Tenant forged AST.

tumbledowngirl

poppysarah wrote: »

Go organise a half hour freebie with a local solicitor.

We (our LA on our behalf) are already in talks with solicitors, but every communication with the tenant brings to light a new twist.

BitterAndTwisted

What is this "settlement fee" and how have you arrived at it?

By that, I would assume it would be your reasonable costs to find another suitable tenant (agent's tenant-finding fee) and to re-let the property, i.e. the agent drawing up a new contract.

Sooner or later the rent due but remaining unpaid is going to exceed this fee.

Undercovercarrot

I suppose the question you have to ask yourself is what is this worth to you both in terms of time and in terms of money? Whilst I abhor any attempt by the tenant to blackmail or extort, you may feel it is simpler just to cut your losses and run, get the property fixed and re-let.

The question is that even if you went to court and won, the tenant may claim financial hardship - he seems to have problems paying his bills in the first place.

Benefit of hindsight suggests that the LA should have probably been a bit more proactive in the first place when rent was in arrears.

tumbledowngirl

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

What is this "settlement fee" and how have you arrived at it?

By that, I would assume it would be your reasonable costs to find another suitable tenant (agent's tenant-finding fee) and to re-let the property, i.e. the agent drawing up a new contract.

Sooner or later the rent due but remaining unpaid is going to exceed this fee.

I posted higher up what the settlement fee was - it was the equivalent of a month's rent plus slightly less than the re-let fee. It was offered just prior to rent becoming due, so actually would have saved the tenant the cost of paying that rent and the re-let fee and possibly having to pay the rent for the month(s) following until a new tenant was agreed.

The tenant did actually agree to it - but started all this nonsense when we refused to take it from the deposit, and instead asked him to pay it upfornt, and we would deal with the deposit in the proper way.

DRP

tumbledowngirl wrote: »

We (our LA on our behalf) are already in talks with solicitors, but every communication with the tenant brings to light a new twist.

sounds expensive

tumbledowngirl

Undercovercarrot wrote: »

I suppose the question you have to ask yourself is what is this worth to you both in terms of time and in terms of money? Whilst I abhor any attempt by the tenant to blackmail or extort, you may feel it is simpler just to cut your losses and run, get the property fixed and re-let.

The question is that even if you went to court and won, the tenant may claim financial hardship - he seems to have problems paying his bills in the first place.

Benefit of hindsight suggests that the LA should have probably been a bit more proactive in the first place when rent was in arrears.

I don't think the tenant had problems paying his bills - the property he has moved to is more expensive than ours. He claimed to have paid late because he was changing banks and his standing orders were messed up.
The LA chased the rent each time, and until last week the rent had been brought up to date. However, a month's rent is now overdue by a week.

It is obviously very stressful having to deal with this, but I'm finding it very hard to accept giving in to the threats of an obvious conman. While I accept that every landlord will have trouble at times, I can't accept that seriously shady tenants should be allowed to get away with it, just because they think they can wear down landlords.

BitterAndTwisted

Undercovercarrot wrote: »

I suppose the question you have to ask yourself is what is this worth to you both in terms of time and in terms of money? Whilst I abhor any attempt by the tenant to blackmail or extort, you may feel it is simpler just to cut your losses and run, get the property fixed and re-let.

The question is that even if you went to court and won, the tenant may claim financial hardship - he seems to have problems paying his bills in the first place.

Benefit of hindsight suggests that the LA should have probably been a bit more proactive in the first place when rent was in arrears.

The difficulty for the landlord in this instance is that until and unless the property is formally surrendered by the tenant, the landlord cannot assume the property is vacant, so is not able to enter the property or re-let it. Doing so would risk the landlord being sued for illegal eviction and harassment. Going by what has been revealed to date about this tenant's behaviour, this could be a very real possibility, so it's absolutely vital the the LL does not play into their hands.




OP: what is your reasoning for declining to accept the tenant's deposit in lieu of rent due just to make all this go away asap?

tumbledowngirl

DRP wrote: »

sounds expensive

At the moment, it's to see whether they have a role to play in this.
Obviously, if the proposed costs massively outweigh what we stand to gain, we will have to re-think BUT rightly or wrongly, the principal of the matter is in the mix for us at the moment, and the LA is in agreement that the tenant should not think he can simply get away with it.

tumbledowngirl

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

The difficulty for the landlord in this instance is that until and unless the property is formally surrendered by the tenant, the landlord cannot assume the property is vacant, so is not able to enter the property or re-let it. Doing so would risk the landlord being sued for illegal eviction and harassment. Going by what has been revealed to date about this tenant's behaviour, this could be a very real possibility, so it's absolutely vital the the LL does not play into their hands.




OP: what is your reasoning for declining to accept the tenant's deposit in lieu of rent due just to make all this go away asap?

Because we suspect from all of his behaviour to this point that he will argue the deposit. Plus, we want to be able to dispute the deposit on damage/cleaning grounds if need be (and the AST states it cant be used for rent).

jjlandlord

tumbledowngirl wrote: »

The tenant did actually agree to it - but started all this nonsense when we refused to take it from the deposit, and instead asked him to pay it upfornt, and we would deal with the deposit in the proper way.

Oh come on!
You're really making things as hard as possible for yourself, aren't you?