Tenant from Hell= penniless and destroyed house

oldbaldman

Regarding the damage done by your tenant did you have LL's insurance? If you did you would need to check the policy wording. Did the T remove walls and ceilings and fittings or did this occur after they left and the property was empty?

Are you and he able to do any building work yourselves?

If you are not able to DIY then accepting that it will not be ideal, how much would it cost you to get a functioning bathroom, not completed with tiled surfaces and lino or carpet, but with somewhere to have a wash with a working loo?

And ideally somewhere to cook and be able to sit in the warm?

Is there space for a caravan on site?

If you can achieve this, you could leave the rented accommodation and move in. This would save rent, and one lot of council tax, all of which you can put to the renovation.

To add, approximately 60% of any quote is labour, so if you can do anything yourselves you can save a lot of money there.

obm

bupe

Mrs Mumbles, thank you that is great help! I will get looking into that now!!

G_M

bupe wrote: »

hi tea-bag, yes there was insurance but it is only valid whilst there is a tenant in occupancy and the basics required to get it to lettable standard is around £10,000. The tenant literally destroyed it. needs new bathroom and kitchen, and new heating system - radiators ripped off walls and ancient boiler needs updating now anyway.
I thought this would have been claimable on the insurance but they said not due to no more tenant in the house, do you think they were fobbing us of?

Yes.

The tenant was in occupation at the time the damage was done.

Even if there is some clause in the policy stating that tenant must be in occupation at the time of the claim, I'm pretty sure you could challange this as an unfair term. Clearly you insured in order to protect yourself from exactly this, so a hidden clause......

assuming of course your policy included malicious damage by tenants......

I would read the insurance policy carefully.
Push your cliam.
Follow their complaints procedure.
Appeal upwards to the FOS

For goodness sake! £15,000 and you are tamely accepting their word?!!!!

pmlindyloo

May I suggest you post your question on the Mortgage forum.

It may be possible to remortgage and get the money to repair the house.

I am not an expert by any means and I would think it will probably depend on the loan to value so how much would the house be worth once done up?

bupe

thank you Chuck and OBM, I am going to approach the insurers again as feel we have been mislead, the damage to the property was done whilst tenant in situ. We live 2 hours away so not as easy to come by and do things and not practical to move there as we are close to our work here.

kinger101

bupe wrote: »

I thought this would have been claimable on the insurance but they said not due to no more tenant in the house, do you think they were fobbing us of?

Read your policy very carefully. Was this LL insurance which included malicious damage? Did you explain the damage occurred when the property was occupied? It does sound like they may be fobbing you off.

kissingthepink

Have you considered selling it at auction in its current condition? It may be worth asking what it could achieve at auction to see if it will clear the 95k mortgage. You can then set a minimum reserve price at which you will sell. Google Clive Emson auctioneers, I think they are the leading auctioneers in Kent.

theartfullodger

You presumably have reported the criminal damage to the Police and got crime reference number.

And will be pursuing the ex-tenant, for however long it takes in time & money & patiencee & cunning, for the damage & the rent owed. £22k (If I got the numbers right..) would make a difference to your partner's financial position. & Then make sure he gets a CCJ (if he doesn;t pay it all off promptly) preventing him getting credit & renting in future..

What would the ex-tenant say about why he did these things??

To run up £12k in arrears sounds like the eviction process was - er - a little slow. Why wasn't it done faster??

Was the deposit protected with 30 days of tenant paying it?? (If not he can sue landlord for up to 3x deposit)

Living 2 hours away was/is your choice: I live 10 hours from 3 self-managed houses & accept the consequences of that (time, money, inconvience,.,, all my decision, all my fault)

Good luck!

dimbo61

Evil tenant and massive charges for court action !!!!
Are you a member of a Landlords association ? RLA/NLA ?
You did reference and credit checks on your tenant before she moved in ?
Deposit protected and prescribed information given to tenant.
Gas safety certificate on gas central heating ?
You have debts and a large mortgage on a property worth little more than the debt.
You need to get the work done to bring it up to modern standards and then either sell or rent to recover the costs.

mrsmumbles

Just had another read of your post...looks like you need to get the plastering done, then the damp coursing, then build up the rooms like kitchen and bathroom from scratch. PLEASE do this yourselves and don't get a gumtree bod in. legally, you would be risking even more....for a few hundred quids worth of costs...just try to find a plasterer and damp proof course layer who has a good, maybe not the cheapest deal, and offer cash with a reciept. keep all the receipts as they are tax deductible as allowable expenses. Then it's that staircase to do, after that, the property could sell on to a developer who could take it off your hands, but frankly if it was me, at that point I'd plough in the extra and finish it off myself, because you will get more money back medium term, you will be MUCH cannier landlords now and never get caught out like that again, and why let some developer take the profit? I had to refurb my fathers house which is 250 miles from my place, and I work full time, did seven day weeks for two months...was a killer, but now he and we are secure, it does pay off in the end.
I just firmly believe that landlords should never get tenants to do their work, it seems a great idea in principle but invariably goes tits up and gets you in a worse position quickly...if it is really that bad then let the bank foreclose and they will eventually shift it at auction.
IF you could both move into it, if that would fit around your jobs, that would work really well and would be very cost effective.
Check a trade are good for vetting workmen, rated people allow you to post your job online and then traders all bid for the work, but beware of cowboys on that website, I've been caught out, but he did get the work done for us eventually. Check a trade are better. I don't think a damp course is that expensive, tbh, I think it's the staircase and all that plastering which is the most. remember that you are aiming to get the house safe and rentable, this will be a lower spec finish than if you were selling it on.
A last idea, and apologies if this upsets you: if one of you took on some extra work, this would help cover some of the costs. Flog stuff on ebay, ask the parents to do the same..from memory a refurb like this will need little chunks of cash payments to the traders of about 300 to 450 a go. This is where the extra job really helps! When we did my dads place. I remember that it was 400 cash to re plaster a big room ceiling and one other wall, and 300 cash to re plaster a whole box room...