Tenants trashed house & insurance not paying out

[Deleted User]

warby68 wrote: »

With respect, the tenants have made a real mess - they ARE to blame. Yes they weren't 'policed' as well as they might but they were still the ones to trash the place.

What is it with this site and 'saintly' tenants and 'devil' landlords?

But you could have protected yourself better. In no way is this site renown to treating tenants as 'saintly' and LL's as 'devil'.

You were foolish. You had tenants move into a property worth tens of thousands of pounds (probably more) without checking them out properly. Would you let someone borrow your phone for 12 months without knowing them inside and out?

Pixie5740

warby68 wrote: »

With respect, the tenants have made a real mess - they ARE to blame. Yes they weren't 'policed' as well as they might but they were still the ones to trash the place.

What is it with this site and 'saintly' tenants and 'devil' landlords?

I don't think anyone has said your tenants were saintly. I get you're upset that your insurance won't pay out and the deposit isn't enough to cover the damage. The tenants are responsible for covering the cost of the damage and if the amount exceeds the value of the deposit then you can take them to court for the rest. What has happened with the deposit? Has that been resolved using the deposit scheme?

In your shoes I'd also be checking the contract with the letting agency. Was there anything in it about conducting inspections. If yes how often were they supposed to be doing them. Did you ever get copies of the reports. Sure you wouldn't expect an inspection to involve peering inside fridges and ovens but you would expect it to notice holes in doors/walls and signs of a dog if not the dog itself.

How did you find these tenants? Through the letting agency? What was the referencing process? Were you involved in that process at all? Has a reference been supplied by you or the letting agent to the next [STRIKE]sucker[/STRIKE] landlord?

I don't know what kind of research you did before becoming a landlord or selecting a letting agency but there are things you can do to protect yourself from getting a duff tenant or if you do end up with a duffer getting rid of them swiftly. What made you get a BTL 150 miles from where you live? Is it your former home you're letting out or did you choose this area for some other reason? Did you buy here because there a buoyant rental market with good yields? Because it was cheap?

davidmcn

warby68 wrote: »

With respect, the tenants have made a real mess - they ARE to blame. Yes they weren't 'policed' as well as they might but they were still the ones to trash the place.

What is it with this site and 'saintly' tenants and 'devil' landlords?

deannatrois wrote: »

But you could have protected yourself better.

Pixie5740 wrote: »

I don't think anyone has said your tenants were saintly. I get you're upset that your insurance won't pay out and the deposit isn't enough to cover the damage.

Er, warby68 isn't the OP...

itchyfeet123

I'm not sure inspections would prevented this. Broken fridge must be fairly close to the tenants leaving, because how long could they have lived with a broken fridge? Do inspections typically check the washing machine works? Maybe you could gave pointed out the paint or the dirty oven or the holes in walls, but all you could really do is tell them it needs to be put right before they leave.

I guess if you renewed the tenancy multiple times inspections early on could have been a red flag not to renew so the overall damage wasn`t as bad, but in general I think inspections do little to protect landlords from bad tenants while annoying the good tenants. I say that as someone who has never lived anywhere that has had inspections, and all else being equal would actively choose one property over another to avoid inspections.

Pixie5740

davidmcn wrote: »

Er, warby68 isn't the OP...

Fair doos but the advice still stands. Pursue the tenants and find out what the hell the letting agent was being paid to do.

FBaby

deannatrois wrote: »

The point is, if you'd done things differently (an inspection, different letting agent, more thorough vetting - checking where they lived before they lived in your house etc) the damage would have been prevented/spotted before things got to that state.

The problem was how the letting was done, not letting itself.

We did all this with our tenants and it made no difference whatsoever. In the end you can't stop people not caring about the property they live in nor hiding damages when inspected unless you carry out invasive inspections.

Pixie5740

itchyfeet123 wrote: »

I'm not sure inspections would prevented this. Broken fridge must be fairly close to the tenants leaving, because how long could they have lived with a broken fridge? Do inspections typically check the washing machine works? Maybe you could gave pointed out the paint or the dirty oven or the holes in walls, but all you could really do is tell them it needs to be put right before they leave.

I guess if you renewed the tenancy multiple times inspections early on could have been a red flag not to renew so the overall damage wasn`t as bad, but in general I think inspections do little to protect landlords from bad tenants while annoying the good tenants. I say that as someone who has never lived anywhere that has had inspections, and all else being equal would actively choose one property over another to avoid inspections.

I know letting agents are slagged off a lot on the forum but you'd like to think that if a letting agent inspected this property they would notice dark grey paint on the walls and floors, a radiator hanging off the wall, a hole in the garage door and at the very least been able to smell the dog. Unless of course the property had always been well kept but for some reason the tenants went batshit crazy in the final month or two.

Thrugelmir

warby68 wrote: »

With respect, the tenants have made a real mess - they ARE to blame. Yes they weren't 'policed' as well as they might but they were still the ones to trash the place.

What is it with this site and 'saintly' tenants and 'devil' landlords?

You obviously aren't cut out to run a business. Not everyone is. If letting property were that easy and profitable everybody would be doing it.

AdrianC

warby68 wrote: »

What is it with this site and 'saintly' tenants and 'devil' landlords?

Odd. Half the time we're accused of all being landlords and against tenants on principle.

Maybe the truth is that some people - from whichever side - don't like hearing things they disagree with?

FBaby

In regards to decorating the tenants asked if they could repaint the children room shortly after they moved in (was freshly painted neutral they wanted pink). We were reluctant but for the benefit of having happy tenants who said they wanted to be long term we agreed to this one room as long as it was repainted neutral to the same standard . They took our flexibility to extend this to every room. We were not impressed at all when we did the first inspection but they apologised profusely and assured us they would repaint all nicely when leaving. Well that happened much sooner than anticipated as they separated and as he left the painting was done by her and frankly my children would have done a better job.

We had no choice but to repaint all the rooms. Again we got some money from deposit but that didn't even cover half what it costs us which would have been nothing if they hadn't touched the walls in the first place or repainted properly as was agreed and we could have updated in 5 or so years.