went wrong with the first application’and that I should now get some sort of rent payment within the next 4weeks. Do you think that is possible?

Depends on the backlog of claims/average turnaround time that the council are taking with claims. However, housing benefit is usually paid directly to the tenant so unless you've been able to persuade the council to pay it directly to you if you've got the right grounds for this, then you might not see a penny of it when it reaches you, particularly as she should be aware that you are likely to boot her out - what's the point in her passing on the HB then..?.

Why do you not believe the council when they said she did not submit a claim in the first place?

If you had a served an S8 on the first day of the second month's rent arrears (a month and a day into the tenancy), your court case for possession would be scheduled in the near future and the judge would have found automatically in your favour if at the time of serving it, and at the date of the court case, the tenant owed 2 months rent.

It looks like you are sleepwalking into your fifth month of arrears without getting a penny and without taking the proper action which is to evict this fibber (whose HB is not payable while she's claiming it for another property and whose rate, as a single person without kids, will not come close to the rent).

geek84 wrote: »

...

Assuming that I do get the rent payments fromJanuary this year, what about the period when I didn’t receive any rent – November2012 to January 2013. Is it worthapproaching the HB people and showing them the short term tenancy agreement inan attempt to persuade them to back date the rent due?

You don't seem to understand the relationship between tenant, council and landlord. It is irrelevant in the legal relationship that the rent should be paid by HB. She has the relationship with the council for her HB claim - you do not. She has a relationship with you via the tenancy. You cannot intervene on behalf of your tenant to sort out her claim - they have the primary relationship over the claim with her. It is not a triangular relationship between you, her and the council - she has this, not you.

It is up to the tenant to sort out their own claim and to meet their obligations to the landlord. She is choosing to blame the council, has not been proactive and probably already knows that she is unable to pay HB to two landlords simulataneously. For all you know, the other landlord has not seen a penny in rent either and she may have a history of bouncing from naive landlord to naive landlord who is foolish enough to give her a key.

A tenant cannot get HB on two properties, exceptfor a 4 week period, if the council believes it was unavoidable and it follows these grounds.

http://england.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/housing_benefit_and_local_housing_allowance/change_of_circumstances_affecting_housing_benefit/housing_benefit_for_two_homes

Can't you understand that she appears to be holding two tenancies for a much longer period than this and it is likely that HB is being paid for the other one, that she is stringing you along, because she has no right to HB on both?

geek84 wrote: »

...

If that happens, should I go through thecourts in order to obtain the rent covering the period November 2012 to January2013? Of course, in that case the tenantmight say to the courts that she has not got enough money/savings, so cannotpay up or the court may give her some ridiculous order to pay off £2 per weekto make up the rent arrears.

It can take up to 4 months, sometimes longer, to evict a tenant depending on whether or not there are arrears at the time of serving the papers and at the court case (S8 route), or if you want to get them out by the end of the fixed term on another type of grounds (S21 route). If they remain in the property and ignore the court order, it can take another couple of months.

Generally it is a waste of time taking action for arrears with tenants who have no employment income - you cannot get money out of someone who is effectively broke, so yes, she may be ordered to pay back the thousands of pounds of arrears at a fiver a week and generally it's impossible to enforce.

Because it can take up to 6 months to get a tenant out, that's why landlords are generally urged to not have a risky, unvetted tenant in their property in the first place, to ignore sob stories from professional tenants (meaning ones that deliberately target novice landlords, who know their housing law rights and that they can effectively live rent free in properties for months and trash them and have next to no come back for their actions).

Stop being such a sucker - you should not even be communicating to the tenant verbally, you should be professional and get her out via the long-winded legal means because she is playing you.

RAS

Housing benefit can be back-dated by one month and no more. it can be claimed for two addresses briefly to cover moving dates.

She has no chance of getting HB for November. Remember as well that if the children are not residing with her, she amy only get HB for a one bed flat not a house, or even for a house share.

Ditch

Paul_01

As has been stated above, you MUST start eviction proceedings NOW.

You may well start to receive the HB, but I would want to be speaking to the HB department myself to get confirmation rather than sit twiddling my thumbs for another month or 2 hoping to receive a cheque from them.

In order to be able to do this, you need the tenants written consent. Prepare a letter and get her to sign it. If she is being genuine, she shouldn't have any issue with agreeing to this.

My guess is that she is playing you.

Good luck!