Story By Barbera

Just a taster of some of the yukky side of letting and tenants we have experienced:-

• 2 murderers (at least).
• 2-3 alleged arsonists.
• 2 tenants have died - but in hospitals.
• too many police raids to count.
• drug pushers.
• drug users.
• con artists - numerous and with dozens of aliases.
• mad axe-man.
• Prostitution - none of the other tenants could get to sleep.

One particular young lady who was a compulsive liar with a multipersonality disorder. I have found they are the hardest of all to spot - becaused they can lie so well, that they believe what they are saying, and if they have a multiperonality disorder,they can lie fluently in each personality. Great fun.

I should have kept a list over the years!

I will give you two short stories to go on with.

1. My husband let a room to a very nicely presented young lady - she paid a months rent and a months deposit. A telephone line was installed in the room. No-one actually moved into the room and no further rent was forthcoming - but the telephone line was still being used from our address, it had been diverted to another number and then a lock put on the socket. We couldn't get hold of the girl to find out what was going on. The phone line was then diverted onto my home number - no-one answered when my husband picked up the phone, but when I answered, people were asking what type of services I offered or said they were responding to my advert in the Wednesday Sport.

Possession of the room was taken and the room re-let to someone who also needed a telephone. He got the phone transferred to 'his' name and then proceeded to run up an absolutely huge bill over the next week 'probably' on the internet, and then he did a runner. We were not out of pocket - but there are some crafty people out there.

2. We let to a lot of foreign people and have generally found them to be excellent tenants. We had a lot of Cypriot relatives in various houses and they were really great tenants - but they all disappeared back home at the same time with no forwarding addresses. Then all the bills started coming and credit agency letters and bailiffs etc etc - we understand that they left with credit run up on everthing they possibly could including taking a Mitsibushi Shogun. So all the members of the family were in on it to get as much as they could on credit and then disappear. I think they just saw an opportunitiy and took it - they were all really pleasant people.

These we found mildly amusing. Oh, and another one a couple of weeks ago, which is not amusing - the police visited one of our properties and needed one of our tenants to pove he was - he had his passport handy - to which the police said "we thought we had just fished you out of the river". A man of the same name and age had been foud drowned.

I have had some seriously nasty tenants and incidents but have only really been frightened by one or two. As we let bedsits, this is mainly to a transient type of person and they cannot all be credit checked, many do not have banks, and lots of references are not worth the paper they are written on - you get a lot of gut instinct about people over the years. If we get 5% bad tenants - well no business runs perfectly and we get high rents for the aggro involved. Yes, I am being defensive as people thinks we are nuts sometimes to do what we are doing. And no, I would not recommend bedsits for the novice.

Barbara

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