A fed-up landlord has slammed the legal system for unfairly favouring poorly-behaved tenants after her rental property was trashed.
Maria Topcheva, who is a single parent, is doing a massive clean-up at the house in Stockton-on-Tees where she found rubbish coating every floor, old food and flies, mouldy clothes, and even blood up the toilet walls when her tenant finally left.
She had herself been renting until, in May, her landlord said he wanted to sell the flat, so she told her long-term tenant - a friend of her ex-husband - she needed to move back in and gave him six months to leave voluntarily.
But he then stopped paying rent before Christmas, building up £7,000 in rent arrears, so Landlord Action helped Maria serve a Section 21 and Section 8 notice in February.
Luckily, she only had a few months to wait for a court date where he was given 28 days to leave. When he failed to do so, she was forced to employ bailiffs and finally got the keys back last week.
She is now £10,000 in debt due to the arrears and legal bills, she tells LandlordZONE.
“Debt collectors have told me that if the tenant isn’t working and doesn’t answer his door, I probably won’t get my money back,” she says.
“To add insult to injury I’ve got to keep his belongings for 28 days in case he comes back for them which is preventing me from properly cleaning up.”
Unfortunately, because he was a friend, the tenant didn’t have a protected deposit – particularly as he moved in before the law changed - and had threatened to take Maria to court.
It meant she couldn’t start the eviction process until reluctantly paying him the £750 deposit.
“The system is so unfair – the law gives much more protection to tenants, and I haven’t had any support,” says Maria.
“My mental health has suffered, and I’ve had panic attacks as I’ve been so worried about how I would pay my rent and had to take out a mortgage to pay the bills.”
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