I know that landlords don’t tend to do well on here, but here we go.
We are not property empire type landlords, my husbands parents bought a flat in his name as an investment when he was younger that’s rented out. It’s generally cost us money after rent, but the idea was long term it would make money in housing value.
In Oct 2023 we decided to sell it as it was too much hassle and we were having to top up the monthly payments to cover the mortgage and bills. We agreed for a family friends friend to move in on a short term basis, providing she keep it clean and allow viewings, which she did. Our massive gigantic mistake was not verifying her finances. We knew she’d sold a house 2 years prior for around 400k and she had a job, and given the personal connection we assumed it was fine.
2 months in she loses her job and doesn’t pay her rent. Keeps saying she will pay, can she have a bit longer etc. Says she is ill and having operations. We are very understanding and assume it is legit. We later learn that this is her second time doing this to a landlord, and despite the fact she had a family member who was happy for her to move in, she wanted to live in her own place and refused to move out the property. All the while we are covering all bills and mortgage. It gets to the point where we have to get solicitors involved and start the court process. In the end we have to pay her cash to move out as having somebody removed from a property can take over a year, the whole ordeal costs us around £15k. It’s not an exaggeration to say it very almost bankrupt us, and we have two nursery aged children. Because we didn’t do the usual checks on her, it couldn’t be claimed on landlord insurance.
The whole fiasco was at the same time in the run up to our wedding. We almost cancelled it because of the money but didn’t want to lose the money we’d already paid. We also had a buyer on the flat but we had to pull out and take the property off the market, as you can’t process a sale with a squatter in situ. Because of the stress of potentially going bankrupt, not being able to pay our mortgage etc, I was unable to sleep properly and started having really bad brain fog and memory issues (I’m 32). The brain fog has lifted, but the memory issues are still there and it scares me if it’s like this at my age. I went to the Drs but they couldn’t find a cause. I feel like the stress has almost caused part of my brain to stop functioning.
I just can’t get over that somebody could just steal from a young family like this? I’d understand if she was going to be homeless but she had somewhere to go (it’s where she’d lived before she came to our place).
Im just so angry, and I can’t move on from the fact that she took so much joy away from our wedding, the money we’ve lost and the fact that she’s potentially damaged my health for life. And there are absolutely no repercussions for her, nothing.
Any advice on how to let it go or move on would be much appreciated, thank you.