Section 8 notice

[sukesu]

We have tenants in our home in England that were late paying the rent in May (10 days or so) and have not paid June or July's rent. They are on an AST for 1 year and have not reached the end of the tenancy (Dec 05).

They really have been nightmare of tenants and because of leaky showers (fixed now) they complain they cause respitory illness that of course miraculosouly go away when they leave the property. They say the drinking water is contaminated by backflow from the dishwasher. 5 yr old house that has been checked out by builders and water board. Anyway I am only really giving you this as background to show you some of the issues they raise not to mention numerous other little things. We are of the impression through various sources these tenants are the sort of people who just seek compensation all the time and in one letter to the agent they mentioned they were looking for compensation.

We have also found they are using the house address for their business and it is showing up on various google searches for their company.

Anyway in short - once they have been served the Section 8 notice I suspect they will cough up on the arrears of the rent. What I am wanting to know is if they do that are we then not in a position to evict them - which is ideally what we would like to do - ie get them out before their AST expires. My guess is after the letter saying we are taking them to court they willpay up this time but we will go through it all again next month.

Any advice appreciated. We had tenants in for 3 yrs prior to this and had no problems. It is our home that we rent out whilst working/living in USA.

[Paul_f]

My reaction to such situations is nearly always the same:-


How well did the agents reference the tenants?
Have you seen the replies to the reference enquiries, as you're entitled to do?
Did you see the references before they moved in?
Did the agents offer any recommendations beforehand?
Why did you agree to a 12 months AST when they were new (unknown) tenants instead of 6 months?


You can instruct your agent to instigate proceedings under Section 8, Grounds 8, 10 & 11 just in case they pay off most of the arrears before a court hearing, but possession is discretionary under the last two grounds. Also get a breakdown of costs. A specialist solicitor is far better than an agent who is not used to doing this - see those advertising on this site who are very good such as Pain Smith, and Greenwoods.

If you use the search facility and put in "Section 8" then you will find a load of threads on this very subject going back months.

[sukesu]

Thanks for the reply

We have engaged a solicitor who specialises in this area he suggests, section 8, also section 21, court order to recover arrears and something to terminate the AST early as he is in breach of contract because he has registered our house as a business.

Reason for going for the 12 month AST we stupidly thought it gave us more protection from not losing the tenant....wouldn't do it again.

Lawyer does say you just don't know whether the judge will go with the Section 8 - you never can tell. So let's try and cover some of the other angles at same time.

What I am a bit unsure about is if he pays the rent prior to the court hearing for the Section 8 does that essentially make it void. I mean whats to stop him paying and then doing the same again next month.

[sukesu]

Paul

As to your questions on referneces - no idea - again felt the agent was in control of that so didn't get involved.

Any suggestions next time round on how to handle that?

[Jennifer_M]

One advice is don't let a stranger have full control over your hundred thousands of pounds investment. Unscrupulous agents don't really care if you lose money as long as they get their fee.

Next time insists on seeing the references and demand you have the final say in whether a person can rent your house or not.
Also it might be worth you reading some books about letting your property so you have at least a basic knowledge of the business and know what to do to avoid common problems.