Tenant has abandoned property

[AccidentalLandlord1]

Hi everyone. My tenant of 5 years has abandoned my property today. She text me to say that due to a change in circumstances, she has left the property and has posted the keys through the door and the stuff she has left behind can either be thrown away or kept. I went to check and she has left her all her furniture such as beds, wardrobes, etc. She had always paid her rent on time so admittedly I'd become a bit laid back with checking but I checked today and she has not paid rent for the last 2 months and she missed a payment in October last year too. She also had the cheek to give me her bank details to give her deposit back...! Where do I stand with getting missed rent back from this tenant? I have no idea where she has gone and she seems to of now blocked my number. I am an accidental landlord as you can tell from my username and also rather stupidly did not protect her deposit. Does this mean I have to give it back?! Even if she owes rent. Help desperately needed...

[stayathomer]

'accidental landlord'?
hmm, in your case that sounds like code for 'made bad financial decisions'?
The market crashed 6 months after we bought, a company bought the one I worked for and I had my hours cut so had to get a new job. Dh and I both found a job in another county and we had kids so couldn’t do a 3 hour commute daily. So bad decisions, bad luck. That’s what being an accidental landlord is really. If I could go back in time, one of my only regrets in life was that we bought but we were just saying’we need to get a foot on the ladder now’. I try to advise people now if you’re buying, make sure it’s somewhere you have the option of staying in- I worked for the only pharmaceutical company in the whole county, I should have thought about what would happen if they downsized. Sigh.

[AccidentalLandlord1]

Yes, all clothes/paperwork/toys have gone.

[EnthENd]

@stayathomer

NorthernDrizzle
No-one is an accidental landlord and certainly not for 5 years


What planet do you live on? We’ve been accidental landlords for 12 years now- bought an apartment, moved out when we both got jobs we could no longer commute to as we had kids , paid 4 times what is was worth only months after we bought and was told by the bank they’d take us to court if we tried to sell for anything less than what we owed. We’ve been renting it out since and will be able to sell within the next ten years (thank goodness!!) we rented for ten years while our tenants paid half of the mortgage payment, and were poor for about five of those years. And it’s not an uncommon story. If you try to sell in negative equity your options are be sued or never own again. Op am no help but best of luck

Taking work far from home when you knew you would make a huge loss selling that home was a choice.

Renting it out was also a choice. You had other options. The most drastic being bankruptcy. If you truly had a mortgage debt four times the flat's value then that would not have been unreasonable. You chose your approach instead. Maybe it was the least bad of a bunch of bad options, but still your choice.

[Orangesandlemonade]

She should have paid the three months missing rent at the time .
she should have given you notice and she should have cleared and cleaned the property.
You should have protected the deposit.
But please be the better person. Yes you have been treated badly but…
she is in desperate situation to suddenly leave , you admit she has left her child’s furniture. She possibly needs the money more than you . Apologies if I’m wrong. If I am take legal advice not mumsnet.com
But if you can afford to - be kind , rip up the script - return the deposit and ask her if she could possibly collect the furniture or if you could drop any of it to a friend .
She won’t be expecting kindness, give goodness to the universe , she may pass this kindness on , make the world a better place .

[Justmeandthedog1]

Retired landlord here:
You can sue her in the small claims court for unpaid rent. Chances of actually getting it are slim. Do not consider doing this if anything is out of place — eg you do not have current gas safety certificate, you did not protect deposit.
You can charge her for disposing of furniture. If she texted or email any instructions re her furniture make sure you keep them.

Contact your deposit protection company. Explain the tenant has left owing rent, no address given. Say you want to claim the deposit as unpaid rent. They will then try to contact the tenant. Give her name, phone number, email if you have it. They’ll take it from there.
Did the tenant have a guarantor? If so contact them re unpaid rent.

Being a landlord is really a full time job to be on top of all the accounting and also to make sure everything is in place to the letter to be fair to both tenant and landlord.

[TaunterOfWomenInGeneralSaysSayonarastu]

@AccidentalLandlord1

I did do a gas/elec safety check when she moved in

& every year since, for 5 years?

[Kerfuffler]

@Justmeandthedog1

Retired landlord here:
You can sue her in the small claims court for unpaid rent. Chances of actually getting it are slim. Do not consider doing this if anything is out of place — eg you do not have current gas safety certificate, you did not protect deposit.
You can charge her for disposing of furniture. If she texted or email any instructions re her furniture make sure you keep them.

Contact your deposit protection company. Explain the tenant has left owing rent, no address given. Say you want to claim the deposit as unpaid rent. They will then try to contact the tenant. Give her name, phone number, email if you have it. They’ll take it from there.
Did the tenant have a guarantor? If so contact them re unpaid rent.

Being a landlord is really a full time job to be on top of all the accounting and also to make sure everything is in place to the letter to be fair to both tenant and landlord.

OP says in their OP that they didn't protect the deposit. There is no deposit protection company to contact.

They also haven't had gas checks done since the tenant moved in 5 years ago.

[Aavalon57]

Have you done the boiler check annually? Also, how does she know the deposit isn’t protected? And finally, is she safe? All sounds a bit worrying.

[AdobeWanKenobi]

You can absolutely be an accidental landlord. But when that happens you then need to be reading how to be a bone fide, law abiding landlord.

Being a bit green around the subject is understandable for the first few months, but after that the onus is on you to step up.

[stayathomer]

Taking work far from home when you knew you would make a huge loss selling that home was a choice.

Renting it out was also a choice. You had other options. The most drastic being bankruptcy. If you truly had a mortgage debt four times the flat's value then that would not have been unreasonable. You chose your approach instead. Maybe it was the least bad of a bunch of bad options, but still your choice.
The company I worked for was taken over and my hours were cut so I had to find another job. There was nothing else in the area (it’s a county with very little options hence property is now dirt cheap there!). All choices, yes, I’d never have taken bankruptcy as it would have thrown us into even more of a pit in terms of ever owning again. I don’t deny we were idiots to buy and I’ll always regret it, am just saying there are plenty of people out there who aren’t landlords because they want to earn money!

[Aavalon57]

Also, did you have a tenancy agreement in place?

[Whooyou]

What do you mean by Not protecting Her deposit

[Kerfuffler]

@Whooyou

What do you mean by Not protecting Her deposit

Means they didn't do this
www.gov.uk/tenancy-deposit-protection

[CandyLeBonBon]

I’d never have taken bankruptcy as it would have thrown us into even more of a pit in terms of ever owning again.

Also not accurate. It sounds like you're not very clued up financially.

[Maverickess]

It's funny how you never hear the term 'accidental tenant' isn't it?
Much less used as an implied defence against anything a tenant does wrong on their part.

I can just imagine the cries of 'choices!' and 'take responsibility!' if I were to say I'm an 'accidental tenant' who can't buy a property.

[viques]

@AccidentalLandlord1

I did do a gas/elec safety check when she moved in

Five years ago!

so no up to date safety checks (illegal)

no deposit guarantee (illegal)

you didn’t notice she hadn’t paid for two months after not bothering to chase her for another missing months rent. (Stupid)

have you declared the rental income to the taxman? Have you told your insurers the property was rented? Is there a mortgage on the property and is it a rental mortgage?(probably, all illegal)

I hope you are better organised in your real life than you are in your accidental landlord life.

My advice? pay back the deposit, get the house cleared put it on the market asap.

[stayathomer]

CandyLeBonBon
Also not accurate. It sounds like you're not very clued up financially.
We had a window in terms of getting another mortgage due to age and the fact that we wanted more children. Am in Ireland and at the time it was 6 years before you could get a mortgage which would have meant we were older and had another child (and as it turned out two) which the meant the banks would have given us less.

[Summerfun54321]

She sounds like she needs that deposit back. I would just transfer it back to her and take the missed rent as a lesson learnt.

[NumberTheory]

Realistically, OP, your least expensive way going forward is probably to send her deposit back, clear out the flat, selling what you can of her stuff, donating or dumping everything else, and selling the house.

The alternative is to risk having her report you for not having protected the deposit and failing to get required gas safety checks each year (and possibly other breaches, since it seems you've done little other than take her money). She could get 3x her deposit back and it will cost you time, money and stress to deal with that and any investigation. Your chances of getting more back than it costs you seem small, especially if you'd need to instruct a solicitor.

You have avoided your responsibilities for 5+ years, so this is probably a relatively cheap get out for you.

[OldFan]

I don't think you will actually be fined for not giving back the deposit of someone who owes you more than that in rent @AccidentalLandlord1 . Also because you will have costs/lost time arising from having to remove any of her stuff that you don't want in there.

So I really wouldn't be frightened to keep it. It's standard practice. If you want to give a reason you could say because there was all stuff left in there, so it wasn't left as she found it.

[Lifeispassingby]

@OldFan the OP can be fined for not using deposit protection scheme and not fulfilling other responsibilities as a landlord though. There is a risk the tenant could go down this route if the deposit isn’t returned to her

[Kerfuffler]

@Lifeispassingby

@OldFan the OP can be fined for not using deposit protection scheme and not fulfilling other responsibilities as a landlord though. There is a risk the tenant could go down this route if the deposit isn’t returned to her

www.lettingaproperty.com/landlord/blog/gas-safety-checks-landlords/
Potentially unlimited fines/6 months in prison for not doing gas safety checks - inot sure if that's that per missed annual check, or just one count for the whole tenancy?

[OldFan]

I don't even know what this protected deposit thing is, and I private rented for a long time, and knew many people who did.

Never heard of anyone's deposit being protected. At the end of your stay they decided whether they were happy with the condition of the property and based on that you got some or all of your deposit back.

Obviously if you did a runner you probably didn't get anything back, and not if you owed rent either.

The last time I private rented was 2014. Have things really changed that much?

I suppose nowadays with the internet etc, tenants can read more about their rights and stuff.

[OldFan]

For sure OP should've done the gas safety thing of course.

[Kerfuffler]

@OldFan

I don't even know what this protected deposit thing is, and I private rented for a long time, and knew many people who did.

Never heard of anyone's deposit being protected. At the end of your stay they decided whether they were happy with the condition of the property and based on that you got some or all of your deposit back.

Obviously if you did a runner you probably didn't get anything back, and not if you owed rent either.

The last time I private rented was 2014. Have things really changed that much?

I suppose nowadays with the internet etc, tenants can read more about their rights and stuff.

Protected deposits have been required since 2007.