Landlords, don't be lazy..... do your homework

Even after all these years in the industry, I am still surprised at just how little landlords know about the business they are about to embark on

I think renting a property us the only business people embark in without doing a single piece of research on their chosen subject.

In not other industry would you find a complete novice signing a legally binding contract handing over the most expensive purchase he ever made to the hands if a complete stranger, without even checking the legitimacy of that person

I mean, would you happily hand over the keys of your shiny new car to a guy you'd never met in the hope he brings it back in one piece.... No, of course not because that's just madness

Yet everyday landlords are happy to hand over they and exclusive possession of their properties to tenants who they don't know and then run around like headless chickens whinging that the property got wrecked, the rent went unpaid..... What did you really expect from a complete stranger?

Landlords are in the news a lot in the last week because of this very reason, I'm sure we all saw the latest programme with Landlord Action explaining how they successfully evicted another tenant.....

But the bit they fail tobtell you is the fact the landlord was too dam lazy to do the job properly in the first place

•Did the landlord check the prospective tenants Immigration status as per the new regs?
•Did the landlord carry out referencing of the prospective tenants?
•Did the landlord ensure his tenancy agreement is up to date and not still harbouring clauses now seen as unfair under OFT guidance?
•Did the landlord protect the tenants deposit & issue PI within the time frame
•This list is quite extensive and I am still shocked when I see how slapdash landlords are when it comes to renting a property

I can guarantee a landlord will spend longer reading the small print ofbhis new phone contract than he will researching the rental industry and checking a applicants tenantability

If you are a lazy landlord and don't do your homework then I'm afraid in my opinion you can't then go around complaining that your tenant was bad...... You'd have already known and avoided that tenant and your current financial headache ifbyou had just taken some time and done your homework

You cannot expect a model tenant if you decided not to be a model landlord

The importance of paperwork….any paperwork

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.

When is a Section 21 not a Section 21........ when it doesnt say it is

Over the last few weeks i have seen a startling increase in the number of tenants coming to me with notices given to them by their landlord which are actually invalid and Ihave had the task of writing to all of these landlords to tell them they will now have to serve another 2 months notice.

The problem is, these landlord seem to think all they need to do is write their tenant a short letter asking them to leave in 2 months time......WRONG

if your tenant is on an Assured Shorthold tenancy then you need to serve the correct notice which in the absence of a breach of tenancy will be a section 21 notice.

The reason these notices are invalid is because nowhere in them does it state that possession is required under section 21 of the Housing Act 1988.

The section number and Act are important because if you need to apply to the court for possession the judge will know which grounds, why and what procedure should have been followed in order for the judge to make an order of possession or in some cases to not grant an order at all.

So in these cases I have written to the landlord explaining the error and advising that if they  still wish the tenant to leave, then they will need to serve a valid section 21 notice giving 2 clear months notice to vacate from the date the notice is given, to help further I also include a template Section 21 notice so they can see what it needs to contain.

I admit that my letters have not always met with the gratitude I would have expected and on several occasions I have received rather abusive phone calls from these landlords

Serving a section 21 is basic landlord admin and should not be proving such a problem, I can understand that landlords may wish to keep outgoings low but cutting out the agent, but in these cases it may actually end up costing a landlord much more, if their tenant allows them to go to court only for the possession claim to be thrown out and the landlord is left to pay the court fee, which I am sure would be much higher than the cost of an agent or membership to one of the many Landlord associations around the country that will have a template Section 21 notice ready for you to just fill in the blanks.

So come on Landlords, get your finger out and do your research and PLEASE serve your notices correctly

I refer to an article by Paul Shamplina which revealed over 62% of landlord notices are incorrect.

http://www.property118.com/landlord-action-study-landlords-notices/66672/

Dear letting agents & Landlords.... Please know your tenants rights

Dear letting agents & landlords,

I would just like to mention that just because you own/manage a property, does not give you carte blanch to behave in anyway YOU feel fit

 When a tenant signs an assured shorthold tenancy, this means that you have given them, in law exclusive possession, clearly not many of you know what exactly this means....

It means that the tenant can exclude ANYONE including YOU!!!

This means that you must give the tenant notice if you wish to enter the property, if they say no, then no means no!  It doesnt mean turn up anyway and let yourself in, it doesnt mean enter the property when the tenant is out, it doesnt mean come to the property and weed the garden

And letting agents, you cannot put clauses in your tenancy agreement saying you can conduct viewings in the last month of the tenancy, you have no legal right to do this and you are
1) in breach of the tenancy agreement 2) you have committed an offence by inserting an unfair clause in the agreement that is adverse to the law of entering a property and 3) if you do not have the tenants permission to enter the property and you do, you are commiting a crime and the tenants have every right to call the police.

So please be very careful when and how you enter your tenants property.

I am currently dealing with a huge increase of these exact issues and i am coming down very hard on letting agents and landlords.

Know your rights and more importantly know your tenants rights!!

Housing Crisis.......not just a lack of good landlords

As a tenant and a housing adviser it is also good to hear a landlords' side to the "Housing Crisis" and apparently there isn’t one, the real issue is just lazy moany tenants who should be grateful that landlords even exists…. Really?

Is this the reality or am I missing something?........

Both from my daily work and personal experience I know exactly how hard it is to rent a property let alone the unachievable thought of owning my own place.

1st you have to find a property, by this I mean somewhere that is in a half decent area that is on a semi ok level of repair and cleanliness. 2nd if going through an agent you have to find £500+ just to be referenced, although in my case, I paid my fees, was never referenced and told by the agent its up to them if they reference tenants, they don’t have to reference them all, but still charge all applicant the same……interesting 3rd after being (or not being) referenced 9 times out of 10 the agents round here will tell you that you failed referencing for no apparent reason, keep your money and you are back to square 1 If you are lucky enough to get to step 4, then you have to find 6 weeks worth of rent for deposit, 1st months rent and the cost of moving, this is a hell of a lot to find when over 50% of your monthly wage goes on rent alone.

Most tenant stay in a undesirable property just because its all they can afford. Then comes the issue when the landlord puts the rent up, £25-£50 per month may not sound a lot but when you are already pulling your belt in as much as you can to make ends meet this small increase really cant be afforded. So you say you cant make this extra payment and ‘Poof’ appears a section 21 notice… So back you go to step 1 and now with the added pressure of only having two months to do it in.

Most landlords don’t understand how difficult it really is for tenants, they see us as an endless supply of income, I often come across the attitude, “well if you don’t want it 10 others out there will” but will they really??

Rents are higher than the average wage yet landlord insist on charging the highest rents possible and then point the finger at tenants for getting into arrears. Landlords have got it too easy… they can serve notice to have you out of their property with no reason at all, and with no regard for how it will impact on that tenant.

Landlord kick up a fuss when a maintenance issue is reported and immediately blame the tenant for breaking whatever it is I agree that in some cases the eviction process does need to be fast-tracked for people who are constant non-payers of rent.

I don’t agree with S21s being given out like sweets whenever the landlord has the hump. Longer tenancies of 3-5 years and regulated rents will help keep people in homes, there is a huge lack of good standard private rental property out there and even more of a lack of professional landlords.

Superstrike, Strikes again!

Just when we thought it was safe to serve a Section 21, Superstrikes raises its ugly head again, this time in the form of Gardner v McCusker, Birmingham County Court. As we all know the ins and outs of Superstrike Ltd v Rodrigues [2013] I wont bore you all with this, however the bones of this new case simply clarify what we were all wondering. Gardner v McCusker the judge found in favour of the tenant for the following reasons The landlord granted a Fixed Term Tenancy for 6 months, deposit was protected and Prescribed inform was attempted to be given to the tenant. On the Fixed term becoming Periodic, the deposit was seen to be re-received, but was not re-protected and new PI was not issues. Upon receipt of the deposit the obligations under s.213 arose; those obligations included a requirement to serve the prescribed information A section 21 notice was served by the landlord on the tenant. The result of this was that the s.21 notice was invalid and the landlord was liable to pay damages. The court ordered the deposit to be returned to the tenant and damages of 2 times the value of the deposit to be paid (so £1,800 in all). The claimants were to pay the costs of the claim and counterclaim (to be set-off against some rent-arrears and outstanding costs orders from other – earlier – proceedings). Source: http://nearlylegal.co.uk/blog/2014/05/the-tenant-superstrikes-back/

Deposits, Damage, Dilapidations and Delusional Deductions.....

Even after all these years I am still surprised when a see a tenant whose landlord is claiming Delusional Deductions from a deposit. I am even more flabbergasted by the number of private landlords who don’t feel the need to protect said Deposits at all. I still see numbers of section 21 notices served, but soon find out the deposits are not protected and so have to break the bad news to the landlord that he isn’t getting his property back any time soon. More and more landlords are not having inventories done at the start of tenancies then trying to claim for extremely high figured damages that they can’t prove Repairs, or should I say a lack of them seems to be a trend on the increase too with less landlords willing to put their hand in their pocket to pay for obligated maintenance. Just this week I am dealing with a tenant who reported a boiler not working over 3 weeks ago, so far 1 engineer has attended, condemned the boiler and tenant has been without heating and hot water since, with the landlord stating that he isn’t too worried about replacing it now the weather has got warmer!?! Recently I saw a tenant who had been texted by his landlord to tell him that as his mortgage had gone up the landlord would be putting the rent up as per the next rent payment due, but a whopping £200pm. The tenant was 3 months into a 12 month fixed term (no BreakClause) and landlord has told tenant that if he refused then he would wait until tenant left for work and would change the locks. I appreciate this is only a snap shot of what I see and it is also not a true reflection of all landlords, after all, every walk of life has its bad apples, but I do feel that it is a worrying increase of blatantly flouting the law that is there to protect both parties. Will regulating the industry really help stop this type of practice, or will it be that all good landlords will stand up and be counted (and registered) and all not so good stand back a carry on regardless until the law catches up with them. There is now an increasing trend in lifestyle referencing for tenants which I think is a good idea, but where can tenants go to see how a landlord has previously treated his or her tenants? Most tenancy work well with both parties doing what is expected of them, but there are still the problems of landlords and tenants who don’t.