AIBU to think this is a really shitty way to behave?

[ballinacup]

An acquaintance was talking very proudly today about how she has evicted her tenants. She's done it completely illegally by sneaking in whilst they were out and changing the locks.

Yes, they were shitty tenants, but I still think making someone homeless without notice is a bit off. However, it gets worse.

She will not give the tenants their possessions. She finds it hilarious that the couple have called her on several occasions in tears, begging for their five month old's clothes/bottles/cot. Acquaintance's sister is expecting so she's given all of their stuff to her.

She stormed into the office fuming today as the tenants are taking legal action against her. Aibu to hope she gets into serious trouble for, essentially, stealing from a baby?

Etoo does have a point that if you're going to be a LL, you should do it with your eyes open and accept that not all tenants behave responsibly, just as not all LLs behave responsibly. But from my first hand experience, tenants do not as a rule come off badly. Certainly not those who view rental payments as optional.

mushy

No BrianTheMole I don't, 3-4 months seems ok for a beginning to end process to me. However others view this as "Tenants having all the rights" and seem to think if you miss a rent payment you should be out on your arse 8am the next morning. I'm guessing they wouldn't like it if their water company cut them off for missing a payment, or their bank froze all their accounts if they went overdrawn or any number of things that might happen to somebody in financial difficulties. Quite frankly anyone who thinks the modern day UK has strong tenant rights probably doesn't know anything about tenancies other than what Sarah Beeny told them on the last series of "Property Ladder".

How many properties do you rent to tenants, Etoo? I'm guessing none given your views on LLs. So where does your knowledge of the tenant/LL sector come from?

"Why didn't you just talk to the landlord and try and work out a plan? Instead of just ignoring the phone."

Because I'd spoken to him twice a day for a fortnight and I couldn't think of any new way to say "I'm so sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Yes we are terrible people. I will pay you as soon as the housing benefit comes through".

Funnily enough, he went on about "working out a plan" all of the time as well. But I got the strong impression that he was just enjoying seeing us squirm. I hope that doesn't sound familiar to you Brian.

I think most LLs would be amenable to discussing payment plans for tenants who are in short-term financial difficulty and have every intention of paying it back. Unfortunately it seems most anecdotes are not about those sorts of tenants.

Um, quite a lot of standard leases give the landlord a right of lien over the tenant's possessions in the rented property in the case of non-payment of rent - in other words they can retain it until they acquire permission to sell it to make up the defecit

Right but when does anyone morally take the possesions of a baby.

Any LL on here really would you take the cot and the bottles as well?

what has the baby done?

renting out houses is a business, both have clear predefined rules and well known risks

This keeps on being said as if 'business' makes it somehow ok to rip people off.

It's not a business like M&S is a business, or even a small business like your local independant hairdressers. Many landlords are just regular individuals who have their own shit to deal with just like everyone else.

Yes, being even a very small time landlord is a risk that should be mitigated against in the proper way. But why should individuals have to consider it a very real risk that they are going to be unlucky enough to work with people who behave like scum, trashing their property and effectively stealing their service?

others view this as "Tenants having all the rights" and seem to think if you miss a rent payment you should be out on your arse 8am the next morning.

Who are these others? Because in the years of renting myself I never came across a ll who wasn't prepared to negotiate, as long as I talked to them. Do not tar us all with the same brush. And earlier you were advocating 300 days before tenants were evicted. If it had come to that then I would have lost my home and my children would have been homeless too. But I suppose that doesn't matter as long as the fragile tenant is protected, with 300 days free living courtesy of me, and others like me.

Funnily enough, he went on about "working out a plan" all of the time as well. But I got the strong impression that he was just enjoying seeing us squirm

You got the impression??? Perhaps he was genuinely trying to help.

LL's have it easy in the UK there was a panorama programme on a few years back about ruthless LL's renting out mould ridden filthy homes to desperate people.

something like one percent are ever taken to the courts.

Agree with etoo. Letting property is a business (and treated as such for accounting and tax purposes) - it is only because "property" has acquired such a lustre as a vehicle for making money in the buy-to-let era that (often amateur) landlords seem to forget this. Just because you are owed money does not mean you can break the law. And if you are not ready to accept the risks of letting property, don't do it - just as if you aren't willing to take the risks in starting up a business, don't do it. A business might well end up with a major supplier going bust and folding because of that - that's business. I have just dealt in a work capacity with a non-profit society that has gone bankrupt owing around 15,000 pounds to various sources because some individuals and employers let them down at the last minute - they didn't have bad debt provision and, well, these things happen a lot to businesses. Renting property is no different, and just because people get sentimentally attached to their houses and the idea that they are "investments" doesn't mean they are any different, essentially, to betting on the stock market. Them's the breaks.

And UK tenants do have markedly fewer rights than in most European countries at least: there is no security of tenancy (unless you are lucky to have a tenancy under the pre-AST legislation), and no real protection from rent control. I only just heard about a big landlord in my city putting rents up by more than 50% and evicting several families whose rent had jumped from around 650/month to over 1000/month - in many countries they would not be able to do this.

WooWooOwl yes it is a business in exactly the same way that M&S is a business. And treated in the same way for tax purposes as a business.

And if you are not ready to accept the risks of letting property, don't do it - just as if you aren't willing to take the risks in starting up a business, don't do it.

Absolutely. And if you aren't able to take the risk of losing stability and a home for your baby, then don't have one when you can't cover a few months rent.

In fact the very reason why tenants in the UK have so few rights is precisely because letting property is treated as a business. If any of you ran a business and tried to get a bad debt repaid through the court system you'd find it took about as long as was about as successful as evicting a tenant. Do you think if a supplier to M&S goes bust M&S stands much chance of getting their money/goods back?

*and

So you think it's ok to steal from M&S then?

Sounds like victim blaming to me, according to other times I've read that phrase on mn.

Funnily enough, he went on about "working out a plan" all of the time as well. But I got the strong impression that he was just enjoying seeing us squirm. I hope that doesn't sound familiar to you Brian.

Well I should think he just wanted his rent and didn't believe you. Nothing to do with seeing you squirm, you think he was happy to let you live there rent free just so he could see you squirm? Really? Why didn't you give him the details of your claim and permission to speak to the council so he could check for himself a claim had been made. If I knew that myself, then I would suck it up and deal with it.
As for familiar, in some ways it does, but when I contacted the council it turned out they had never made a claim. The council weren't supposed to tell me because of data protection, but they did anyway. Turned out these people were sub letting a council house in another area, and claiming hb too. So they had moved into mine with the intention of not paying as obviously they couldn't make a second hb claim. Those poor fragile tenants.

two wrongs don't make a right. what this woman is doing is utterly awful. purely because of the fact that a baby has had to go without his/her cot, bottles, etc.

This keeps on being said as if 'business' makes it somehow ok to rip people off.

Nobody has said it's ok to rip people off, only that a default in payment doesn't make it ok to make somebody homeless without any notice in retaliation.

It's not a business like M&S is a business, or even a small business like your local independant hairdressers. Many landlords are just regular individuals who have their own shit to deal with just like everyone else.

Landlords are dealing with £100k, £200k, £300k+ assets and are responsible for the basic human needs and even safety (gas boilers etc) of other people, to imply it's a less serious business than giving Mavis a perm is staggering.

Yes, being even a very small time landlord is a risk that should be mitigated against in the proper way. But why should individuals have to consider it a very real risk that they are going to be unlucky enough to work with people who behave like scum, trashing their property and effectively stealing their service?

Because if you are dealing with the public that's the risk you take. The small time landlord is still running a business and having chosen to expose themselves to a risk in order to make a profit should be prepared for those risks to be realised.

Wow I would love some LL on here to say whether they would take the babies cot.

I have just posted on another thread about problems we have experienced living in terraced housing, I posted about lodgers causing all sorts of problems and I have been the victim of atrocious behaviour from lodgers next to us, however even though the lodgers were vile, I would have never ever wanted the baby had they had one to loose its cot and clothes and bottle.

its quite clear this ll was being vindictive and laughing over a baby loosing its cot.

I just cant see not matter how vile these tenants were anyone, anyone with a moral fibre in their body can actually stand up for the LL taking the cot, and bottle and clothes.

How? I have seen witnessed some wonderful things on MN and some nasty lows, but I think this is the lowest if anyone agrees with a LL taking the babies things....

Sorry, I didn't mean to vanish.

The tenants were shitty in that they'd - apparently - pay the rent late. My understanding is she had been threatening to do this for a while so the tenant had the locks changed to prevent acquaintance gaining entry. Acquaintance then called a locksmith herself.

Brian The only satisfactory 'plan' as far as he was concerned was to pay him immediately. The only plan I could offer was: waiting for the housing benefit to come through and paying him then.

Haranguing somebody day and night for weeks to do something impossible for them is called 'harassment', not 'help'. Maybe you harass your own tenants in the name of 'working out a plan'. Or maybe you're just being contrary because you've taken a dislike to me. I hope it's the latter.

And you think that burden should be extended to 300 days etoo? You think that the landlord should make provision and provide that service for 300 days. As far as I'm concerned, peoples rights and freedoms stop, where other peoples start. And if they can't be bothered to talk to the landlord and work out a plan, then they should go. Not have the continued right to live there for free.

I can't speak for etoo but on property letting as a business I have dealt with the accounting and tax affairs of both businesses and landlords and individuals who make money from both. And charities who both let property and run business subsidiaries.

It's also not at all the case that a right of lien is part if any standard lease in the UK - the PP who said this is either misinformed or not in the UK. A lien over a tenant's property is explicitly illegal in the UK and can't be enforced whether it's in a tenancy agreement or not (it's effectively an illegal clause).