Tenant stopped paying rent and vanished

[Deleted User]

What people on here are saying is that your were extremely lucky with this previous tenant. Its possible you won't be as lucky this time. And you don't seem to take seriously this position. You could lose in a big way. Unjustly.., maybe .., but taking a deposit would have helped some to protect you. You chose to not do that. U've chosen to ignore a lot of the legal aspects of being a Landlord.

fishpond

deannatrois wrote: »

What people on here are saying is that your were extremely lucky with this previous tenant. Its possible you won't be as lucky this time. And you don't seem to take seriously this position. You could lose in a big way. Unjustly.., maybe .., but taking a deposit would have helped some to protect you. You chose to not do that. U've chosen to ignore a lot of the legal aspects of being a Landlord.

How? exactly.

bitsandpieces

jgh wrote: »

The tenancy has the standard clauses:
The Tenant shall...
... Give one month's notice of leaving
... PROVIDED that if the Rent or any instalment or part thereof shall be in arrear for at least fourteen days after the same have become due (whether legally demanded or not) or if there shall be a breach of any of the agreements by the Tenant the Landlord may re-enter on the Property (subject always to any statutory restrictions on his power so to do) and immediately thereupon the tenancy shall absolutely determine without prejudice to the other rights and remedies of the Landlord and may dispose of all and any items left on the Property as and in any way seen fit by the Landlord

Even if that clause is enforceable, it suggests 14 days arrears. You took the property back with 1 day's arrears, without attempting to find out whether the tenant was planning on coming back or if payment was accidentally delayed?

[Deleted User]

You ask that question and u've been a landlord long term? Words fail me for once.

Guest101

I seriously dont believe the OP's attitude on this, clearly you are in the wrong. He is probably at the solicitors right now, filing a claim.

I would be

How dare you enter his house?

If you didnt take a deposit, that's your problem. If he chose to empty his house, what business is that of yours??

Yes you serve notice on the empty house.

You served s.21 6 months ago, why did you not go to court, get possession and have bailiffs remove him and his partner?

Oh because you havent got a clue about the law, or the procedure. So you made it up, the tenant does know the law and is going to bend you over in court. Good for him.

mrginge

A 20yr landlord does not rent a house without a deposit.

I call shenanigans

HarryBarry

Ha I was talking in another thread about the attitude you see towards landlords on here (the attitude where a tenant can do no wrong and a LL is going to jail for minor irrelevant actions).

Anyway, there are some really idiotic responses in this thread by the LL haters.

Forced eviction comments? What forced eviction. Tenant moved all of his possessions out, still had key, fully welcome to return that night and keep living there and catch up on his arrears. He still is if he hasn't returned the key, LL hasn't said he is stopping him, so no eviction. OP - don't block a return to the house and you haven't done anything wrong.

Breaking and entering? Ok for a start this isn't a case of a bad landlord entering for no reason or so he could steal stuff. He saw a removal van and the place had been cleared. !!!!!! how many people wouldn't assume the tenant has left. If the tenant wants to stay, he should realise the reason for the misunderstanding and simply clarify that he isn't moving out. If he wants to call the police, they will do nothing. In fact all the landlord has to do is say "nope I wasn't there" and it's one word against another. The police will laugh if the tenant reports a break in, in which the result was a bit of cleaning done.

So, onto the tenant. He hasn't given notice, therefore he is still liable for the rent. So, OP - simply deny you entered the house, there will be a lack of evidence and the police won't be bothered to investigate if nothing is missing. Even if it came out that you did enter, you won't be in much trouble given the explanation - any tenant action will be for little reward seeing that no harm was done. And finally, whereas you are not likely to be in any trouble, make sure the tenant knows you expect rent as usual and if not received you will pursue it through the courts, and even if he can't pay you intend to do it to make sure he has the necessary black marks on his record.

So, in conclusion - landlord made a genuine mistake which is unlikely to see him get into trouble (assuming he doesn't block the tenant entering and denies having gone in himself) while tenant is obviously deliberate planning to break the agreement and will be in trouble if he doesn't pay rent that is still due (tenant even confirmed he still classes it as his house). Bad tenant. Mistaken landlord.

thesaint

mrginge wrote: »

A 20yr landlord does not rent a house without a deposit.

I call shenanigans

I encourage my landlords not to bother taking a deposit. The con's far outweigh the pro's.

[Deleted User]

HarryBarry wrote: »

Forced eviction comments? What forced eviction. Tenant moved all of his possessions out, still had key, fully welcome to return that night and keep living there and catch up on his arrears. He still is if he hasn't returned the key, LL hasn't said he is stopping him, so no eviction. OP - don't block a return to the house and you haven't done anything wrong.

Landlord entered the property while the property was still in the hands of the tenant and removed the tenants stuff, that's an eviction. The tenant could have very well been moving their stuff because they've bought a house but fully intend to continue living in the rented house while their new house is renovated. There is no evidence that the tenant has abandoned their tenancy, I've been in exactly that situation (left a place while it was still mine because I was moving) and would have been exceptionally angry if the landlord moved my stuff.

HarryBarry wrote: »

So, onto the tenant. He hasn't given notice, therefore he is still liable for the rent.

He is liable for rent because the house is still his.

I genuinely cannot believe your post, in another thread you berated a tenant for being bullied by their landlord and demanded they take personal responsibility and in this thread you're defending a landlord that has broken the law and advising that he denies this all happened?

jgh wrote: »

The tenancy has the standard clauses:
The Tenant shall...
... Give one month's notice of leaving
... PROVIDED that if the Rent or any instalment or part thereof shall be in arrear for at least fourteen days after the same have become due (whether legally demanded or not) or if there shall be a breach of any of the agreements by the Tenant the Landlord may re-enter on the Property (subject always to any statutory restrictions on his power so to do) and immediately thereupon the tenancy shall absolutely determine without prejudice to the other rights and remedies of the Landlord and may dispose of all and any items left on the Property as and in any way seen fit by the Landlord

Let's do some math:

Due date: August 1st
Late (1 day): August 2nd
Late (2 days): August 3rd
Late (3 days): August 4th

So his rent is... 1 day late. The tenancy agreement you're so desperately clinging to is in the tenants favour! Not only that, even if rent is 14 days late you can't evict without a court order, which requires at least 2 months of arrears -- unless you use a no fault, which will also take at least 2 months to evict.

As HarryBarry says you can probably get away with this but you have been a negligent landlord and you really need to rethink your approach to landlording if this is how you think you should be conducting your business.

fart

jgh wrote: »

Unfortunately, we don't have any address to serve them anything. They've just upped and vanished. We couldn't give notice of entering, he'd vanished (my 'he' I mean him & his co-tenant partner). What could we have done? Put a letter through the letterbox of an empty house saying "we're coming around tomorrow".

Even with notice i'm pretty sure you still need to hear a response. You can't just say 'we're coming round tomorrow' and then turn up and enter if you've heard nothing back.

He didn't move "some" of his stuff, he cleared the place out.

Doesn't make one bit of difference.

Exactly! What was he doing other than moving out?

The tenancy has the standard clauses:
The Tenant shall...
... Give one month's notice of leaving
... PROVIDED that if the Rent or any instalment or part thereof shall be in arrear for at least fourteen days after the same have become due (whether legally demanded or not) or if there shall be a breach of any of the agreements by the Tenant the Landlord may re-enter on the Property (subject always to any statutory restrictions on his power so to do) and immediately thereupon the tenancy shall absolutely determine without prejudice to the other rights and remedies of the Landlord and may dispose of all and any items left on the Property as and in any way seen fit by the Landlord

Again, doesn't matter. You can NOT enter HIS property (it's his home - he lives there) because you decide to assume that he's scarpered. You're not legally allowed to assume that.

I've been a landlord for almost 20 years, I'm not a novice and certainly not somebody chancing my arm at making a fast buck.

I highly doubt that. I had a problem paying rent one month at uni, and in half hour of research i found out information that you're clearly not aware of because after 20 apparent years you haven't got a single clue how to legally operate as a landlord - you've broken the law by doing what you're doing and have even made yourself look a right mug by insisting you were in the right when you are 100% in the wrong. No ifs or buts, what you've done is illegal; whether it's obvious to anyone that he's not coming back, that's not your call to make without going through the correct legal recourse.

No forceful entry has taken place, as I said, I got my landlord's keys and unlocked the door.

You've entered someone elses home without permission and touched what is still legally deemed his stuff. Whether you kicked the door in or used a key, you shouldn't be in there. Legally you're in similar territory as someone finding a key in a door in a random house and walking in.

There was no deposit.

More fool you, with your 20 years experience i'da thought you'd have taken a route different to this.

Well, I was planning on waiting until the weekend, but my partner was insitant on going in to check the place over, she lives next door to the building.

This could even encroach on his quiet enjoyment of the property - you've essentially got someone living right next door who is reporting their every move back to you. Not sure what this means legally but it's shady.

No, his stuff was gone - that is how it looked so clear that they'd moved out. All there was left that wasn't part of the furnishings was a sports bag, some kitchen cleaning things and some food in the fridge. Well, we just put them all together and put them to one side. For all we knew it was stuff he didn't want and was abandoning. Well, we weren't going to throw it out just in case he did come back looking for it.

Doesn't matter.

There are laws for a reason - they're there to prevent people like you from acting on your own instincts to protect tenants from harrassment, bullying and unlawful acts such as this. The law is there to stop you from doing things which are unprovable. For instance, he could say he came back from a holiday, found all his stuff gone and you in the house saying he'd 'clearly moved out'. He then goes to court and says you did this, and that he's now homeless because of you and all his stuff is gone. You have absolutely NO recourse to deny any of this because the process you use to protect YOURSELF is the proper action of going through court.

I hope he takes you to the cleaners, it might change your shoddy attitude.