These are a few tips that I have picked up in the course of my work – signs that all is not well with your tenant
They start paying rent late
This is a sign that your tenants are struggling. Sometimes it can lead to total overwhelm, at which time they may just stop paying rent altogether, wait to be evicted, and hope that they will be re-housed by the local authority.
Sometimes you may be able to help them and save the situation, if you step in and offer some support. For example by suggesting they take in a lodger perhaps (if they have a spare room).
They start making complaints
There are two possibilities here. One is that they are ‘making up’ excuses not to pay rent. A sort of advance justification.
However bear in mind that they may be right, and the thing they are complaining about may be something you are supposed to deal with. In which case they may have a legal right to withhold rent and get it done themselves.
They refuse to speak to you
This is really bad news. If the rent stops being paid and your tenant is still being evasive, you need to move as swiftly as possible towards eviction. Otherwise you could lose a lot of money in unpaid rent.
Excellent idea for an article Tessa. Those early signs. In my job I see them all the time. They often come in the form of slightly cautious questions about disrepair issues where you get the impression the tenant is sounding the adviser out to see where they stand if they withold rent.
And I often find that this starts coming up in the last 2 months of the tenancy.
The most common worry being where the tenant fears they arent going to get thier deposit back and look for the most direct way to recover it.
Sometimes the landlord tells them outright that they wont get it back for cleaning/carpet replacement/curtains etc.
Perhaps another signifier that the tenant has plans is when the landlord gets a letter from people like me saying they have been approached by the tenant and want to discuss a few matters with them. Especially if this is within the last 2 months of the tenancy.
Speaking for myself, after 21 years in this game I am well wise to when I am being used in this way and refuse to cooperate
Not allowing access, or being awkward with access after a repair issue has been reported. I had a contractor driving around in his van with a new washing machine for a tenant who kept refusing access, after complaining bitterly about the fact the previous machine had broken down. Sure enough rent stopped the following month (2008, she is still paying me back after the CCJ judgement under an Attachment of Earnings now, in 2012).
Also, not paying the utility bills. I have written to the utility companies in the past explaining that if we could get some sort of warning that a tenant was behind with paying their bills as a Landlord we could a) assist in prompting the tenant to pay and b) be warned ourselves that a problem with payments generally was starting with our tenant and therefore be warned that non payment of rent may commence. This in turn would assist the utility company as the quicker the Landlord can act, the quicker the tenant is evicted or a payment plan put in place which will restrict the amount of non-paid utility bills that mount up. My efforts have been met with resistance though due to ‘data protection’. I suggested, to Eon, that they refer to their lawyers with a suggested wording that I could put in my tenancy agreements that would allow me to find out, in general terms, whether a tenant was up to date with their payments, which they did, but they rejected the wording of my clause without responding with a clause that would work. My thoughts were that if we could get a tenant to authorise the Landlord to be able to find out if the tenant was paying their utility companies, by a clause in the tenancy agreement, then this would overide any data protection issue.
After all, most of my tenants who leave without paying their bills respond to me that I can sort it out with the utility company, they don’t seem to realise they will not communicate with me as the bill is in their name!
I dont agree with point “Paying rent late ” . Some times may due to other reasons
Yvette you couldnt write-in contractual clauses that would bypass the data Protection act. Contractual details are simply business agreements, whereas the DPA is a statute.
You may possibly get somewhere if you get your tenant to sign a letter authorising thier supplier to liaise with you about their account, I do these all the time with my mortgage repossession cases but I’m not sure they would cooperate, plus, despite your understandable concerns it smacks as a trifle intrusive to say the least.
Not for the first time I find myself torn on the one hand with understanding a landlord’s wish to protect themselves from difficult tenants and on the other hand feeling suggestions like that are nannying and over the top
Great signs Tessa! More especially if they suddenly stopped talking with you. Thank you for sharing your ideas about the early signs.