Scooby96

Spoon - perhaps the way I worded it was incorrect but alot of it is common sense. Get an AST, take a good deposit amount and dont take any **** if they start buggering about with the rent.

IMO - personal references are a complete waste of time as they're usually done by the tenants mates!

chinnybloke

Thanks everyone. Got 4 at mo. Selling the house we live in now to buy several more. We are going to rent for a while.

I can rent somewhere closer to work (save 250 in travel costs per month) and with rent at a similar amount to what I pay on the mortgage. Renting is dead money though I get told by everyone. But I think house prices will fall over next 2-4 years, so rather than sit there and watch my equity fall whilst interest rates go up and I have to pay more on my mortgage, I will rent and get income from my rental properties, all of which will be paid for and be in demand because I am targetting the low end of the market and first time buyers do not buy when house prices are falling and interest rates going up. Thats the plan anyway.

Plus I read the average 1st time buyer is between 32-33 now. I am 30 and if we sell our house I can have 10 rental properties all paid for and I don't give a toss about starting from scratch again with minimum deposit. I have always overpaid on my mortgage so I pay it off much faster anyway.


Cheers,
PG

marky1

Listen, the thing to do is go in when they're not there, dump all their stuff outside the door and get the locks changed. the chances of them suing you are so slim, I'd take the chance anyway. To evict them will cost a fair bit and it will be hard to recover costs as they probably have sod all which is why the rent hasn't been paid I would imagine.

andym172

Sorry - haven't had a chance to read through the whole post so don't know if this has been suggested.

If you have any problems with non-paying tentants simply remove the toilets. The property is now legally uninhabitable

Brit_in_Japan

chinnybloke, whatever you do DO NOT EVER throw a tenant out and change the locks unless you already been through all the legal procedures first. Marky1's advice is totally wrong. You will be liable to pay huge compensation if you ever did this.

I know this because some years ago I was sharing a rented house with 3 mates, one of whom was a solicitor. The agency said, the landlord is selling the house, you have 4 weeks notice to get out. My solicitor friend said it was bo!!ox, they have no right to give notice when there was 4 months left of the AST. If the terms of the agreement are being adhered to, you can't evict tenants before the end of the AST. Because the landlord desperately wanted to sell the house, a surrender agreement was drawn up between us the tenenats and the landlord. We basically got 2 months rent in cash to move out early.

FYI, the compensation you would have to pay if you follwed marky1's advice would be equal in value to the property, no BS !

scoobynutta555

Erm, if i was a tenant and i wasnt too fussed about paying the rent and the toilets were taken out, id just 'do my business' all over the place.

As stated the best thing to do is carry out everything legally and fairly and take legal insurance out (circa £80 per annum). This will cover costs for removing tenants and rent loss due to bad tenants.

Although im not trying to sell anything Im insured with Letsure 01628 5815000 http://www.letsure.co.uk/

And they seem a fairly competent outfit and offer a range of policies.

Regards references, I get them from employers and check them.