Picky tenants!! Need opinions please

Building_Surveyor

At the end of the day this is your property with your money invested in it. If you are unable to afford to maintain you may as well chuck your investment down the drain as the property will only depreciate, then you'll have bigger problems on your hands.

Some of the issues may seem minor, however left over a period of time you'll only have a bigger bill as you'll have to fix them eventually, or cut the price when you do get round the selling.

I personally think you need to think carefully about what your involved in as a landlord. You could have 10 more tenants like this, are you financially and emotionally prepared for that?

I wish you all the best.

Lookingtobrighterthings

Do not extend the rent terms regardless of the baby. Issue them with notice now and that gives them a couple of months to find somewhere (which should be easy). They have picked so much at your property that they may as well move out and find their ideal house/flat with everything perfect!

Depending on their jobs, they may even get Christmas off (or just after Christmas) and this might give them more time to move anyway. They knew when they moved in that it was for six months so this won't come as a surprize.

Give yourself a good Christmas present - get new tenants!

Simple_life

*Robin* I had thought of that also!!! Could be what they are planning.

It's not that I don't have the money to maintain the property it's just that I don't want to pay out for things that in my opinion do not need doing and was seen on viewing. The things that I listed are not the only complaints/maintenance that they wanted doing, there was more than just this. If they seriously need done and will effect the structure of my building, then I would fix immediately. But the others such as cosmetic can wait now.

Your right though, I'm not cut out for this landlord stuff! But like many others I am sure, it was forced on my due to negative equity. When the time is right I will gladly sell the house and get back to my simple life .

franklee

Simple_life wrote: »

Again the Woden trim that surrounds the garage needs to be replaced ( in their opinion) because the paint has stripped off and the wood underneath has started to rot. Should this not have been picked up in previous inspections before it started to rot?

Things like that won't be reported by the tenant in future if they pick up you are unhappy at their complaining. Sometimes a tenant can't win. Keep quiet and get accused of a failure to report making the problem worse. Report the issue and risk being booted out for being picky.

I would have thought a tenant over reporting stuff is better than under reporting. That way the landlord can make the choice if he wants to repair or not. If it's not been reported it could deteriorate costing more in the long run.

Complaining that nothing has been done after the landlord has clearly stated there will be no repair is a different matter but I'd be wanting that in writing so there can be no dispute further deterioration wasn't the tenant's fault.

Time for you to set out how you want things run.

jamesd

Lots of negative here but consider the pregnancy. It may simply be that they are in nesting mode and trying to get the place as perfect as they can. Perhaps worried about the future toddler on the paving. The potential positive is that this might mean that they plan to be long term tenants and that the hassles will eventually die down.

To help move things in that direction you could ask them to compile two lists:

1. All of the things that they think are currently broken.
2. All of the things that aren't currently broken but that aren't as they would like them.

[Deleted User]

I think this would invite trouble. They don't know the boundaries and I don't think this will teach them.

Palookaville

I'm sorry but these people are being unreasonable.
I'm a tenant and I'm near completion for buying a house because my landlord ignores absolutely everything down to the damp in the house, the telephone line that doesn't work but requires BT to come and fix it but they are too tight to pay the £130 and also the boiler which breaks down every year.
I just cannot cope with a dodgy boiler for the 5th year running so do what my landlord does, ignore ignore ignore and then the tenants will give notice, just as like I'm about to!