To be pissed off at having just seen my tenants spending a load of cash whilst they're behind on rent?

[JennylovesRosie]

I am fed up to the back teeth.

This is the third month now where they're falling behind.

(I know them by their appearance and we have a mutual friend on a social networking site)

I have just seen them paying for a spa and no doubt it'll be up on social media next week (they like to brag and display all their newly acquired gains in Instagrammed glory.)

Next month my kids won't have the birthday parties they wanted because I'm subsidising these idiots living expenses and incurring charges as for their late/part payments.

Has anyone managed to get tenants out despite then not being 2 months late on rent. The Lettings agency have told me I'm stuck with them . Can I fine them?

They got a 12 fixed contract in January and surprise-surprise they started to default from day one of it.

I'm so upset.

my husband insists we persevere until he come out and we are in a position to settle and buy - then we can finally sell this millstone of a house!
You may find the market has dropped and you get even less for the property, not to mention the possibility of further legislation to penalize landlords

Still, landlordism is a speculative venture, and as with all gambling you could win or lose
Lots of people have put it all on the one horse though😱

eagles I suspect that part of it is because landlords don't need to know that tenants are on lha if it goes to the tenant rather than the landlord. I suspect the government started to foresee problems in the rental market (in the early 2000s things were nowhere near as dire as now) and took this step to lift a whole swathe of people out of their remit and make it more possible for them to private rent.

I'd just like to point out that and tenant with children who feels safe in the knowledge that the council will house them is a fool. It's not a lifestyle choice, because being evicted for non payment of rent makes you intentionally homeless. It's not something you can keep doing, maybe a few times if you can successfully flit and find yourself new accommodation but it's certainly not possible to get rehoused by the council over and over. Most private tenants on benefits do their utmost to keep their home because they know full well that eviction probably means living in a bedsit or scummy hostel 15-20 miles away from their children's schools for months on end.

This sounds terrible; what a cheek of the tenants. I thought there was stuff you could do (I think your agent is being lazy, or at best not proactive) so I asked a friend for his advice as he has been managing property for years and had a similar issue recently. He wrote back:

She should serve a Section 8 Notice to Quit citing all 3 of the following grounds (on the basis that at least 1 is likely to be valid come the day of reckoning in due course):
Ground 8 ['Mandatory' - the judge HAS to order eviction]
Ground 10 ['Discretionary' - it is up to the judge as to whether he/she grants eviction]
Ground 11 [as per ground 10]

Just serving the notice may well be enough to put the wind up the tenants and make them improve their behaviour.
DYOR: www.makeurmove.co.uk/page/Guidance-Notes-Section-8

Christ, don't put the wind up tenants. Treat them like an unexploded bomb. If the LA have been that inept with the OP they could have been equally inept with the tenants.

My only experience has been as a tenant treated like shit and went through a revenge eviction. It cost the landlord thousands and took a year because he thought he knew best when everybody told him he was wrong. Event the judge in court.

Some of the advice I have seen on this thread is breathtakingly awful. Get proper legal advice. Now. It will cost less in the end.

Absolutely tenants should pay the rent. Maybe they are and the LA is lying. It's happened before. Seeing them buying luxury stuff is a red herring. I get lots of luxury items and days out as a perk of my job.

Don't be emotional and for Gods sake don't use Facebook to stalk. Imagine how this all looks in court once you get it there. My landlord ended up looking like a complete twat.

Handsoff, but you do know now that your clause which you exhorted the OP to put into her contracts is an unenforceable one and therefore not worth having, don't you?

And that actually a landlord who does insist on that clause being actioned is breaking the law? Including you, if you've collected monies on the basis of your illegal penalty clause?

Tip for next time- never sign a 12 month lease with new tenants. Always start with 6 months.

Sorry, I'm probably getting confused as I've read through loads of posts really quickly. I thought that your clause enforced financial penalties for late payment of rent, which is illegal. If it doesn't, happy days. If it does, your solicitor is bent.

And yes you can use s8 to ask for habitual late payment to be considered as breach of contract - if that's all you've done, then that's fine.

12 month contract is the only kind you will get round here.

Ah ok, sorry about that - in my defence there has been loads of posts since I last looked at this thread! Someone did suggest it though which I hope the OP hasn't taken any notice of.

Handsoff I think what Cruik is saying is that non-payment of rent is breach of contract in any case. S8 notice can be served based on the grounds given in law. You don't have to write in your contract that it is breach of contract. The contract stipulates when rent is due, and how much. Non-payment breaches the contract. Putting the clause in doesn't make it easier or quicker to evict non-paying tenants. When starting eviction proceedings you rely on the law, not the clause in your contract. The clause you mentioned doesn't offer a landlord extra rights or protection over and above what they are afforded in law.

That is my understanding anyway. I hope it makes sense.

I have no idea. This is the first house i didnt even bother asking. Response is always "thats our standard contract" i have lots of friends who rent and same story. I spoke to a letting agent friend who I have had no professional dealings with. She said its just standard and works for all her clients. Where we are its just accepted that if you move you're there for a year minimum. It has made life very difficult for me in one house and a close friend too.

JohnSnows, I don't know why HB started being paid to tenants directly, but as you say one result of it has been that tenants no longer need to declare that they're on it/LHA which would otherwise disqualify them from lots of rental agreements as landlords quite often if they are doing it under a BTL mortgage are prevented from taking tenants on HB. Despite the fact that 4.8 million households claim HB/LHA. So actually what is happening is that loads of landlords are, by asking for the rents they do (which clearly are nowhere in line with wages), breaking the terms of their mortgage agreement by setting them so high because that then means they are letting to people on HB/LHA. And as a group getting £9 billion a year every year from the govt coffers to prop up their 'investments'.

Agree about the folly of just relying on councils to house tenants should they fall into arrears. There are plenty of places in the UK where the housing waiting lists are 10 years long. In parts of London, it's 18 years. Of course, tenants know this and therefore I think it vanishingly unlikely that any tenant would just stop paying their rent in the hope of getting evicted (ie being made homeless) and think 'well it's ok I'll get a council house ' - most of them are on the waiting list and know how it works.