Non oaying tenants should be arrested!!

[JakieOH]

Just watching a programme about landlords and tenants. I know there are bad landlords out there, however, surely it should be a criminal offence not to pay rent on a property?? It can take months and months to evict a tenant from your property and it costs a fortune too. Meanwhile the landlord has to pay the mortgage etc. it's awful, these people should be arrested for theft because that's what it is.

More a rant than a question really, I rent out my old flat and it worries me a lot! If my tenets decided to stop paying rent I would most likely default on the mortgage and loose the property. There would be very little comeback to retrieve the money Owed.

I'm lucky because I have great tenants, they get a lovely oroperty at a very very reasonable rate (just covers the mortgage and any breakdowns/upkeep etc)

Something like that should absolutely be illegal Lollypop, I think it disgusting that you're on your own when some scumbag has treated you like that.

They are, by signing a tenancy agreement, buying an interest in land. And there are different rules, thankfully, governing interests in land than there are governing possessions.

I get there are different rules, it doesn't take a genius to understand the relevant laws, but that doesn't mean we automatically have to agree with them. Laws do get changed because enough people disagree with them and because they are morally wrong sometimes. A tenancy agreement is worthless once a tenant decides to stop paying, and tbh, once one side breaks their half of the deal by failing on the biggest thing they are supposed to do, it's pretty shitty to have the attitude that the other side is in the wrong for no reason.

ptolomey the point you are missing is that if people didn't treat housing and peoples home as an investment then many many more people would be able to afford to buy there own home.

It the few owing the many properties that has messed up the whole market for all but the few who can use equity to get more.

There are many things that affect the levels of housing stock and supply and demand, it's not all down to some people being landlords that there are problems.

I don't see how that point is relevant to the issue of people not paying the rent that they have agreed to anyway.

Exactly Lovely, the whole housing market has been distorted wherein the few have their asset paid for (in the main) by those who could never afford to buy the same property.

A tenancy agreement is not worthless if the tenant stops paying the rent. The agreement is weighted in the favour of the landlord who simply has to give the tenant two months notice of their intention to evict them outside the fixed period. If the tenant breaches the terms of the agreement the landlord can serve the notice.

All landlords should have an insurance to ensure no financial losses particularly if they do not have some sort of slush fund to weather periods of non payment of rent or damage to the property. It should be compulsory like car insurance. I simply cannot feel sorry them.

At the end of the day, if the landlord has, from time to time, to pay the mortgage on the property without the rental income, it seems to me to be a small price to pay for the asset that you eventually end up with when the mortgage is cleared. I'm guessing that once there are no more mortgage payments to be made, all the 'great guy' landlords on mumsnet don't reduce the rent. Win win for them.

The housing market in this country is a scandal - and I say that as someone who was lucky enough to buy in the mid 1990s and has seen the value of our home escalate ridiculously.

All landlords should have good quality insurance to repair damage done to the property by tenants.

Imo if you can't afford to insure the place properly then you can't afford to be a landlord.

Why do people keep banging on about insurance? It's a given that landlords should have insurance.

I have insurance on my car, does that mean i shouldn't be bothered if someone crashes into it? I have insurance for my home, does that mean someone isn't an arsehole if they damage it?

ptolemy

You still haven't said what type of "support" you would like from the police.

I have insurance on my car, does that mean i shouldn't be bothered if someone crashes into it? I have insurance for my home, does that mean someone isn't an arsehole if they damage it?

The thread is about punishment for tenants in arrears.

Several posters said that OP was BU to want tenants punished for being in financial difficulty.

Several other posters said tenants were unreasonable to pass financial difficulty onto the LL and pointed out LLs incurred financial losses.

So the response was that insurance could guard against financial loss.

Now you are more concerned about LLs feeling upset and wanting tenants in arrears branded 'arseholes'. Really?

Would people feel differently if the question was whether someone who deliberately decides to withhold their rent - not because they can't afford it or have fallen on hard times, or because the property is in poor condition or the landlord is a slumlord - but because they think it is fine for them to occupy the property without paying - does that specific subset of non-paying tenants deserve punishment?

I don't think it's the LLs who should have insurance to cover for periods when the tenant does not pay. I think the tenant should have insurance to cover periods of hard times, unemployment, etc. The tenants who after, say, 5 years of employment lost his job and now can't pay the rent did not go on holiday during the 5 years and did not spend on luxuries, right? Because they were saving, putting money in the bank for the eventuality of losing their jobs, weren't they?

Tenants who let you down are a risk of being a LL. It is possible to decrease the risks though. Keep all the bills in your name bar one (so the tenant has proof of address), and have that on a prepaid meter (gas or electric). Go round once a month, collect the rent + money for bills in cash and while there, inspect the property.

*tenant, in singular.

Keep all the bills in your name bar one (so the tenant has proof of address), and have that on a prepaid meter (gas or electric). Go round once a month, collect the rent + money for bills in cash and while there, inspect the property.

HA!

Keep all the bills in your name bar one (so the tenant has proof of address), and have that on a prepaid meter (gas or electric). Go round once a month, collect the rent + money for bills in cash and while there, inspect the property.

That sounds like something from a kitchen sink drama.

And there you have it, tenants aren't allowed to go on holiday or spend on luxuries. Just so the btl's mortgage can get paid.
I would hope that if I was a good tenant for five years that my landlord would be a bit more sympathetic in the short term at least whilst I could claim HB or sort something out.
And as for collecting the rent in cash, collecting payments for bill in cash and carrying out monthly inspections. Words fail me.

IonaNE Are you joking?

Ahh but you would be allowed one bill in your own name, (on a little meter so if you didnt pay it you would just sit in the dark and not eat or shower thus not affecting your lovely, all heart LL) so it's not all bad!

On goodie does that mean bad landlords can be rested too and bad estate agents. Remember i had the agent caught by my mother in law with hus hands in my underwear drawer.... Should work both ways op. Also what about the house we let which we gave notice after 6 months (min time we could) due to the indoor water feacture that occured in our lounge after rain. Despite photos hand delivered and phone calls at one point daily, that landlord never did fix the guttering!

I viewed a house a few years ago and half way round the owner said that inspections would be once a month, i ended the viewing there and then.

Ionane....

I rent out a property and on the event that a tenant could not pay I would give them ample notice and drop the rent to what they could afford while they find somewhere else. In these situations it pays to be reasonable.
Unforeseen circumstances could happen to anyone so it would be grossly unfair to criminalise unpaid rent. It just adds to the tenants stress.

"All landlords should have good quality insurance to repair damage done to the property by tenants.

Imo if you can't afford to insure the place properly then you can't afford to be a landlord."

I have insurance against burglars. That doesn't meant that burglars should not go to jail. I feel that there should be criminal proceedings for malicious damage like taking out a kitchen, bathroom and painting a house black. That kind of behaviour is different to rent arrears.

it only costs £100ish a year with NLA and only requires a few hours learning and online tests about laws etc.

Sounds like a really rigorous process and definitely an accreditation that's worth having then , and all for the bargain price of a year's cub scout fees - yeah, that must really weed out the chancers.

What I would like is the same kind of checking-your-knickers vetting that tenants have to go through just in order to be considered for a property. For eg, if the landlord has ever been made bankrupt (although personally I think that should bar them from being a landlord for at least 6 years if not forever, but there are plenty of the fuckers around), how many deposits they've withheld in the past six years, how many tenancy disputes they have been a party to in the past six years, how many tenants they've evicted in the past six years and how long those tenancies lasted before eviction, written evidence from past and current tenants as to how long it takes, in days, for a reported problem to be rectified to a satisfactory standard, and a six year record of rent rises on the property in question.

That's for starters. I'll probably think of more later.

Checking that they've spent a couple of days giving the place a lick of paint tells you fuck all about how they are going to comply with their repairing obligations.

Totally agree cruikshank