For many landlords it is a familiar situation: No matter how hard they try, their tenants never pay the rent on time and often do not even respond to attempts at communication. The tenant from hell! But what can you as a landlord do against such behaviour? How can you make sure that your tenants stop playing games with you and start paying the rent?
No matter if your tenant is playing games with you: It's crucial to always remain calm and not let yourself get carried away. After all, stress won't help you either in such a situation, since it might end up making the situation even worse. If possible you should avoid doing anything that could even be perceived as provocation (such as changing the locks, for example). If you are eventually forced to take action against your tenants because they will not pay the rent any more or if they have become a real nuisance, then you should start documenting everything. This way it will be easier to show whether your evicting procedures are justified at all...
If everything else fails, you can go to court and terminate the tenancy. The judge will check whether you did everything correctly (e.g. informed the tenant about your intention to terminate the tenancy in time). After that, he or she will rule that either your tenants have to move out of the flat (within a certain period of time) or you must pay them compensation depending on the remaining term of their tenancy.
Your tenants will probably continue to play games with you during the eviction procedure, but keep calm and always respect the law! If everything is done correctly, your chances of success are high...
How to make a tenants' life miserable?
If you want to go to extremes then:
1. Turn off the heat in winter
2. Lock the doors to your house when you're not home
3. Raise rent every month, regardless of whether or not they are able to afford it
4. Refuse to fix anything that breaks in their apartment (including broken locks)
5. Give them a pet and then refuse to let them keep it for any reason what so ever
6. Make sure there is no food in the fridge when they get home from work, even if it's just leftovers from last night's dinner
You can also:
Make sure you don't provide enough toilet paper for everyone to use
Don't fix anything that needs fixing, like broken appliances or leaky faucets
Be really loud at all hours of the day and night - this will make it hard for tenants to sleep well
Leave dirty dishes in the sink and never clean up after yourself
Never do laundry when people ask you to do their laundry (unless they're paying more)
Important things to know
There are so many ways to make life hard on your tenants. It's important to be calm, though, and always follow the law while taking these steps. The most extreme things you can do are probably turning up the heat in winter or shut off water whenever you want. Other than that, just being loud during all hours of the day and night, leaving dirty dishes in the sink or piles of laundry around, or refusing to do any kind of laundry for them are good ways to make people miserable. The more you can do things like this without breaking any laws, the better it is. There's no way you'll win against your tenants if they take legal action against you!
Comments
Post a Comment