(TRO Ben Reeve Lewis considers bad tenants he has known …)
Most readers of this blog know me as someone voicing opinions on protecting tenants from criminal landlords but also hopefully as a council enforcement officer who doesn’t hate landlords as a species and recognises that despite the violent and sometimes insane nut-jobs I have to deal with on a daily basis most landlords are decent, fine people.
I might not always agree with even the decent, fine ones but …..well……..its a free country.
In 25 years of protecting tenant’s rights for an inner London borough I have seen some astonishingly unpleasant behaviour……………..from both landlords AND tenants.
One of the things I always hate as a Tenancy Relations Officer and I would imagine are hated by other TROs, is having to utilised laws designed to protect tenants from the worst in ways which in fact protect the worst tenant against a normal landlord.
False harassment claims
Perhaps the most common scenario I encounter is the tenant who once installed in the property doesn’t pay any rent, refuses to answer the phone or otherwise engage with the landlord and then makes a complaint to the TRO that the landlord is harassing them for money.
Now. Section 40 of the Administration of Justices Act 1970 makes it a criminal offence to make demands for payment which cause “Alarm, distress or humiliation”. It’s a thin line where reasonable demands for rent payments, driven by panic at an inability to meet the mortgage payments, trips over the admittedly blurred boundary into a Section 40 breach.
But as the TRO I’m the one who has to make the call and advise the landlord to reign it in and/or go for possession on the basis of rent arrears, a procedure that both I and they know will take months and even if successful may still not claw back the missing money.
I hate making those calls and despite what understandably angry landlords say to me I do as much on their behalf as I can. I always advise the tenant that they need to bear in mind that when it does come time to leave their prospective new landlord will ask their old landlord for a reference and to think ahead about what that reference may say.
Identity theft
Fairly recently I encountered a case where the tenant, conveniently holding the landlords bank account details for rent payments and date of birth, embarked on a spending spree in the landlord’s name.
The landlord asked for my advice but sadly my answer was that stealing a person’s identity wasn’t covered by any housing law I am aware of and that she needed to contact the police, however the police, as they do so often heard the words “Landlord and Tenant” and deemed it a “Civil matter”.
I failed to see how identity theft and fraud were a civil matter and could only suggest that she complain to the police for not investigating the allegations. All I could advise on was….yes….you guessed it, evict the tenant, which is going to take months. Meanwhile the tenant’s shoe collection kept growing.
Risk free renting
Nightmare tenants and rogue landlords are part of the landscape of renting, part of the possible risk you take when getting into the game. As one wag said to me recently “If a landlord wants a risk free investment, then buy a house but don’t rent it out to anyone”.
I also talk to loads of landlords of rogue tenants who tell me that they have been renting for 20 years and never encountered a problem until now. It’s a lottery as is so much of life.
Tenant hands over £3,000 in deposit and rent in advance only to find agent walks off with all the money – landlord happy to let to nice woman and three charming kids who end up smashing the place to pieces within a few months – tenant spend fortune furnishing their home only to find its an unauthorised council sub- let and they have to get out.
All very common scenarios.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not for watering down laws in place to protect tenants from the violence and intimidation of criminal landlords but I would support any law which helps landlords evict nightmare tenants more quickly.
I’m not qualified or erudite enough to suggest in detail how this could be done by I do know enough to comprehend that any changes would have to be made within the framework of the general legal system of proof and accusation, so it wouldn’t be just a case of “Well if they owe me money I should be allowed to change the locks”. That would be a naïve way of approaching it indeed.
Checks are vital but …
Can you run checks on tenants in advance to minimise the risk? Yes you can and you should, as should tenants with landlords but Experian will only give you so much.
A person might have a poor credit rating from years back but be otherwise solvent now and with a perfectly clean balance sheet when it comes to rent.
Even criminal record checks aren’t too instructive. I myself have a criminal record. Do you know what for? I got caught handing out leaflets for a Madonna concert whilst standing on the wrong area of the payment of Earls Court. What a cumbersome vile recidivist I am. I’m surprised anyone will let to me at all.
Many landlords I know rely on gut instinct. Fair enough but I doubt its 100% reliable.
I met a guy the other day Rahim Hassanali who runs a sort of speed dating event where groups of landlords and prospective tenants get to meet over wine or some such and check each other out in person before going down the legal route.
Wouldn’t fancy it myself but different strokes and all that.
It’s a risky business being a landlord and I wouldn’t do it myself. In the cases I mention above I can’t see how any checks could have picked up the possibility that a tenant might steal a landlord’s identity or smash the place to bits unless they had done it before.
Whats your story?
Morning Ben,
Good tenants are paying the price for bad tenants, that can’t be right.
Section 8 needs strengthening, section 21 weakening.
Starting with the biggest reason, non payment of rent.
Safeguards such as those proposed in the deregulation/retaliatory evictions bill should be imposed.
i.e The only defence for ground 8 is a pre reported disrepair claim that has had a notice from the, soon to be very busy, environmental health dept.
Or that the forgotten disrepair protocol has been stringently followed.
The ridiculous situation of tenants paying £1 under two months rent owing on the hearing date should be stamped out by judges then automatically and fairly looking at grounds 10 & 11. If there is history of non payment, possession should be awarded.
Easy! That’s that one all sorted.
Right! How are we going to sort out the Ukraine?
As someone who has provided landlord training I always advised that if they were seeking possession that they should never use a single ground just in case as you say that a tenant makes a small payment to bring it under the two months. Adequate preparation is essential to a good argument at court. As for Ground 10/11 themselves if it is believed that a judge is not acting fairly it could be subject to an appeal or to the MoJ
It is worth quoting from two judges exasperated comments in the Oxford & Hull Universities study (2014) into private landlord possession claims.
..” their notices are all wrong. They haven’t got a schedule of arrears. It’s all hopeless.
and another
“Where is the rent statement?
Oh. Well what were the arrears at the date of service of the notice?
Oh, I don’t know.
They haven’t a clue”
Private landlord possession claims hearings take at least twice the amount of time that is used for mortgage and social landlord claims, usually caused by the lack of information that is available to the court for judges to make a determination that is fair to both parties.
Can’t argue about amateur, unrepresented, unprepared landlords getting it wrong, to some extent they deserve what they get but this also frequently happens to experienced, prepared represented landlords.
From the same two exasperated judges;
“Solicitors, there are very poor solicitors doing this.”
“And you say you really need to go and seek legal advice, and they get legal advice,
and the advice is wrong.”
Judges don’t/very rarely(?) give possession for grounds 10/11. I don’t have much gripe about that, they are discretionary grounds and the judges are exercising that discretion about someone’s home.
What I think they should be doing is granting possession under those grounds when there has been a clear history of it and when the tenant has pulled the ‘£1 under two months arrears paid on the day of the hearing’ trick.
Wherever the blame lies for it (Judges, landlords or solicitors), section 8 has become useless, I’m suggesting that should be changed.
As said in the study you mention;
“There aren’t many private landlords who actually issue on fault grounds nowadays,
even if they’re owed money (DDS1)”
Yes, lawyers who do not specialise in housing also come in for criticism in the study. It is often easier for landlords as has been said elsewhere, not to apply on fault grounds because as long as the procedure is correct, possession will be guaranteed using S21.
Not all landlords are “bad”, not all tenants are “good”and there are many in the grey middle.
I hope that you thought the study was both thorough and fair.
Ben’s point that landlords should be able to evict real, proper rogue tenants more easily is something I very much agree with. I’ve been a landlord for eleven years and in that time have been forced to evict three tenants, all after many opportunities over very long periods of time to rectify the significant breaches of the tenancy agreement and significant arrears. But even though all were very behind with rent the law allowed them to stay for many months longer than was good for either side. I wanted my property back, and the longer tenants stay who cannot afford a property the more debt they run up that can take years to repay and affect their credit. I think there’s an argument to say if a tenant wants to delay an eviction, they should post a bond in escrow to cover the rent, so the landlord know the delay period will be paid for.
One ex tenant left a house filled with detritus, the most “interesting” aspects of which were the boxes of tarantula skins all over the house, and a section of carpet cut out of a stair step with a Stanley knife where their dog had defecated.
Another left a property and we only discovered months later that the previous tenant had put paper plates filled with cat faeces (deliberately) under the kitchen units in the kitchen. It was a horrible feeling knowing my new tenant had been subjected to something so disgusting.
Most tenants are like most landlords, just normal people doing their best on planet earth. Stereotypes are unhelpful and the law should continue to focus on driving out criminal landlords and assertively dealing with the rogue tenants who are sometimes just as bad.
Unfortunately I have lost all faith in the possession process to support me in cases where it’s entirely clear the tenant has not just breached but will continue to breach. I now evict sooner rather than later because I expect it to take (from serving notices) at LEAST 6 months.
In one of the cases I mentioned it got all the way to the eviction day, county court bailiffs arrive, but the tenant claims she “had no idea” she was being evicted, and convinced the bailiffs to leave (!). It took nearly a month to get another appointment, costing me over £1,000, which remains unpaid, and delaying the refurbishment which significantly increased the cost as the builder was then not free and creating an enormous void. Thankfully on the second attempt it seemed every bailiff in the area attended at the same time to make sure they left, and had the police on standby.
Preparation and communication is key. I would expect a an efficient landlord to make sure that the tenant is served with a letter or note of the bailiffs appointment, in addition to the one that is served by the bailiffs themselves.
In any circumstances contact should be made in respect of a potential inspection for the purposes of deposit return – if any. In all legal situations like this both parties need to try and predict what they next action of the opposing party will be. Had that happened it may have been possible to ensure the bailiff did not cancel the eviction or perhaps delayed by an hour or so.
High court enforcement officers seem to be able to avoid these problems, and they don’t cost much more.
Firstly court delays need sorting out, so that a case is hard within days of a notice expiring.
Something need to be done for HMOs, as the current system just does not work when all the good tenants leave due to a problem tenant, but none of the good tenants are willing to give evidence.
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I would personally also like to see the complete process changed, so that a landlord had to pay the court charges when the notice is SERVED, and the tenant having to put any defence in before the date the notice expiries. This would allow the hearing to take place as soon as the notice expires. (If the tenant comes up with a defence on the day that has not been put in at the correct time, the judge should disallow the defence.)
I then want to see the changes the landlord paid to SERVE the notice, to cover all the courts costs, and the costs of the police removing the tenant (and their belongings) on the date the judge sets.
At present a S21 notice is costs free to a landlord if the tenant leaves as requested but very costly otherwise. If the S21 notice had a real cost, landlords would not be issuing them “just in case”.
Details of all eviction cases should also be included in credit files, as at present the worse tenants have clean credit files, as no one believes there is any point trying to get money out of them.
“Details of all eviction cases should also be included in credit files”
The tenants with arrears unpaid will get a CCJ; that’s adequate. Tenants have a legal right to see their eviction to court; that all comes back to land law. Intimidation tactics have no place in our society; a nasty and shocking suggestion.
I look fwd to your article on Nightmare Landlords Ben.
Often a landlords users a S21 rather then a S8, and does not bother with a CCJ for the arrears as they no the CCJ can not be enforced against the worse tenants.
I would NEVER choose to take a tenant that has lost an eviction case at court! Regardless of them being told they must not leave when given a S21 by the housing department.
And the answer is still not to have “all eviction cases included in credit files”. When the court system needs revising pls refrain from trying to take that out on tenants. Cos you sound like one of the bad guys.
“I look fwd to your article on Nightmare Landlords Ben.”
Ha I pretty much write about little else Reb so I cant see the point. I am working on a piece at the moment about my experience over the past year in systematic, organised crime using the PRS to launder money though.
Even I am shocked by the scale of it