Tiny violins out - private landlord having trouble

[roarfeckingroarr]

I own a flat that I rent out because it no longer suits my needs to live there and I couldn't find a buyer without making a substantial loss during Covid (due to no private outdoor space).

I try to not be a dick - e.g. I charge under market rate, I don't increase the rent unless in between tenants, I get everything fixed as soon as I can (via management agency), I allow pets/children etc. All things that should be standard but too often are not.

Anyway, I have a tenant who is playing games. Every month for the last three she has had a problem paying the rent. First of all she wanted to move the payment date (fine, circs change, but she was a week after the agreed date), then she was late again, then she decided unilaterally she didn't have to pay because the boiler had broken and I couldn't get a new one installed over night. I reimbursed her for heaters to keep warm and had it replaced as soon as a reputable tradesman could install one - about a week in total. I get this isn't ideal and I offered a £100 discount as a goodwill gesture. She eventually paid.

I hate being a landlord and I am v shortly going on maternity leave with my second child so I need to sell especially as the income is now unreliable to use the equity to buy us a family home.

But I'm scared to put it on the market in case she takes that as free reign to stop paying altogether.

Does anyone have any advice that doesn't include "private landlords" and "scum of the earth" in the same sentence? I wouldn't expect her to let people traipse through her home at short notice and would hope to arrange maybe two open house mornings in Jan to minimise inconvenience - but I also expect her to stick to her side of the contract and pay the agreed rent during this time.

Because your ages and your boyfriends illness is not relevant

@Goodgrief82 You're a shining example of why renters need more protection.

Er, no. If you have one property you have one client. There's no reason you can't have more clients
Haha.....if only! Because of course, all landlords can afford to buy 2, 3, 10 properties to let, when having more is even riskier. The majority of landlords don't make enough profit from letting to make it a living, and oh, what a pity that letting alone, unless you set yourself up as a limited company, cannot get UC to make up the difference!

Over 70% of landlords in this country only own 1 property.

If landlords only sold to other landlords, I would not have been able to buy my flat as a FTB. Almost every flat is owned by a landlord here (the ones that aren't owned by older people who would most likely stay there for the rest of their lives). Fewer younger people can afford to buy a flat nowadays and even if they could, they prefer to move out of London to buy a house or they can't afford to upsize to a house (so would stay in the flat long term). Only landlords tend to sell properties pretty regularly.

DH says that for our next flat, we should try to buy an owner occupied flat because the flats that landlords own are not in good condition. However, sometimes you just don't have that option. Family owned flats generally come with a chain too so that is more risky.

But yes in my housing search, i encountered a landlord who lied to a young family that I was an investor who would allow them to stay (i was 27 at that time and I have been mistaken as a teenager/child due to my baby face). The tenant had a tiny baby and was terrified of being turned out of her own home (this was just before Christmas). She didn't believe the lying agent and proceeded to tell me about all the mould in the flat.

My point exactly. Over 70% of Landlords in this Country have made a poor decision to have a single client business.

You think that landlords can't buy 2,3,10 properties? Watch them do exactly that at a knocked down price when all this dross gets flushed out the system over the next couple of years.

@BloodAndFire your hypocrisy is comical. You're accusing @Goodgrief82 of not reading your thousands of words, yet you haven't read my responses (like where I've said multiple times I've no plans to serve notice before Christmas) or you're choosing to misrepresent me to fit your narrative.

You're also criticising @Goodgrief82 for not being all heart for your irrelevant story after wishing me (heavily pregnant) and my two year old norovirus over Christmas with a broken boiler so I can't get it fixed.

I didn't say landlords should only sell to other landlords

I said that landlords should sell to other landlords when they have a tenant in situ.

I was a renter throughout my twenties

i never took on a 6 month tenancy where the LL refused to increase

why? Because his intentions were abundantly clear

I do curse them for selling. Not because they are actually selling but because they are not honourable enough to sell it onto another Landlord
Because being a landlord is not financially beneficial any longer. Landlords are selling for the same reason they are not buying. It's quite obvious! But that's what everyone wanted.more properties available for those who couldn't afford to buy, so convinced everyone was that it would bring prices down....except it didn't.

My point exactly. Over 70% of Landlords in this Country have made a poor decision to have a single client business
No, they had no choice in the matter because the business couldn't afford to expend. Multiple properties landlords are selling too having made losses.

Many business had to close during COVID. Many survived only thanks to the government bail out. Maybe that was you too. Landlords were not entitled to any such support when tenants failed to pay.

Expected to act as a business but not getting any of the benefits businesses get...

@vivainsomnia
Because being a landlord is not financially beneficial any longer.

For you and other small landlords it's not. This is a good development.

No, they had no choice in the matter because the business couldn't afford to expend.

Many landlords expanded in the early 2000s and early 2010s. If someone couldn't afford to they simply don't know their business

Many business had to close during COVID. Many survived only thanks to the government bail out. Maybe that was you too.

No, I already told you I had retained profit.

Landlords are buying more properties than ever before: www.telegraph.co.uk/property/buy-to-let/landlords-swoop-housing-downturn-snap-bargain-properties/

Yeah, I read you backtracking after many, many posters pointed out how disgusting it was that you said (very clearly in all seriousness) that you were going to serve your tenant notice before Xmas because she had 'been a dick'. The fact that you later pretended to have been joking doesn't change that. The original post is clearly not a joe at all.

My story is entirely relevant to the discussion of landlords who don't care at all about their tenants' lives, families and homes, and who think that other people's lives are theirs to play with and destroy on a whim.

I'm sure you could use some of the £15,000 profit you've made from your tenant to buy some of those electric heaters you so generously gave her before deciding to evict her.

@vivainsomnia
Landlords were not entitled to any such support when tenants failed to pay.

Do you think my business is entitled to support when one of my clients fails to pay?

Why do you think I don't have a one client business?

No, not relevant to the person who was only concerned about making a profit.

The lettings agent knew my boyfriend was seriously, potentially terminally ill. They stood face to face in front of a visibly desperately ill young man and his even younger partner, knew we were scraping together every last penny in order to secure that flat, so that he could continue getting chemotherapy. We asked them straight out if we would be able to stay long term in the flat. They said yes.

We were not in any position to try to force anyone to give us a longer tenancy agreement. We were desperate. They knew that.

On a human level, that is absolutely abhorrent and completely indefensible. And, sadly, representative of the general 'ethics' of the rental market and the treatment of tenants.

Just as @socialmedia23 's story shows:

But yes in my housing search, i encountered a landlord who lied to a young family that I was an investor who would allow them to stay (i was 27 at that time and I have been mistaken as a teenager/child due to my baby face). The tenant had a tiny baby and was terrified of being turned out of her own home (this was just before Christmas). She didn't believe the lying agent and proceeded to tell me about all the mould in the flat.

If you can't see what is wrong with the agents and landlords in these stories, and you try to blame it on the tenants, for having no power and no leverage in these situations, you clearly share their belief that anything goes as long as you can get away with it. It's a shitty, shitty way to treat people.

@BloodAndFire your story is that you and your boyfriend signed a short tenancy and were shocked at the landlord expecting you to leave after a short period of time. Shocking. Evil landlord.

And you have repeated one comment I said in jest - that I may as well be a dick too - that I clarified repeatedly. So come on, take your nasty wishes for my toddler to get sick and your grudges against landlords away from what has been a very helpful thread.

@BloodAndFire do your problem is with that letting agent. Your story is even more irrelevant.

I see the anti-landlord contingent's arrived

What beats me is how it can be said (correctly) that renting should be done in a businesslike manner, but that posters also want to moan about the rent being used towards the mortgage, to fund maternity leave, a pension or whatever.
What the hell business is it of a tenant what the money's used for, when they're quite properly paying for a service and that should surely be that?

@Puzzledandpissedoff
I see the anti-landlord contingent's arrived

It used to be a contingent. Now it's a popular opinion.

You’re right it goes both ways.

Take the emotion out of it and rent is at market rate and the arrangement is there because both sides get something out of it. And both have legal obligations and rights

I don't know what the conversations were between the landlords and the letting agent. I do know that I rang the landlords up, spoke to the wife and begged her to reconsider selling or to sell to another landlord. She knew the situation and she didn't care.

The story isn't irrelevant and you don't get to order people around here. Sorry - I am not your tenant and you don't have any power over me.

Yes, we were shocked to come home to find a 'For Sale' sign outside the home that we'd literally spent every last penny to secure, had had to get housing benefit for (taking weeks to come through), when we'd been explicitly told that there were no plans to sell it (having just been evicted from the previous place for the same reason).

Yes, I guess we were naive, desperate, ill and poor. He was in his early 20s and I was 17 and had never signed a tenancy agreement.

Yes, the landlords and lettings agent took full advantage of our desperation, poverty, naivety and illness to get as much money from us as they could, lie to our faces, and whether we did or didn't end up homeless could not have been of less interest to them.

You may think that's all fine and great because it's a business transaction. A normal human being with a sense of decency would understand that that is not OK as a way to treat people. There are lots of people out there who are poorer, more desperate and more naive than me. But I don't think that makes it OK to take advantage of them just because I can.

'Shocking! Evil landlord'. Yeah, I think it is pretty evil, tbh. Guess I am less shocked by it now though, I understand more about how the world works.

@BloodAndFire because your sob story wasn't her problem. Sorry but I loss all sympathy for anything you have to say when you wished a serious virus on my two year old.

Take the emotion out of it and rent is at market rate and the arrangement is there because both sides get something out of it. And both have legal obligations and rights

Yet another of your usual sensible, balanced posts, Marsha

And yes, HotChoxs, it has indeed become a popular opinion; it's just a shame there's sometimes little behind it except resentment because someone else has something and they don't.
Absolutely nobody should be defending truly rotten landlords, but just to damn the entire system seems thoughtless at best

I'm not remotely interested in your sympathy. Your entire thread is about calling your tenant a 'dick' and a 'wanker' and your threat to evict her just before Xmas wasn't in jest at all.

You seem to think it's about you. It's not. It's about the fact that people like you think that it's OK to destroy people's lives just because you can.

@BloodAndFire ok so you weren't actually even paying your own rent - taxpayers were - and after signing a short term rental the landlord expected you to leave after a short period of time. I'm sure it must have been stressful. A shame that experience didn't make you a nicer person,