If you are a landlord, it can be catastrophic if you tenant stops paying your rent.

After all, you have to carry on paying your mortgage, the insurance premiums, maybe Council tax and untilities and all the other outgoings you may have.

They are not going to let you off payment just because your tenant is not paying rent!

But often landlords, particularly new landlords, have no idea what to do. How can you deal most effectively with this disaster? How can you get your tenant paying rent again and keep paying rent?

Dealing with rent arrears

You need to remember that your tenant will no doubt have lots of creditors all calling for a part of his limited resources. He will probably pay first the one which is shouting loudest!

So you need to make your tenant decide to pay YOU first, before all the others. How can you do this?

• Get on to it promptly. Ring him up or write to him the day after he fails to pay. Let him know that your eye is on him

• Be sympathetic. Let him know that you understand his situation, and will do what you can to help. For example by allowing him to spread the payments, or maybe change the payment date. Or even (for the best tenants who you don’t want to lose) a small temporary rent reduction

• Warn him of the dangers of non payment. The risk of being made homeless and the effect this will have on his earning capacity – to say nothing of family life. The negative effect also of having a CCJ registered against his name.  That sort of thing

• Make it clear that you WILL take action if necessary, even though you are sympathetic.  You cannot allow him to stay in the property rent free, and will have no alternative but to take steps leading to eviction if the arrears situation is not dealt with

Generally if you take this approach, if the tenant is able to pay rent, he will.

And if your tenant STILL does not pay his rent?

Then I suggest you move as swiftly as possible towards eviction. It is neither right nor necessary for you to subsidise impecunious tenants who won’t even make an effort to pay your rent.

For more information

You will find quite a bit of guidance on this blog.

But your best guide will be my Rent Arrears Action plan which I wrote specifically to help landlords in this position, and give them a plan of action to follow. It contains guidance, letters, eviction notices and checklists.

Find out more >> here.

I hope you can help, I have an issue with my current tenancy which it would be good to get some informal advice on.  I’m coming to the end of my current agreement, and have already signed a new contract, beginning on the 5th August 2011. However I have found a perfect new flat, and want to move in at the end of August.

• At the moment I have a two-month notice period under my current contract, due to expire on the 4th August – meaning I could hand in notice now and have a leave date at the end of September
• The new contract has a 3 month “break clause” from 5th August 2011, meaning I won’t be able to leave until the end of October

Can I submit notice before the 5th August under the terms of the old contract – as it would still be “current”, even though I have signed the new one?

My view is that you can’t.

Although you are currently occupying the property under the terms of your old tenancy, any rights you may have to end that original tenancy will not affect the new one coming into force on 5 August.

Unless you are able to reach some agreement with your landlord.  My advice is to try to find someone to take your place.

What does anyone else think?

My tenant has been with me for last 3 terms of 6 months, renewed as ‘six months- no break’.

He requested me to go for a six months renewal again in December ’10, which I agreed to and then I forgot about it like in past.

Last week I was shocked to receive a call from him that he was vacating the property on one month notice. I told him that it was six months contract and he should check with my letting agency. He,instead went to the agency and said that he had given me a notice and that I had accepted it, so they accepted his notice.

Now I chased with the agency how could he give one month notice and I was told that it happens automatically if the contract is not renewed in a specific period after the first one expires. Agency had not kept me informed . I see that agency had sent three letters to the tenant but he did not respond. So it seems that he knew about this loophole about jumping into one month notice -a rolling contract.

I also have a copy of letter from my agncy to my tenant which says that if he did not sign a new agreement in seven days after that letter, then the new contract would be made as per the landlord’s request.

Can I take him to CAB? Can I provide the proof that he desisted from signing a new contract because he had these intentions. OR is he a defaluter that he continued to stay in my property without a proper agreement?

Any help will be highly appreciated.

If the tenant did not sign a new contract, then the tenancy would have continued on a rolling month by month basis, and he is entitled to end this on a months notice.  This happens automatically under the provisions of the Housing Act 1988.  See here for more details.

Your tenant has not done anything improper.  Once a tenant is in situ you cannot force them to sign a new tenancy agreement if they do not want to.  It is perhaps unfortunate that your agents did not explain this to you.

So I am afraid you will have to grin and bear it, and just hope you get a new tenant soon.  However on the bright side, there is a general shortage of good properties about nowadays so your agents should hopefully not have much difficulty in re-letting.

We have a student who wants to stay in the same room next year but is saying he can’t/won/t pay a retention fee over the summer… surely it is normal practise for all student landlords to charge a small fee (we suggested half the normal rent to retain the room and store possessions – is this unreasonable??)

Be grateful if you would let me know asap what your opinion is as the student is going home to Spain this weekend.

I would say that there is no hard and fast rule here (as in legal rule) – it really depends on what the parties agree.

If the student is unwilling to pay the retainer Gill, you can say to him that he has to take the risk that you will rent the room out to someone else over the summer and he won’t get it.  Plus of course if he is not paying the retainer he will not be able to store his possessions there.

I know that many landlords in holiday areas use student accommodation for holiday lets over the summer.

What do other student landlords do over the summer months?

The first thing to say is that legally the tenant is entitled to stay on in the property until he is evicted through the courts. If a landlord goes in and changes the locks, then this is harassment and a criminal offence.

Many tenants are of course honourable people and won’t mess their landlords about by refusing to move on an agreed date. However, it is sometimes out of their control.

The LA rehousing problem

If for example the tenant wants to be re-housed by the Local Authority, he will be advised to stay put until the landlord gets an order for possession. In almost all cases the Local Authority will not re-house until this is done, and sometimes the tenant will not be re-housed until a day or so before the bailiff is due!

If they move out before then, they will be deemed ‘voluntarily homeless’ and will lose their right to be re-hosued. Obviously they are going to stay put in those circumstances however much it is going to annoy their landlord.

My advice to landlords is never to trust their tenants or assume a tenant is actually going to move out on the due date, and to plan accordingly.

Talk to your tenants

If your tenants are talking to you (and if they are not it is bad news), see if you can find out what their plans are. If they have somewhere to go to which is confirmed, then you can be reasonably sure that they will be going (although nothing is 100% certain).

If they want to be re-housed by the local authority, then you should start proceedings for possession as soon as possible. You are doing nobody any favours by delaying. The sooner you can get a possession order, the sooner your tenants will be re-housed.

If they refuse to speak to you, then just assume that they are not going to move out and proceed to issuing prossession proceedings as soon as you can.

If no notice has been served

If you want your tenants to go, and they have said that they will, but you have not actually served any possession notice on them, then you should do this as a precautionary measure.

Then if they fail to go, then you will not waste any more time waiting for the notice period to expire.

Don’t sign up new tenants

You need to be very careful indeed about signing up new tenants before the old ones have gone. Because if the current tenants fail to move out there is not much you can do about it, AND you will (normally) be liable to your new tenants for breach of contract. They can hold you resposible for example for the cost of temporary accommodation until they are able to move in.

The Landlord Law tenancy agreements have a clause (on the front page) which says that the tenancy agreement is conditional upon any current tenants moving out in time, but even though this may save you from being held legally liable, you still don’t want the embarassment of letting your new tenants down.

Issue proceedings for possession

Using County Court bailiffs (or sometimes High Court Sheriffs) acting under a court order for possession is the ONLY legal way you can physically evict tenants from a property if they refuse to go voluntarily.

If you need your property back for any reason, or if your tenants are failing to pay rent, then you need to protect your position by issuing proceedings as soon as legally possible.

Sometimes tenants will try to get you to delay and they can be very persuasive. However you are not a housing charity. Start the proceedings if the tenants have failed to vacate by the due date, and tell them that the proceedings will be withdrawn once they have gone.

You can find out more about possession proceedings here.

And finally

If your tenants are the ones who have said that they wanted to go AND if they served a notice to quit on you, but have since changed their mind, a blog post I did a year ago features a very interesting piece of legislation which may allow you to charge double rent.  I’d love to know if anyone has actually done this, so please leave a comment if so!

Do YOU have any suggestions?