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Someone I know who rents properties had the misfortune of experiencing outrageous damage from a tenant in a flat.
I was casually asking him about his experience with tenants. He said you get good tenants and bad tenants. I asked him for an example, and he hesitated. The example he was going to give me was so bad that I think he didn’t want to scare me off.
Nevertheless, he told me.
I’ll come back to what happened, but in the meantime, it’s important if you are deciding to let or rent a property that you know the type of person who is going to be in your property day in, day out, month in and month out, and year in and year out.
Horror tenants get up to all sorts of bad behaviour, including damaging property, making a place filthy, sitting tight, and not paying their rent.
What should you do?
The first thing is to do background checks. Even a basic search on the Internet and social media will show you something about the person who is going to be your tenant and on whom you are going to rely for your rental income. There are also professional search networks that can check out people for you. Use a proper tenant screening process and conduct complete and accurate background checks.
The second thingIs to work through a reputable estate agent who knows all the legal intricacies and can help you, together with a lawyer, to get bad tenants removed from your property.
The third thing to do is to ask for proof of income. Not only this but also phone up the employer and ask if the person works there. You’d be surprised at the number of people who pretend they work for a company yet they don’t.
This is a shortlist. There are many other tips. The best is to get professional advice and do your homework.
Back to the story about the horror tenant. The landlord was called in after the tenant had made a fire in the lounge, where there was no fireplace. The tenant had started the fire in a rusty iron bin and damaged the wooden parquet floors.
What savagery! What disgusting behaviour! What utter trash!
Make sure you check out prospective tenants thoroughly. Leave no stone unturned.
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