General (main property discussion here) - Rental voids - longest period you've had!

Hi guys

Out of interest what's the longest period you've had of tenants not paying rent and you've moved for accelerated possession / managed to get them to cough up?

Will

7 months and never got a penny of it.

more to the point is how much you lost - i lost over £2.5k.

bet that there are few people that can beat that though!

tom

£3,000 is the maximum I have lost to one tenant!!

Others?

Will, perhaps you could donate a prize to the landlord with the highest arrears owed? Go on!

Julian

Good idea - we'll see. I think £3000 is quite a high marker though, if not taking into account other out of pocket expenses - damage, etc.

Any tales of woe out there?!

Will

Hi all, I've had trouble with voids, but the letting agent was to blame really as they signed the 3 tenants on for an extra year without consulting me. Two of the tenants were already 2 to 3 months in arrears each. When I eventually got them out they stole all my possessions I had left behind. Microwave, hoover etc..Around £500 worth, along with the £2000 rent missed it certainly hurt.

That was my first one, inexperience on my part didnt help.

The letting agent just will not do anything about it.

Any ideas on how I can do them for negligence? They are not part of ARLA which I will learn from too!

Cheers

Simon

simon, sounds like a nightmare. your guess about negligence as what I would have thought is the most likely avenue that you will find sny joy.

that said it could be costly and relatively hard to prove. got any solicitor friends that could give you a friendly bit of advice?

any solicitors on this forum?

good luck in any case.

tom

Cheers Tom, I had a full head of hair when I started....bald as a coot now like!

I have a friend of the family who is a solicitor who could possibly help me, but I'm not sure its in their area of expertise.

Could be costly yeah. But I could maybe at least get the tenant on the bad credit list, make me sleep better at night knowing he wont be able to make another landlords life a misery and avoid paying his way in life.

Cheers

Simon

Hi, I think you should look at the county court (small claims court) it is relatively cheep and easy to do, and deals with claims upto £5000.00 this way it will cost a fixed amount you do not need any legal representaion and will leave the x tenant with a CCJ and may well recover your monies. something like 4 out of 5 people who win get their money. You can use such tools as attachment of earnings, bailiffs etc. which is all relativly easy and cheap to do.

gary

Cheers for that Gary, I'll definitely have a look into that.

Laters

Simon

Bit late on this post but I completely agree with previous posts. Try to get an opinion with regards to the negligence from a solicitors and the likely route, depending of course on what the solicitor says, is small courts.

Julian

Yeah, your easiest way is via small claims court.

Don't get your hopes up too hight though I'm afraid. Even if they rule in your favour, it's still really hard to squeeze any money out of them.

There are ridiculous loopholes such as they can claim to be skint and pay you back at £5 per month, I've heard. If you want to cause them hassle, this is the route at least.

Better luck for 2005 mate

John

Cheers for those ideas lads,

I'll keep you posted (no pun intended) on how it goes!

Thanks for the well wishes

Simon

3 years

Paul - 3 years?

Is that your spread on how long it'll take?

John

i think paul meant void period?

what happened paul?

tom

Can no-one beat £3k?

I HAVE THE ANSWER. SEND THE DOGS IN. T

is that pitbulls clive?

perhaps you could use skunks - stink them out. i am still so angry about my £2.5k.

tom

To update you guys on my attempt to drag some money out of past tenants.Dated 4th Jan.

I employed a company called Haymarket Services. It was £400 to do all the background work and find the tenant and his guarantors.

They issued them with a statutory demand. They ignored this and so now a company may take the case on and all the risks to get this money, but I'm not holding out much hope on this. One of the options was to get the solicitors in and to proceed on insolvency it would have cost me between £1000 and £2000....not worth it I'm afraid..

So it looks like I may have to bite the bullet and forget about it.

Even if the company who could be acting on this case gets all the money off them and takes it all for themselves as costs, that will be a result for me.As the tenants at least will have been inconvenienced and at the very least had to pay out a good amount of cash!

Anybody else actually fought a case and won, using the statutory demand angle?

Simon

Longest void? I had a property empty for 10 months a couple of years ago. The place was a bit of a dump in need of total overhaul. To be fair it was my fault but I had other projects and that one fell off the radar somewhat!

In the end I sold it for a slight profit, enough to basically cover the void period loss of income so I didn't lose too much sleep!

Just received after I sent the last post, a letter from said company who will take the case on.

If they retrieve 3/4 to full amount, they take 40%.1/2 - 3/4 amount then 25% and then 15% for less than half.

I'll go for that....as long as the wasters are out of pocket and cant do it to another landlord I dont mind what I get!

Keep these wasting lowlifes out of our properties.

Landlords unite.....or something like that!

Simon

People keep mentioning that we should have a record of bad tenants and share it between landlords. UK law is fairly kind to the non-paying free-loaders unfortunately.

Trouble is it would contravene data protection act or something.

John

Shame, coz I have a couple of names we could share.

simon you could try landlordaction who advertise on the right hand side of this site?

tom

Hi Tom,

Its with a debt collecting company now and they have taken over the debt.

So what ever happens now, they will have to pay something up..thats my main reason for doing it!

Cheers

Simon

oh right. apologies simon. hope you get a good percentage back. i didn't go down this route but i am interested to see the outcome of yours.

tom