unpaid rent

[laverda]

this i beleive to be a comon problem just wondered if you have any ideas or solutions to the following as I have come accross this senario many times.

example

you have a tenant whos tenancy is soon to end and they plan to leave on expiry or you have served notice that you wish your property back for whatever reason. The tenant then defaults on rent payments you try and chase this up and even go through the courts to caim unpaid rent this can take several months and can be costly at the end of this the tenant is ordered to pay ok fairly straight forward so far . Next thing you know is tenant has vacated leaving no forwarding address as they dont want to be traced .Even if they are housed by the local Council the council will not give out there new address. After all of this Landlord can be left cosiderably out of pocket . If you go back to the court they ask you for an address to serve papers to ,police say its a cival matter and dont want to know I have seen this happen many times and usually the tenant gets away with it also leaving unpaid bills and damage to the property there deposit hardly covers the costs let alone loss of rent damage etc. Any one had this problem and what can be done about this are the local council obbliged to pass on new address etc. I know of some tenants that do this over and over again and keep moving around every 6 to 12 months I beleive it is illegal to set up a database of this type of tenant some tenants keep there housing benifit this way and so are defrauding the local council as well how can this be stopped and how can these tenants be traced after they have gone you veiws would be welcomed. If they can get away with this they will keep on doing it . I would just like to add most tenants are fine this is just the minority but they do this over and over

[Melboy]

The downside of being a Landlord Lavy.

Legislation is heavily weighted in favour of the Tenant and not the Landlord as many people find out when trouble arises and you need to go through the Court process of trying to obtain some form of justice for being ripped off.

Wears you down in the end and after 20 years of it you just want to sell up and take the money and bugger off to somewhere warm and cosy and not have the hassle of rogue Tenants.

[russ295]

try to get friendly with someone at your local c tax office, they are quite helpful, quite lucky myself as my ma works on the fraud sqaud there!!

russ

[Matthew]

How can tenants keep doing this and keep renting places? Surely if you go to court it will turn up when you credit check them and then don't let the property to them.

[Chris Knight]

I suggest that you always Reference the tenant through a professional referencing company and if they pass the check take the option of a Rent Guarantee & Legal Expenses policy. OK the Rent Guarantee may not kick in if they leave with a month to go but at least you have Legal Expenses cover that allows the insurer's legal team to do all the hard work for you in tracing the tenants and claiming back the unpaid rent (through the courts if necessary).

[jesincov]

Hi Lavy,

Your situation sounds all to familliar to me - I have wasted huge amounts of time, effort, and money chasing these people (even with references that checked out!).

My final step is now to sell the debts to a professional debt collection company called CreditG. They charge an obsence percentage for the risk free service - but it is exactly that. Once referred I don't have to do anything further and they have often managed to track and recover sizeable amounts of money.

jesincov.

[Simon Dewsberry]

completely agree with jesincov only if done properly "obscene percentage" is payable by tenant - NOT YOU !

Simon