Tenant wants to declare themselves bankrupt

[timmysamba]

That says it all really. We got an email from them yesterday asking what we think of them declaring they are bankrupt. They say it won't affect payment of rent as they are both still working, but their debts are too much for them to manage.

We are going to contact the agent on Tuesday, but for me alarm bells are ringing. We had an incident at Christmas when the rent was a month late. They are foreign and their english is not the best, so we struggled to understand what the problem was at Christmas. They were blaming the bank and agents, but we were confused!

What do we do? Give them notice to move out? We are not good at throwing people out! I am sure it will go against the tenancy agreement. Just wondered if anyone had any experience of this.

I'd contact a landlord's association and get their advice. It may well be that they can carry on paying rent as before, it's worth finding out. Apart from the incident at Christmas, have they paid regularly and been good tenants?

Yes they have been good tenants. They look after the place and generally seem lovely. The agent was reluctant for us to take them on as they were borderline on some income/rent scale.

One thought with B/R and rental is that at least your tenants would have less pressure on them financially from other debts and would be better able to make their rental payments to you each month (debt agencies can be pretty nasty and some people will do anything to shut them up, including leaving themselves short financially).

I would find out a bit more tbh, a lot of people who go BR do so with the help of the CAB (or other organisation) and have someone helping with their budget to make sure it is manageable. If they are prepared to be up front and be honest about the fact that they are thinking of going BR (rather than just letting you find out afterwards) they may be willing to give you some more assurance about how know that they will be ok paying their rent.

The other, rather grim point, is that if you serve them notice they may not have the means to find another house just now. Not great for them, but aren?t they sort of forced by the council to wait it out until you are legal able to kick them out?