Can I sue the council for telling tenants to stay put and wait for bailiffs?

These problems can all be mitigated by the landlord buying Rent Guarantee Insurance. Why do landlords risk taking on tenants without it?

Reply to the comment left by Mark Smith at 11/09/2024 – 16:15
they have sent an email saying stay put !

Reply to the comment left by Mark Alexander – Founder of Property118 at 17/09/2024 – 11:14
If you cast your eyes over the latest conditions from Direct Line landlord insurance you will see that the tenants have to have been professionally referenced, including photograph, employment references and the property inspected every 6 months (to prevent cannabis farms). I think these conditions are good really BUT you can forget any ‘social housing’ tenants getting a property.

Surely the best solution here is to accept this delay as a learning exercise. In future, insist on property-owning guarantors – they will cover all of these costs, and the rent, and in my experience a gentle reminder of their obligations has always stopped the rent going into arrears in the first place.
Once you have your property back, you should also take advantage of the market place to increase your rent by at least 8%. Within a year, this amount will be equivalent to a full month’s rent and can be viewed as replacing one of the months of the standard two-month’s deposit that we used to take from tenants. The benefit of this is that when the tenant leaves, you get to keep this extra, whereas in the past you had to return it.
In future years, if you are happy with your tenants, you can always choose not to increase the rent by as much. Or you can continue to bank this money and use it towards the inevitable obligated improvements that will become necessary by legislation.
You should also ask yourself (given your recent experience and knowledge that this will become the norm) why you should continue to take such risks in future.
Let the council house the dross. Improve your housing stock and concentrate on attracting the decent, hard-working tenants who can be backed by guarantors.
I look at it this way: if the family of a prospective tenant don’t trust them enough to sign a guarantor agreement, why should you trust them? Wouldn’t their own family know them better than you?

Reply to the comment left by GlanACC at 17/09/2024 – 11:26
I use a different provider. They also do the referencing on Guarantors before deciding whether or not to offer RGI.

My view is that if the RGI provider isn’t prepared to take on the risk whi should I?

I’ve never been too impressed with stand-alone RGI policies either though. Like all insurance policies, the fine print favours them when the time comes to make a claim. Years ago I had a policy of that nature (not with Direct Line) where the insurer refused a claim on the basis that I needed to inform them of rent arrears within 30 days of the first missed payment. I was 5 days late and they refused the claim.

I’ve found the best way to mitigate risk is to work though a letting agent who does the referencing and RGI through one trusted provider. They then have a relationship and plenty of experience of when and how to submit claims that will result in a successful outcome. The agent I use charges 6% commission for full management plus £10 a month for RGI and a few hundred (can’t recall exactly) to set up the tenancy. I’ve not had a lot of claims but those I have made have all been honoured since I started working with them 10 years ago.

shame you cant take the Council on.. great thread of comments. My Agent missed the fact I needed a Selective License.. I dont like in the country so I was not aware either. So my S21 had to start again after I’d paid part of the Selective license fee as said tenant was threatening to stab anyone who tried to evict him. License is for Social Misbehaviour, you would think threatening to stab people, tampering with the meter, throwing knives & Needles down from a window would be a reason I paid the fee.. But alas no.. they just take the money and do nothing. I have a CCJ on him as I used an Eviction Specialist.. but he will get rehoused, keep taking his drugs all funded by taxes.

Reply to the comment left by Nicholas G-B at 11/09/2024 – 16:57
“I run a referencing agency”

In the interest of education and landlord competency, please share best practice on tenant referencing?

What would standard or high quality referencing look like…

Reply to the comment left by PAUL BARTLETT at 20/09/2024 – 15:21
I used to work for a large credit referencing agency developing software. Many people with ‘bad’ credit or otherwise simply don’t register on the electoral register. This is a vital indicator as it is one of the pieces of information that identify a person, and can make sure CCJs and the like are tagged to the correct person. As an absolute requirement a prospective tenant should be checked that any previous properties they were at , they bothered to register for the electoral register. If they did not then you may not be getting the full picture.