3 Years Running: Buy-To-Let Legal Services Award
3 Years Running: Buy-To-Let Legal Services Award
I’ve been dealing with and evicting bad tenants for 23 years and have heard some bizarre excuses as to why landlords have not received rent from their tenants. Since setting up Landlord Action 11 years ago and dealing with many thousands of cases, I still get surprised by some of the stories tenants produce after not making their payments.
Approximately 8 months ago we had a case in court where the tenant was 4 months in rent arrears and hadn’t made any attempt to communicate with the landlord. On the day of the hearing she turned up at the court and said to the judge she hadn’t paid the rent as she was convinced the property was haunted, and was deadly serious when questioned by our advocate. Unsurprisingly, we obtained the possession order.
I’ve also heard very common excuses e.g. there’s a problem with my bank, my cheque book hasn’t yet arrived, the landlord was supposed to collect the rent and, maybe more sincerely, I didn’t receive my wages. But as to abuse of the system and tenants taking advantage of landlords, we had one cases in particular where a lady was claiming LHA and the overseas landlord didn’t realise he had not received rent for 7 months. When the tenant was questioned on what she’d done with the rent, she said she had sent it to her family in Kosovo to build a house.
If you have good communication with your tenants, you will know if they are being honest and that if they cannot pay the rent you may want to work with them to give them time to pay it off before you take steps towards legal action, bearing in mind we are going back in to recession which unfortunately means more tenants will stop paying rent for various and often genuine reasons.
Landlord action was set up by landlords for landlords with problem tenants. That is, tenants who are in rent arrears or break some other part of a tenancy agreement. Landlord & tenant law is a specialist area and we found solicitor charges were too much and too vague. When you have a bad tenant you want to evict them fast. Any landlord would want a bad tenant out. they want advice and help with the law. And that's what we do. We are experts in this area and unlike solicitors, we only act for landlords, never tenants. And we'll help recover the outstanding rent. Our free advice line is open to all landlords and we have carried out thousands of evictions.