Story By Dot

I bought a property from auction. I already owned another property in the same town but this new one was an ex-council property.

The day after the auction I had a phone call from someone who was looking for a 3-bed house in that town. They had got my phone number from another tenant who lived a few miles away. I said, yes luckily I had just purchased a property and as soon as I got the keys they could have a look. I got the keys a few weeks later and arranged to see them there. I hadn't actually been in the property before so wasn't sure what to expect. (Someone from our company had been to see it before the auction, never bid blind at the auction). Anyway when I got there so were the people who wanted to rent it. The property was ok. A few minor jobs to do, a few new carpets and oh yes remove the burnt out car on the driveway!

He wanted the property and a few days later sent me his deposit. I met him again and signed a 6 months short hold tenancy. They were claiming housing benefits and again that was sorted and the rent was coming in no problem.

Everything was fine for the first 4 months then we started to receive the phone calls. It was the police and the tenants had been making a nuisance of themselves. Drinking in the front garden all day and shouting abuse to the other neighbours. They also said the neighbours were going to sign a petition to get them out. Sure enough a few days later I received a signed petition from about 40 neighbours. It outlined a few of the problems. Drunk and abusive behaviour, throwing dog dirt over the garden fence onto the adjoining children's play area, generally being very anti social.

We started to get phone calls from the neighbours and the police had told us our tenants had been evicted twice before from council properties. We had to take action. These tenants knew how the system worked, so we had to get someone who also knew how the system worked. We contacted Landlord Action who specialise in this sort of thing. I sent them the petition and a copy of the tenancy agreement. They instructed their agent to deliver the notice for them to quit.

We spoke to the tenants a few weeks later and told them it would be easiest for them if they just left. If they didn't they would have a county court judgement against their name. To cut a long story short they did eventually leave and again luckily for us they didn't wreck the house. This however isn't the end of the story.

When the tenants were still there, I was getting phone calls from people who knew that we were getting them out and wanted to know if they could rent the property when it was vacant. During our conversations with the police they said that when we re-rented the property let them know who the tenant was and they would tell us if that person was suitable. We did this 2 or 3 times and in each case the police said 'Don't rent it to them they are 'wrong uns'. We began to think the house we bought was in bandit country.

While the tenants were still there we had a phone call from a property investor who lived in that area and said he would like to buy the house if we were looking to sell it. They knew it had been for sale in the auction but at the time didn't have the funds to buy it. When the tenants moved out we showed the investor round. Yes they wanted to buy it. It did need some work done to it though nothing major. We agreed a price. It was less than market value but still quite a bit more than we paid for it. They were paying cash and within 3 weeks of agreeing to sell it we had the money.

The moral of the story is: Not to get emotionally involved. Yes it was a pain and hassle you didn't need but if you treat it as a business then you can sleep much easier at night. You will always get bad tenants if you buy and rent enough houses. You just have to deal with it the best way you can.

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