Landlord Blues: Renting out the house from hell

I did balk initially when I saw the long document Adrian from the Guild of Residential Landlords had sent. It consisted of pages of legal jargon, but on closer scrutiny, it seemed to make sense and Adrian explained what it meant over the ‘phone.  In essence, there were two reasons why the judge would not be able to grant Maria the ‘stay’ she had requested: 

1.      She could not prove ‘exceptional hardship,’ as neither she nor her partner had fallen on hard times or lost their jobs. 

2.      If they had been able to prove this hardship, the judge would have only been able to award an additional six weeks to them, dated from the original hearing (on the 15^th of October) and more than six weeks had already elapsed, as it was the 1^st of December (a Tuesday). 

The next day my Adrian went to the court for 10am, carrying three copies of this document; one for him, one for the judge and one for ‘Mrs Smith’.  This time, she turned up with a friend.  Adrian handed the judge the witness statement, he read it and then spoke kindly to Maria.

‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Smith, but there’s nothing I can do. I can see from this document that Mr Lynch knows his rights and the law and I’m afraid the bailiff will be able to go ahead with the eviction today as planned.’

It was clear that if Adrian hadn’t been there the judge would not have advocated on our behalf and told Maria this point of law, but would simply have found in her favour.  Adrian left the court, infinitely relieved and drove home prior to us going to make sure the bailiff got her out.  On the way, we spotted her at the bus-stop opposite Iceland, also en route to her eviction. 

      At 12pm the bailiff knocked and we all went in.  She was standing there with a can of beer in one hand and a fag in the other.  Looking around, it became clear she’d had some inkling she might be going that day as the beds and wardrobes were gone.  A couple of ‘friends’ were there to help her.  She had mentioned she had a removal van coming; instead one of the blokes had a Fiesta and seemed to be putting things in it, driving 200 metres up the road and taking the stuff into a house.  I was like a coiled spring, just waiting for someone to look at me the wrong way.  She’d caused us so much work, stress and trouble over the previous six months and owed us so much money that I just wanted this whole chapter of our lives to be over. 

When she had moved in the previous year, she’d asked if she could put down a laminate floor.  We’d said she could if she left it down when she vacated as the lounge carpet had been perfectly okay.  As she made one of her little trips out of the front door during the eviction, I noticed she was carrying some planks of what looked like laminate flooring. 

‘Adrian’, I said, ‘look, she’s taking the flooring’. 

‘Uh, excuse me’, she said, ‘but this is my property’. 

‘Don’t “excuse me,”’ I said, a couple of inches from her face.  It turned out they were some spare planks of laminate and she hadn’t taken up the flooring, but I wasn’t going to let her get on her high horse after all she’d done. 

I then thought I’d wind up one of her male helpers as well.  I took a couple of photos of him carrying things across the road and putting them in his Fiesta. 

‘Like your removal van’, I called over to him.  He turned towards me and came steaming across the road.  As I went to get back in my car he grabbed at me and held the car door open, nearly knocking the camera out of my hands as he lunged for it. 

‘Going to hit me, are you?’ I taunted.  I figured he was probably on every benefit under the sun and would be worried at me collecting evidence of him showing his ability to work. 

Adrian, being soft, was even persuaded to let 'fat girl,' as we called her, have a few more days to get all of her stuff out - I never would have agreed to it; I would have said I’d get all the stuff chucked on the pavement if she hadn’t got it all out by 4pm.  This entailed him going up every day and letting her into the house and then going later and locking up with the new keys.  It was risky as he left her unsupervised now and then and she could have changed the locks and been back in again.

The extra time also allowed her to do more damage, including tearing a large strip of wallpaper off the lounge wall.  On the morning of the eviction, this wall had been fine; she then ripped it off and we initially thought this would necessitate re-papering the entire room.  In fact, we found a spare roll of the paper in a cupboard and it took the handyman less than an hour to hang it over the ripped section, so her plan didn’t work.  By the end of the Thursday, all her belongings were gone apart from loads of dog poo in the back yard which she had promised Adrian she would clean up. I really object to cleaning up someone else’s dog’s faeces.  It was utterly disgusting, but Adrian, being the trooper, got on with it. 

 One evening, around this time, I was watching a ‘true stories’ film, as you do.  An American actor called Brian Dennehy was playing a serial rapist and murderer of young men in Illinois.  Rather disturbingly, he reminded me of me.  He had a real anger in him, which as he was coming closer to being caught by the police, started to spill over into a real fury.  Sometimes I’d get so infuriated that it was hard to control the emotions. 

And it took a long time before I could get her out of my system.  My hatred for her almost turned into an obsession and I would look out for her at the bus-stop opposite Iceland every time I passed it – which was every day – in case she was there.  Adrian was the same. We would look out for her fat, ugly face, with its complexion red from the booze, and the straggly pony tail and I would want to smack her one, although I think I’d have come off worse, because she was twice the size of me, in girth at any rate.  Of course by now we had found out that she was an all-round nasty piece of work, according to the locals.  The problem was that she had got away with owing us a fortune and we believed that we would now never get it off her.

For anyone interested in hearing the whole story and many other stories about my life as a landlord, my ebook is available: 'Landlord Blues: Dealing with Tenants from Hell. The link is: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BJO2TU0

And for those who have already read it, can I ask that you please post a review on amazon? Despite many people now having the book, not many have posted a review, so I'd be very grateful to anyone who does me this favour, using the book links to amazon.

My second book is also out, and this relates my latest adventure with a truly awful tenant – you won’t believe our bad luck with this one and all because of one stupid mistake… The link is: http://www.amazon.co.uk/house-Evicting-tenant-Landlord-ebook/dp/B00C3LSVZK

 Adrian and I were enjoying our morning coffee in Costa, when he screwed up his face. 'Look at this,' he said, 'another person going on about landlords and this time blaming us for neighbour nuisance!'  He handed me the newspaper, and I read the following, which was the star letter (the writer was going to get a free Parker pen):

Make landlords responsible for the anti-social partying that makes life hell!

Here we go, a slight change in the temperature and the parties start: broken sleep, idiots screaming and using foul language, music banging; who is there to protect decent residents?

Dial 101 you might say; well as long as it’s Wednesday to Sunday at specific hours you may just have a chance of a night’s sleep. But if it’s Monday to Wednesday or after midnight on Sunday you are on your own. Go it alone and you take your life in your hands - you will more often than not end up facing a barrage of expletives.

There have been many cases when decent people are pushed over the edge and react, especially when there is no form of authority to come and deal with it, and who ends up in court for threatening behaviour against a group of drunken louts who will not listen to reason? You guessed it: the hard-working man who is trying to protect his family. I know violence is not the answer but if you have not endured this form of torture that puts your nerves on edge you will not understand, so just consider yourself lucky.

I spoke to a local councillor about it, not just complaining but providing a solution which she thought was excellent. But nothing has yet been done. It is very simple, not rocket science. I would like landlords to provide a contact number to give the ordinary person a means to communicate with the source to stop these matters escalating.

I’m certain  if their peace was disturbed on Nob Hill they'd be more responsible for their properties instead of turning up once a year to clean up the mess ready for the next lot of idiots who need educating. If this is encroaching on their peace then maybe every time a complaint is recorded with 101 they should inform the landlord and make it law that after three strikes the landlord gets a fine. Make them pay, they are getting off scot-free. They escape the expense of paying rates and we are left with whatever mess year after year.

Mrs D Perkins

'What a cheek,' I said to Adrian, 'You should write in.' 'I'm not writing. I'm too busy,' he said. 'You're the writer.' Mmm. I walked up through town, the peace of my Saturday now disturbed. There was nothing for it; I'd have to do something. So I sat down and wrote for half an hour before clicking 'Send.' I doubted they'd print my answer – sometimes I feel that landlords are viewed like Jewish people in an anti-Semitic society (although thank God, we have democracy and the uncivilised elements aren't allowed to take their hatred any further). Given that there are apparently 1.5 million people renting out at least one house in the UK, it’s surprising that the landlord’s voice is so rarely heard. Anyway, surprise, surprise, two days later, my letter was there in black and white, also as we sat down in Costa. I felt a bit excited, to tell the truth:

It’s not so easy being a landlord, especially when the tenants turn bad

The letter from Mrs D Perkins suggested that when tenants are a nuisance and landlords don’t manage to stop them, that landlords should be fined. How we, as landlords, have a magic wand and can stop our tenants behaving as they do, is beyond me. How I wish we could – then we wouldn’t be faced every year with damaged houses, thousands owed to us in arrears, court cases and so on.

She knows that the council is the only body which has any power to enforce action against neighbour nuisance, but she suggests that if the council fails, landlords should be punished. As landlords we are, of course, used to being blamed and vilified, but it’s still not nice.

She thinks landlords all live on ‘Nob Hill’ and are somehow protected from having nuisance neighbours. This is nonsense; we also lived near druggies who played loud music all times of the day and night and received no help from the council. As it was an owner-occupied house, should we have suggested that if the mortgage company didn’t sort it out after it had been mentioned to them three times, that they should be fined, as Mrs Perkins suggests should be the penalty inflicted on landlords?

Bizarrely, she suggests landlords get off ‘scot-free.’ In fact, we pay heavy financial costs when our tenants turn bad. We have had druggies, alcoholics, paedophiles, suicide attempts, ex-partners smashing our doors down... all sorts. If Mrs Perkins thinks we get off lightly and should therefore be fined for other people’s behaviour, over which we have no control, then she is very wrong. She has no idea what life is like for a landlord. She obviously thinks we just pick up the rent and sun ourselves on the Italian Riviera, instead of often spending weeks cleaning up other people’s filth after having paid to keep a roof over their heads.

I believe it’s time landlords’ voices were heard for a change, instead of people seeing us as an easy target. But I suspect many people would prefer to just carry on attacking us and blaming us for all society’s ills.

Rebecca Lynch

Good. I felt better after getting all that out. Sometimes it’s relentless, having to defend landlords against illogical attacks.  It wasn’t the end of it though, as a whole stack of letters appeared on the letters page over the following weeks with repeated blaming of landlords, for stopping young people from being able to buy their own homes etc. I wrote in again and someone answered that; the majority of the letters chosen were anti-landlord, of course, but I felt pleased that the general public would also be reading the landlords' side for a change. Who knows? Maybe the tide will turn one day and we’ll just be seen as normal people trying to run a business.

For anyone interested in this subject, my ebook is available, free to download for the last time on Saturday 18th of May from amazon, onto kindle, an IPAD or a PC (I can't give it free after these dates, because of amazon's rules). The link is: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BJO2TU0

And for those who have already read it, can I ask that you please post a review on amazon (thanks to Tamara for kindly reviewing it).

My latest adventure with a truly awful tenant is also now available – you won’t believe our bad luck with this one and all because of one stupid mistake… The link is: http://www.amazon.co.uk/house-Evicting-tenant-Landlord-ebook/dp/B00C3LSVZK 

And it will be available at the reduced price of £1.99 this Saturday only.