Increasingly I am seeing more and
more tenants come to me with letters, not notices, from their landlord claiming
there are thousands owed in unpaid rents.
The tenants, of course are adamant
that they have paid in full and on time, but the landlord, when asked are
unable to produce a full statement of account from the commencement of the
tenancy to date.
The main problem is landlords and
tenants fail to keep the arrangement business-like and fall fowl of agreeing to
accept/pay rent by cash, not getting a receipt or a landlord may agree to let a
tenant off one month due to repairs or such like, but fails to clarify this in
writing then years down the line cant recall the agreement.
From the moment a tenancy starts
and you receive the first month rent and deposit, you should start to keep
track of these funds, even if it is nothing more than an excel spreadsheet.
If it can be avoided, don’t accept
cash but if you do always always issue a receipt and note down that it was
received in cash.
I recently had a case where a
landlord had claimed over £8k was owed in unpaid rent from the date the tenant
moved in in 2007, there was no record of the rent due/paid and after a strongly
worded email the landlord finally sent me a hand written rental account, however
after spending hours trawling through the tenants bank statements I managed to
account for nearly £5k of these alleged unpaid months.
As the tenants was unable to
prove the remaining £3k the landlord proceeded to court, and as I’m sure you
can all predict, the judge didn’t even entertain the case as the landlord could
not provide proof the rent had not been paid.
The moral of this story is, make
sure you always keep accurate records no matter how simple, because it could
mean the difference between winning and losing in court.
