Foreword
I deeply hope that this book will help you wake up from your sleep/. We have been put into a trance since we stated going to school. This continued through the mass media that has the job to keep you programmed and in line and be a servant of our masters Elite, the Owners of Vanguard that through Blackrock pretty much owns all the major companies in the World including Google Apple Facebook, All the mass media corporations and of course it does control the BBC and all the major newspapers in the UK and almost the world over.
This book will give a prospective of our master elite so that you do not have to suffer as a slave if you so not want to.
This is the slave system we have been born into, but no matter what age you are you can wake up, and one of the results of your awakening is your bank balance going up.
Remember do not wait to buy real estate, buy and wait. If you have any disposable cash put it all into real estate with some good dept on it if possible.
Most people have the same regrets about real estate.
1 not buying real estate
2 for those who bought real estate not having bought more real estate
3 for those who sold real estate, having sold it.
So buy Real estate, buy as much as possible and never ever sell it. The real estate remains with you until you pass to the next world! They say a Diamond is for life? I say Real estate is for life! Do you remember having a job for life? Now forget the job for life and substitute it with the real estate for life, and you will be much better off and your later years in life will be the best and richest years of your life!
It is better to get some education before getting into real estate but hey even if you jump right in it, who cares at least you have some. In real estate there are only two sides , the receiving end of the rent and the giving end of the rent, You want to be on the receiving end of as much rental property as possible.
Remember do not save money, save real estate instead and focus of maximize your positive cash-flow from your real-estate.
What is a slave? The Rat Race,
What is a slave? If you remember the main difference between people who were slaves and free people in the past was ownership. The slaves by definition did not have the right to freedom and did not have the right to ownership. They plainly were not allowed to own anything, they themselves were owned by their slave masters who bought them and possibly sold them later to other slave masters.
You can define slavery also the lack of freedom. Lack of freedom to do what you want with your time, go were you want, I shall expand this a bit more of this concept: a slave is who cannot eat what he wants, live where he wants, do the work he wants to do, someone who is not free to express freely their mind…
On the contrary if you have ownership of your time, this is to a certain extent real estate, but not all real estate, only that type of real estate that makes you truly free financially by putting money in your pocket. . etc. Therefore if there is something that will allow all the freedoms of movement,
This is my definition: someone who does not own any property or especially assets. Someone who depends on a single earned income for a living. Remember what our overlords from the World Economic Forum want for us… what they want is that we “own nothing and be happy”. Happy slaves! In this way they can dictate whether we need forced medical procedures to keep our income, dictate any other impositions as they see fit as you normally do with cattle.
So why if you have a job you are a slave? If the events of 2020 and 2021 did not teach you nothing on your body autonomy I do not know what to say. A good number of governments decided to hold peoples’ livelihoods at ransom ” if you do not accept this medical treatment (Covid Jab) you are fired!”. How does that feel? If you have a job to keep you going, do you see how fragile you are?
Remember our overlords who control our governments world wide have most of their wealth in real estate themselves. They control the main steam media, the education system and much more. Why would they want you in competition with them? They want you a slave, therefore “you “shall ” own nothing and be happy”, a happy slave . A happy slave of theirs!
In essence the more assets you own the less of a slave you are and the more in charge of your life you are, the less controllable and the more you will be able to own your own time. In in other words the more real estate you own the freer you are. There are no half terms.
So, do you want to get out of the “rat race” (slavery in other words), set out to own Real Estate, and own loads of it! Own as much as you can. Do not accumulate (save) currency (cash) in the bank, instead accumulate real estate, especially that real estate which is called “income property”.
The more you are in real estate the more you will learn that real estate can be a true money multiplier. No job or standard profession compares to the power of real estate.
I sincerely hope this book will help you get out of slavery and become financially free.
Why Real Estate?
Real estate is the only asset glass that banks will lend on. Let me correct it, one of the few asset classes Banks will lend on. The do not lend on Stock, mutual funds etc. There are a number of reasons for it:
1 Real estate value will never go to zero like stocks can and will It will always have some value.Even if it burns down the land on its own has some sort of value after all
2 It is hard to be destroyed (except Fire and other rare calamities)
3 It provides rental income
4 You do the work once and get paid for a lifetime.
5 It cannot be printed into existence. Not yet…
6 Even if you make a mistake it will self correct over time. Say you pay too muck for a piece of real estate, as long as you are cash flow positive and you manage to keep it, the real estate will go up in value and the rent will increase over time too.
7 it outlives you. You are dead and the real estate will still probably be there long after you are gone. It also outlives any of the most profitable companies you know about, do you think Facebook will be with us in 100 years? At the time of writing it is already called Metaverse and in very bad shape. On the other hand very likely your real estate will be there fore your children (if you plan tax properly of course)
The most valuable of all is residential Real estate. This is because it is needed by people, it is not optional, people need it.
So real estate is a must for most people. You either own it or you rent it. I personally would rather own it and be at the receiving end of the rental income. I still rent hotel rooms from time to time, but this is only out of necessity and convenience, but I own where I usually live and I own it it with banks as partners, and I am being paid to live in my own real estate.
So own real estate, if you do not buy some. Do not wait to buy, buy and wait once you bought it. This is because the real estate will pay for you.
What makes real estate one of your favorite tools to get rich?
Do you have a job? Well if you do your income will stop when you stop working and and stop submitting to the system. Do not get fooled about Holiday pay benefits etc, it is all a scam, these are schemes designed to keep you poor. whatever you do as an employee is that you are placing yourself at risk, financial risk, health risk and in essence life risk because you are depending on one single source of income and when you stop working everything stops. Mark my words your income is not scalable and there is always a cap you your time you can only sell a certain number of hours at a certain price and there there is only one of you, See what happens if you get ill, you will see your income stop as you stop working.
A trading Business. Lets not confuse you being self employed with business. A business is an entity that is capable to function without your direct daily input. If you get out of the business and the business collapse relatively shortly then it is not a business, it is a leverage of your capabilities. The more the business survives and strives without you the more of a real business it is. Although different types of businesses have different potential, the general rule is that businesses have most of the time theoretical unlimited upside. There is not physical limit to the output of the business, it is dictated mainly by the demand for their products or services. If more product or services are required then the business can hire more people.
However there is a downside to most businesses, this is that the business no matter how good it might be it will be subject to competition. Therefore if the owners are not on the ball it will eventually collapse. Therefore almost all business do require a certain level of work and constant attention from their owners. As IBM, GE, GM are now a fraction of of what they used to be all businesses will face eventual extinction especially without the proper attention from their owners.
So with a trading business you have potential unlimited upside, but you never really know when your business will get decimated.
Real Estate, and especially residential real estate is not the same. With Real estate you do the work once and get paid forever, literally, forever. Real estate if the only asset class that allows you to work once and get paid forever despite you do nothing at all . This is why it is the most heavily regulated, and controlled. However its potential is limited by the capacity of the real estate. There is usually a cap to the occupancy of a building, unless you expand it but you cannot expand it ad infinitum.
So with residential real estate you can acquire an apartment building, have it to work and go away and work on your next project while your previous work still pays you. To this day I still get paid for work I have done in my late 20s and I will keep getting paid until I pass to the next life. Is it not that amazing? Today I still receive income from the development work I have done in my early 30s. When I am 50 I will still get paid not only from the work I have done in my late 20s , in my early 30s but also the work I have done in my 40s. Real estate is one of the best tools ever for someone who plans to become rich, truly rich. Rich meaning that no matter what you do and do not do, your income will not be taken away by competition or change dramatically due to market environment. A trading business can go and will eventually go to zero but real estate does not. While your turn over with a trading business will eventually decline if you do not constantly innovate and pay attention, the turnover of real estate will rarely or very unlikely ever decline.
So as you see real estate is the very sure way to get rich, it is not fast but it is for sure.
What is the purpose of this Book?
The purpose of this book is very simple:
Hrlp you understand the power of Housing in Multiple occupation and why they are such a powerful strategy in the UK. Iwll tell you all the tricks of the trade to create the best HMOs ever so you do not have to go though the major pitfalls.
Help you get rid of the fear of owning real estate especially the best one… the residential real estate. One of the main fears of novel or want-to-be landlords is “what if I cannot rent the property or get a bad non paying tenant?” This is one of the main reasons why many do not become landlords. Residential Real Estate in many parts of the world is over regulated and as we will see there is a good reason for it. Spoiler alert …the real reason is not to protect tenants from bad landlords…..
First of all lets us address the fear of the property not being rented. There is a very important reason for residential property to be far more valuable than commercial real estate just looking at the per square meter price. In-fact the minute you convert a commercial real estate into residential, its price goes up dramatically and you will find it much easier to get a mortgage on it. This is because residential real estate is a necessity, people need food, water and a place to live. Commercial maybe discretionary but residential is not discretionary, you can avoid going shopping but you can not avoid having a roof over your head at night.
I remember when I had just finished the refurbishment of my HMO in Nottingham in 2012. It was easier for me to rent a room than find employment for myself. And I had a master degree, I spoke 4 languages and I had a proven sales record. This taught me a very important lesson, my assets were far better financial security than myself (my own labor).
More particularly this book will focus on the eviction problem due to non paying tenants.
1 If you are already a landlord: This book will increase your residential real estate revenue by minimizing the need for formal evictions and in case of rent default manage to remove the non paying tenant without requiring in a formal eviction speedily and painlessly. In this book we will provide the correct strategies to avoid trouble tenants and in the unlikely case you have one, how to remove the unwanted tenant painlessly.
2 If you are not a landlord and you are considering investing in residential real estate, this book will dispel some of the brainwashing you have gone through TV and mainstream media in general, were our overlords are trying to scare you out of investing in real estate (effectively becoming their uncontrollable competitor), a landlord who is financially free. Remember, our overlords are landlords themselves and they do not like competition!
For over 10 years I have rented both single family homes and housing in multiple occupation and so far the maximum arrears I have had to deal with is two months. Over the period of lock-downs in 2020, when the UN imposed eviction bans , when it was not possible to evict a tenant legally because the court would not grant any eviction order I had zero arrears through my housing stock.
How is that possible? In this book I will gift you the strategies I have used for years
1 to avoid bad tenants. I will show you how.
2 how to get rid of trouble tenants relatively quickly and without almost any major financial losses.
Why is it important as a landlord to be able to avoid expensive evictions, trouble-some tenants?
We now know very well that the system controlled by our overlords does not like to have the general public involved in the best investment there is currently in the world: Residential real estate. This is because residential real estate is the best way to get out o the rat race by making you financially independent. Our overlords (from the World Economic Forum ) would like us to “own nothing and be happy” by their own words. Owning Residential real estate will make you own your financial freedom and be very happy indeed, therefore no controllable by the elite.
Trouble tenants are the reason people are scared to ever start in real estate and also the reason for people to sell off their housing stock to retire. In fact no landlord owning good residential real estate ever needs to sell their housing stock Ever!
Are residential housing investments still worthwhile despite the regulation?
Eviction law is part of the regulation around residential housing in the UK and more generally around the world.
The increasing amount of regulation in the residential housing market is discouraging most newbie investors, however it certainly does not discourage me at all. Neither does it discourage the institutional investors, it does not discourage banks either. Remember BIG money is tied to real estate in general as well as residential real estate. This is because residential real estate is one of the most valuable investment vehicles (depending on cost and cash flow of course). This is because despite all the ups and downs of the economy people will need food , water and shelter no matter what. The human being cannot escape this fact despite the state of the economy. Therefore residential real estate is an excellent investment in general. It is hard to take away the demand for a comfortable place to live at a good rental price and it is hard for the price of a building to go down to zero.
As we have seen residential real estate is full of regulation. We have also seen how evictions for rent arrears are potentially very time consuming, expensive and you could end up losing rent for over a year if you are sloppy. As we have seen above there are many ways to minimize this likelihood. But in reality how much do landlord lose out in this game due to regulation? Is this increasing regulation making the prospect of becoming a new landlord not viable? The answer is, of course, “it is always much better to be a landlord than not being a landlord!”, and this is true by miles. In real estate you are either on the giving end as a renter or on the receiving end as a Landlord, I know what side I want to be on!
How can I say that? It is simple, remember, “the game is rigged”. Regulations are not designed to protect the tenant, this is the facade , this is fallacy, this is a smoke screen. All the regulation is designed to do is to discourage the small player so that the bigger ones have more opportunities, and this is done in the guise of protecting the tenants. They cannot tell the public the truth. This is true i real estate as well as other sectors. In medicines, the regulations are designed to protect the monopoly of the big players ares also similarly pitched as ways to protect the consumers. Look at the MHRA in the UK the head of this supposed “independent body” are the same people who are in high end in big pharmaceutical companies. The rule of the game is the more regulation you see the more you want to be in it!
Remember that all the big money are in real estate and the rules are written for the big money power structures. And all the big money structures and ultra wealthy families put most of their wealth in residential real estate. Therefore the same people that write the rules are the same people that invest in real estate. Now, these rules, in my opinion, are made to discourage the small investor. For example the teacher, firefighter, police office etc who want to invest on the side for his/her pension. If you have a full time job it is difficult for you to deal with these regulatory intricacies especially as a small landlord who does this as a side hustle for a small future pension. Remember, most people crumble at the first sign of hardship this is why they are employees in the first place. Therefore a small amount of regulation is usually enough to discourage the average guy.
Obviously ,these eviction laws are not there to protect tenants, are there to preserve the monopoly for the big money and prevent the little guys to get into real estate.It is quite clear why these are not rules to protect the tenants. Lets say, the eviction could be shortened to 2 months from rent arrears and without the need for a court order. All of the sudden, renting premises would be very easy, there would be less or no background checks on the tenants and if you wanted to become a renter you would have an easier life renting higher end accommodation without great hustle. More small investors would get into the property game and more accommodation would become available and the real estate price would be pushed up. This is not speculation this is what always happens when you get rid of regulation and red tape. The market flourishes and customers ultimately win!
In reality what happens is that people want to pay for their accommodation, and generally you will not have issue with payments for most average accommodation. This is unless the accommodation is horrible and can only be rented to scumbags, but even in such case there is the government that steps in with a bunch of housing benefits so you would generally get the rent anyway. So in general it is always much better to be a landlord than not being a landlord, despite the amount of regulations.
Also do not be afraid of the new regulations that the government might put in place, they are generally good anyway if you focus on being landlord, this is because at the end of the day the rules are written by people who hold their money in real estate and their only focus is to make sure their investment is safe. So if you are not in real estate yet forget about everything and get in it. You may regret is in the short term when you have to refurbish premises and deal with builders ect, but never in the medium term, and you will love it in the long term.
In essence there is generally no safer place to put your time, money and expertise than residential real estate in my opinion. Of course you always need to be cautious in your investments and generally know what you are doing.
Will residential real estate investments be worthwhile in the future? Rent control.
The fundamentals of Real Estate in the UK are very strong:
1High demand due to replacement migration implemented by the UN
2 Restricted supply due to the planning policy, done by design.
Therefore if you invest in real estate that has positive cash-flow the risk is in not getting as much real estate as you can possibly get.
The only problem would be the regulatory system and politics. The politics to be aware of is Communism which is the most corrupt and damaging for independent investors, but not for the elite of the World Economic Forum of course, as you remember “you will own noting and be happy”.
Communism is the highest form of egalitarianism, it is the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the most tiny group of people where there is the greatest difference in wealth between the ruling class and the population. Regulatory powers are at their peak and trading without regulation compliance is illegal.
If you are considering investing in a communist country you can either become wealthy beyond measure or die of hunger, there are no half measures and safeguards. But we will try to stray away from investments into communist countries which is profitable if you know how to bribe well. Bribing is a skill to be learned if you want to be doing extremely well in wealth creation even in the so called free western countries.
Apart from communism one of the policies to be aware of is rent control.
Rent control is usually brought about in the name of keeping the cost of living down but , it is not what rent control does. Rent control, like communism, sounds very good and people buy it very easily. After all it sounds like it is only good and it acts against these greedy business owners. People love that. Rent control is easy and straightforward to advertise as landlords are very well off compared to the rest of the working class. Who from the working class does not like to get something from nothing from these rich greedy landlords? However what rent control does like communism does too, brings deprivation and squalor.
Rent control is the main threat to residential real estate. There are several legislative threats to residential investment real estate, but rent control is the one that have proven the most detrimental. They are trying to bring it back to the UK at the time of the writing of this book. However I could be wrong but it is only a way to discourage small landlords and small independent investors. Do you know how I know why? Because the big institutional investors are moving into the UK residential investment sector. So this in my opinion and time will prove me right or wrong, but I bet this is only a temporary move to discourage the small investors. If the government brings some sort of legislative rent control it is only going to be temporary, it will last just as long as necessary to keep the small independent investors out to allow space for the institutional investors to get in at low prices. Remember you “will own nothing and be happy”.
It is so incredible how well known the dire consequences to the supply of rental properties are of rent control. It is well established that whenever you put rent control in place the supply of housing goes own dramatically. The detrimental results of rent control are well known despite that some puppet politicians still try to bring it forward.
What is the consequence of rent control. Diminishing supply of rental properties, clear and simple, especially the high end first and then it trickles down to the average rental property and lastly the low end rental property. As soon as the state intervenes to control the price on private rental properties this marks the end of the supply of rental properties. Rental control has been tried in many countries and at different times and the result is the same: Dereliction, deprivation and bad neighborhoods, lack of rental properties of any type let alone the middle or high end rental properties. The results are the same all the time with no exception. As soon as rent control is gone, supply appears again, the housing stock increases, neighborhoods improve as private investment increases.
Why is that? This is because private business is disincentivised to invest in rental real estate, therefore apartment purchase prices go down and no more builders are able to build anything profitably. This lowers the housing supply. The existing landlord do not have any financial incentive to repair and maintain their rent controlled housing stock because there is no return on investment. Hence the quality goes down. No existing landlord will be incentivised in creating prime or luxury rental property as there is a clear cap to the rental income the landlord can achieve. The net result is lowering in supply and poor housing standards. The bottom line is that like communism rental control takes all financial incentives away and the market collapses, in this case the quantity and quality of housing market. This is not conjecture, this happened every time governments tried to implement rent control, and it happened without exception.
So why do they implement such policies despite the fact that the effects are known? Likely the government puppeteers want to collapse the market to get in cheap, simple! Therefore this is not a measure that can last in the long run. It usually lasts as long as required to drive the supply and the prices down.
Eviction bans is another way to make the real estate investment impossible, but once again do not be scared as a small independent investor. They will never make it impossible to evict tenants, this is always a temporary measure to discourage small investors, while the insiders of the institutional investors move into becoming landlords. How do I know that? Again if they banned evictions forever then the housing will have literally no value to the banks either. And the people who control the government are the big money (banks and institutional investment banks) so there lock down eviction bans are only temporary to try and destroy small landlords who cannot afford non paying tenants, while large institutional investment banks can afford a few people not to pay rent for a short while. Then when enough small investors have been repossessed by the banks the institutional investor s have more low priced assets to acquire. So the big guys always win because they are insiders and are large enough to whether the controlled storm (by the way the storm is caused by them as they control the government).
In essence, look at the interests of banks and institutional investment banks, if they are getting into the residential real investment market then (because they make the rules) will inevitably work out very well in the long term.
Now that you know what to watch out for. Remember residential real estate is where the very rich store and multiply their wealth, this is because:
1 it is a commodity which is needed, shelter is needed like food and water.
2 It cannot be printed out of thin air like cash is.
3 it can be leveraged with banks money, most other investments cannot
4 it provides monthly cash-flow no matter whether you are working or not.
5 the value of the real estate you invest in will never go to zero no matter the market conditions. This is not true for stock and other not real estate investments.
Real estate can multiply capital like no other vehicle in several different ways. So if you want to be rich get into real estate the earlier the better. So if you have any cash put it into real estate and if you know what you are doing you will not regret it in the medium long run. Maybe you will regret it in the short run but not in the long run, promised!
Will residential real estate investments be worthwhile in the future? Yes 99% of the time, unless there is rent control implemented , but then even under rent control real estate could still be valuable.
EPC (Energy Performance Certificates) and the nightmare of the year 2025
It is said that by 2025 the minimum EPC allowable for a rental property will be C. If your property is below C then it is illegal for you to rent it. Yet another scam. This is in my opinion another way to discourage the small investor in order to make space for the institutional investors. Time will tell whether this is yet another of the governments’ run scams. Remember, the Government runs for the elite and not the people.
Remember that EPC rating means next to NOTHING, it is not consistent over time, something is E becomes F a few years down the line and it is made through a number of assumptions and parameters that change over time. It is subject to the whims of a poor energy assessor whose little livelihood is connected with this small supposedly in-depended income created though another stupid meaningless regulation. It is stupid because it is becoming well known that CO2 does not cause global warming and it makes the planet greener. CO2 is the gas of life and it is well know from something called photosynthesis.
It is very established that sea levels are not going to rise and New York will not lose Manhattan. Manhattan will never be underwater because of sea levels rises. If you see the preconditions of the “inconvenient truth” of AlGore in 2006 they were all wrong go and watch it again! See it for yourself.
I was indoctrinated at school that by 2010 there would have not been any glaciers left in the summer in the poles, yet another lie, glaciers are there and they are not melting in the summer. Bill Gates who says there is global warming and sea levels rising buys properties by the sea, and so do many other globalists who go around the place scaring the population with global warming gloom and doom. Because global warming is not happening they are recently calling it and re-branding it human caused climate change.
What my prediction is for 2025 is that either the level C EPC minimum requirement is going to be scrapped or there is going to be another controverted move from the puppet government to make the properties that do not comply with the EPC C Rating viable in one way or another. (maybe through incentives grants etc). This is because the housing shortage which this could cause would be unprecedented and the government will not have the money to do anything about it on its own., The only issue is that usually these properties that are not going to comply with level C (please note that any assessor can say what he she wants and make it what rating he of she wants…) , are small and not very appealing to large institutional investors anyway.
Remember that the government is making the housing shortage in the UK happen on purpose and not because of incompetence. This is because the big money is tied to real estate. So the government will never make any move to hurt the large real estate investors. Just moves to enslave the population. And this is true of Labour and Tory see their behavior during the scamdemic in 2020 and 2021.
Rent arrears and evictions.
I guess this is a hot topic and one of the main topics in this book. Many amateurs landlords are moving away from the long terms rental market due to the fear of rent arrears and the cost of evicting a tenant who refuses to pay and refuses to move at the same time. I do not know exactly why , it maybe the quality of accommodation, it maybe the due diligence I perform before taking anyone on, maybe the fact that the rent is always slightly below the market value for that specific type of accommodation. The fact remains that over the course of more than 10 years I had never to evict anyone. Yes I had some rent arrears but never that bad to compare with any of the horror stories that you seen on the British Brainwashing Corporation. Remember after all that the BBC does not want the public to believe investing in Real Estate is a good thing for anyone. They are working for our overlords who want the real estate form themselves, Remember the world Economic forum told us that in 2030 “you will own nothing and be happy”?
The worst that has ever happened to me was a strange guy, from north Africa, (to be fair I would have never expected it form him) I guess we all make mistakes. I had a room available in Nottingham I wanted to rent and I did not seem to have great demand at the time, it was November if I remember well. I never vetted him, I met him in another HMO I own and he was a friend of one of the existing tenants. He said wanted to move to Nottingham, what a coincidence, I had a room available. I never carried out any due diligence on him and before he moved in we even had dinner together. He paid the rent and deposit upfront like anyone else. I would not have thought it would have become a problem, to be fair anyone who met him at the beginning never thought he could have tried what he later tried and done.
He paid rent no issue at all for the first few months. I had the first warning when there was a leak above his room and water came down through the ceiling into his room. It was from the bathroom just above his room. While normally we just fix the issue he instead made a huge fuss about it to the pint that I told the manager at the time that I was happy to give all his overpaid rent payment and deposit back if he wanted to move out quickly. However he still wanted to stay, unfortunately. That was quite strange. It was strange because he seems to have made a huge deal out of this small issue which was resolved very quickly anyway, and yet he did not want to move. I did not think anything of it after that. He paid on time no issue and nobody made any complaint. From time to time I went to live in one of the available rooms and I met him and no issue. Yes he behaved a bit strangely but everyone does anyway in one way or another in my opinion, nobody is the stereotype of perfection. He behaved consistently with the north African culture, so it was never an issue with me. It never sparked any worries. I even gave him some tasks to do in the house, which he never did well anyway. He was very sloppy.
The issue stated in October the following year 2019 when he stopped paying his rent. He never told me about it he just stopped. When I asked bout it, he said he lost his job but he would have paid me in a week. That week came and passed I asked him again because he never got in touch with me. He said he was sorry but he reassured me that he would have paid me within another week. That week passed again and I had some rooms for rent, I said to him “look, lets do it this way, your deposit has covered for the missing rent, how about you leave and this is it? ” He said”I d’ont have anywhere else to go, but I will pay…” then I replied , look how about you do the viewings of the available rooms on my behalf and get commission that is going towards the rent? ” He retorted “of course no issue” . I gave him the leads and once he was in charge of the viewings we was responsive to my calls and whatsapp messages.
I sent him loads of leads from the ads I ran, but he never called them. Maybe he conducted a couple of viewings from the leads I gave him, but nothing came up in terms of tenants wanting the two rooms available at the time. All of the sudden he told me that he got two tenants. I asked him to give me their contact before they moved in for contract purposes, due diligence and payment, and he said “don’t worry I’ll do it soon”. He never did. All of the sudden he said that one guy moved in and I said, I never received any rent, there is no contract. After I said that , quite concerned., he passed me on his number. Fortunately the guy in the room paid and signed the contract. I was slightly relieved by it. Then he said that he was waiting for confirmation from the other guy renting the last room. I got quite suspicious because at a certain point he stopped answering my calls. I though somebody already moved into the room That was still available.
So what I did was I called another tenant and asked him to tell me if there was someone in the last room for rent. He said yes! I asked him during a video call, to knock on the room and pass me on to the guy living in the room. He did and I was furious, there was a guy I never met, never had contact details of, let alone any rent nor contract, NOTHING. I shouted at this new supposed tennant “who are you?” and what was he doing squatting in the room, this during the video call. He did not know what to say and passed me on to the tenant I knew and the nice tenant I know said , “look I have not involvement in this” you have to speak to Ayub” . The good tenant was embarrassed and did not want to be involved, he understood exactly what went on. I was literally fuming!
I called this Ayub guy back, I address him as “this guy” because I have very little respect for this kind of people. I said “Ayub there is a guy in the last room, I have not been told about it , I told you that I needed to run my background checks and I have no contract and received any money, what is this?” He replied “Look I am sorry, I trusted the guy but by not paying he has really upset me and he will be out soon…” I had already enough of this , I knew I made a mistake and I asked this Ayub guy to pass on any house keys for the other rooms to someone else. Meanwhile I had received rent the the first guy who Ayub moved in without me even telling me (Call this new tenant James), but even the problems with that guy started to appear quite shortly thereafter. The problem with James was that he was from north Africa and he thought that he could rent a room and take 4 to 5 of his friends to live with him. I received a number of complaints about 20 people using one of the bathrooms. (This meanwhile I had a squatter in one other room). I said back to the complaint about 20 people using the bathroom :”look there is no 20 people in the house that it not possible” the complaining tenant said “well , it seems you might not be aware of James…” I said ” What about James?” The tenant said: ” there are a lot of pople crammed up inn his room, did you not know?” At that point I told James this was not on and he said: “It is my right to have friends… after all other people take their girlfriends over too” It was not possible to reason with James, He just wanted his way. I told him look ” one thing is to have a girlfriend over for one or two nights, but another is living ith 4 other males in the room and expect that other people will tolerate it”
Pictures of clothes hanging to dry in the staircase. They used to dry their clothes on the handrail on the staircase. I received loads of complaints about it.
I told James to stop having people around and stop the clothes hanging on the staircase. He agreed, but guess what this carried on.
Meanwhile I had to work to get the new guy who Ayub just moved in (lets Call him “Peter”). Again someone else from north Africa.. He begged me to stay and paid a little money in the account, since he would not pay the full rent and he just was not liked in the house I had to work relentlessly to try to have him out in a peaceful way. I tell you it was a joke. I had Ayub not paying his rent, He moved in two scumbags worse that he was. But despite all this I carried on to resolve the situation. I told Peter ” look you stayed here two weeks I will give you all your money back (very little ) but just go as soon as possible, I don’t want you and nobody wants you in the house either”. Peter understood he was not wanted by anyone , literally nobody wanted him in the house, even Ayub turned against him and Ayub also turned against James. It was chaos, tt was a mess and all the other tenants felt in in the house.
Peter was the first of the three to move out. As soon as he was out I said, “one out” we still have Ayub and James to deal with. I tell you I have learned my lesson by that time. James at least was paying so he was my least concern. Peter was out in January 2020. Ayub said in January that he was just about to move out to London. So I left it alone for a couple of weeks Guess what, I was expecting someone to tell be Ayub moved out but in late January Ayub was still in. I had to go back to the house and I saw him again and I confronted him on the missing rent and the fact that he was still there. I said ” Ayub what do we have to do? you have plenty of arrears, you told me you would have paid the rent months ago and you keep not paying and at the same time you stay. I call you you do not answer” By then he did not have the keys to the the other rooms to do any viewings. When I said that he retorted” I will pay what I want, I will go when I want and there is nothing you can do about it because you need to evict me through the court, and this is very expensive” By the way he became very aggressive and threatening as he said it. Please bear in mind that I am very fit and strong so I had no fear I just looked and smiled in amusement. This was at the end of January 2020. By the beginning of February I had already decided to go to China. By the way on the 13th of February I was on an aircraft to China (I knew the pandemic was a scam, there was no pandeminc only fear porpaganda). Before I left for china I confronted the elephant in the room with Ayub, I send him a very long message on the 8th of February.
Andreas: Dear Ayub
Final offer to settle this case, if you move out before the 15th of February we will forfeit every depth you have with us.
You are well over 2 months in arrears and your debt is mounting.
Now you have stated you moved out in the first week of January. Then to my surprise you were continuing living in the house and without paying rent. When I tried to call you on several occasions you avoided my calls and did not return any of my phone calls.
You have stated several times that you are moving to London and the moving date is changing constantly while you keep staying in the house without paying any rent. You a week ago stated you would have moved out in one or two weeks which means latest the 10th of Februarty. When I last met you a couple of days ago you now state that you maybe moving out on the 28th of this month.
your arrears now amounts to over 620 Pounds and you refuse to pay. I have tried to find compromises in several occasions but you insist on not paying and still staying in the house.
This is my final offer to you to settle this case:
you move out before the 15th of February and I will forfeit every depth you have with us. You will owe us nothing provided that you move out within this time frame. If after the 15th you are still in the house our specialists will start eviction proceedings.
This means that
1 you will be evicted. For rent arrears you have, this is an easy process for the professionals and it will be fairly speedy.
2 we will be able to obtain an enforceable court order to recover all rent arrears for the whole time you stayed in the house without paying rent. This means that we will be able to enforce payment even when you are out of the premises unless you file for bankruptcy.
3 court proceedings will leave a mark in your name affecting your ability to rent other premises and obtain credit.
There are also further repercussions which I suggest you seek legal advise about as you may not be aware of it.
All it is required to avoid all this is to kindly vacate your room before the 15th and I will forfeit all outstanding debts. However if you continue to occupy the premises without clearing all the arrears in full I have no choice other than passing on this case to the professionals.
Also note that the rent for the room you occupy increased to 360 pounds per month all bills included in March. So you would be liable for this rent in case we are forced to take this further and you still stay in the house.
Kind Regards
Andreas Russo
I sent another Message after that
Andreas: Once again if you move out before the 15th all debt is forfeited
Andreas: otherwise eviction will be enforced and our specialists will also enforce recovery of all debts. Once again we would like an amicable end to this by you moving out before the stated date. We hope you will take the best action in this case.
By the way before I sent this message I already had the lawyer ready for action. To my amazement he called me back immediately after and reassured me that he was moving out before the 15th. He actually did keep his word this time and he moved out before the 15th. As soon as I was told that he handed his keys, I celebrated. I only has James to deal with and I knew it was much easier.This is because James was at least a man of his word and tdid not have any real intention to rip anybody off.
What I think happened is that Ayub realised I was going for for full lawsuit and it was not a joke now so he moved out voluntarily.
I think my success with tenants is in very proactive and firm communication, being able to fearlessly confront them and apply relentless negotiation, this is why the most I was ripped off was only 2 months rent. In March 2020 the eviction ban started and it was not possible to evict anyone through the courts, I was very lucky to get read of Ayub before March, I am sure I would have had to deal with him for another 12 months if he managed to stay. I am convinced Ayub did this before and he was trying his luck to live rent free as long as possible. I just said that the most I was ripped out of was 2 month’s rent, but in actuality I lst more over the years due to other factors. The most notable was when I did not check regularly the rent coming in and a tenant misses this rent for a few months and it cost me almost 2000 pounds, but this was only my fault.
After Ayub moved out, since James continued to be the source of complaints due to the number of people living with him he moved out too but he moved out easily. Basically this Ayub caused me grief, lost me money and moved scumbags in. Once the last scumbag (James) moved out I said to myself, I will make sure this wont happen again. And although it has passed less than 3 years from these events at the time of writing, I believe something similar may happen again but I will be able to reduce the risks from happening.
I believe when landlords are owed thousands from their not paying tenants it is due to their own fault:
-Bad vetting. What I tend to do now is to get strong guarantors. I assure you that the tenants with guarantors never miss a payment. Of course the guarantors need to either have a UK home, or own a limited business that had been running for a few years. I would not recommend to accept any person as guarantor. It happened in the past that one tenant would not pay and when I spoke to the guarantor the guarantor sis not want to pay either. Guess what? The guarantor was the mother of the tenant and she was a renter too. I still got rid of the tenant quickly enough not to cause too much damage. This again was due to persistent negotiation.
-bad quality accommodation that can only be rented to scumbags, no decent people would live in them therefore if you want to rent a shithole you have to have scumbags as customers. You get what you give.
-lack of cojones in confronting the tenants, please trust me when I say that when tenants try it on they always feel very uncomfortable about it. If they are confronted long enough and with enough negotiation they will move voluntarily in 99 percent of the cases. Once again if you are persistent enough they will move without any need for court proceedings.m
-if you decide that court proceedings do it fast through a lawyer without hesitation. Most scumbags leave either before of before they get their first letter. However if you are relentless you will not need to recur to court proceedings in most cases.
Later on in this books we will explain how to avoid problematic tenants in more details.
What is an illegal eviction?
An illegal eviction is an eviction which is enforced without a court order with or without following all the steps set out by the law required to evict a tenant. In theory if a tenant refuses to leave you need to obtain a court order for the eviction and even after you have obtained the court order for the eviction has to be enforced this has to be done in a certain way. You cannot just show the court order and drag your tenants out…. you need the bailiffs (and they cost money and time too). The entire procedure is well set out by the law.
As you can imagine this is an expensive and time consuming exercise, all of the while you do not receive any rent.
A case of an illegal eviction could be you changing the lock to the house, flat or room of the tenants and not allowing the tenant to get back in. Of course you would pack their stuff for them and leave them outside. This is a clear illegal eviction.
However there are much middle grounds, like you changing the lock with an excuse and yet allowing the tenants back in if they ask for it. If they do not then you can prove that you have offered to give them the new keys via an email or letter message and they never got back to you. This works especially if the tenants disappear for a long period of time without paying rent. This is called abandonment.
An illegal eviction is not always going to bring you financial losses. It is a bet you may make. This is very important for any landlord to realize. There are not any fines enforceable for illegal evictions. The only way to enforce compensation from a landlord is if the tenant files lawsuit in the appropriate court against the landlord or Manager for illegal eviction and he /she does correctly all throughout. A single mistake can have the whole case to fall to nothing. Because of this this has to be done by a lawyer. The tenant himself/herself can technically file such a lawsuit in the UK appropriate court but it is very unlikely to be successful unless a proper lawyer who has experience in these types of cases is in charge of the suit. This is very important to understand. By all means also it is important to understand is that there are many different circumstances to illegal evictions and there can be gray areas and attenuating factors for the landlord too.
If you look at this situation from he tenant’s point of view
What the tenant has to do is:
1 Look for a lawyer. This is not always straightforward but it is possible. Please note that if the tenant is working to male a living then he/she will not be having too much time to investigate the matter. The most dangerous tenants are those who are on benefits and have plenty of time in their hands. they will have all their time in their life to look for lawyers go to court etc. Productive people do not want o be bothered with this, generally.
2 Once the tenant found the lawyer then they have to pay for the lawyer in advance unless they find a no win no fee lawyer. Usually no win no fee in this type of circumstances are not very easy to find, but not impossible. In case the tenant qualifies for legal aid then they have the upper hand, they will not need for fork out any money for the lawsuit and the case will go full steam ahead. The lawyer will be incentivised to take on the case and will hound the landlord till the bitter end so to speak. However please note that these cases are not usually black or white and the landlord can have many defenses which can make the case harder for the tenant’s lawyer. Remember the lawyer need to PROVE the illegal eviction and depending on the circumstances this is not always easy to prove.
So in order for the Landlord to face the consequences for an illegal eviction many things have to fall into place just right. But of course this does not mean that landlords have not been punished in the past for illegal evictions…
If the lawyer has managed to prove the case to the court and the judge is satisfied that illegal eviction had taken place then the compensation will be issued against the landlord and this can vary from 5k to 50k or more depending on the circumstances. Please note that compensation will include a percentage of the lawyer’s fees. Usually the compensation paid to the tenant will be lower than the lawyer’s fee.
There are many circumstances where there are gray areas. For example If a tenant has disappeared for a long while, then you can serve appropriate notices at the address and claim repossession through abandonment. If the tenant returns to claim the property then you have a good defense. Please note that this defense is not always valid if challenged, however it is so good that a lawyer may be discouraged by it and give up. It is always a balance of likelihood of victory and remember that in the suit for illegal eviction the party that has to expend the energy is the tenant not the landlord. Therefore the tenant or the tenant lawyer has to ponder whether the effort spent in order to pursue such a case is going to pay off.
As an example I had once Ia tenant selected not by me but one of my own tenants that was very daupy so to speak, hes brain was literally fried by alcohol and maybe drugs and let alone cigarettes. I would hevae never got anybody like him in. Never but hey….. He was forgetting many things in real time and one of the things he forgot to do was paying rent. At the time I was in China and busy with other stuff for a few months and never checked on the rent (my bad) . After a few months I started checking and I realised that this gentleman never paid almost any rent. He owned me over 2000 pounds in rent. When I when back to the property I checked his room, very messy indeed, full of empty bottles , cigarette butts and other stuff. Very messy indeed. Even worse than me.
I tried to call him but nothing no response, it was ringing but nothing, no call beck nothing. I did not know what to do. I had a guy who hardly paid any rent, who had loads of stuff in his room left as if he had to escape on the spo, as if he woke up at night and he had to go somewhere without taking care of anything at all, and I could not get to him . Nobody in the house saw him in months too. He just vapourised. I left a note on his door claiming abandonment and nothing, not response. After a month I just moved into his room. Since he was not in I filed eviction proceedings and I went to court alone, The judge refused to grant any eviction and postponed the case to a later date as I did not have the right paperwork with me. So I realised that even if he did not go to court to defend himself, obtaining a court order was something that a lawyer would need to do, not me. Otherwise I would spend a number of months of trieal and error in order to get an evision order and for what?. In October I decided to rent his room out and I moved all his stuff into the loft in case he wanted to be back and or he wanted his stuff (it was a lot!), So I rented his room out and moved into another room . In November he sends me a message saying he is was coming back.
I called him and for the first time he picked up the phone, He said that he wan ed to be back into his room, I was terrorized, what could I do? HE had disappeared for several months without paying a penny in rent and nobody knew where he was and hwould not return any of my calls. I know I had a very strong case of abandonment if he tried byt I wanted to avoid any possible problem.
While on the phone to him I said simply”look I received no rent, all you paid was 2 moths and that was it, you have not paid anything for several months, disappeared, I tried to get in touch with you for months and I took you for gone…how if you insist to be reinstated in the house ok I will do it but I will evict immediately.I will evict you with a debt of over 3000 pounds and no way you can get to settle down because you will be evicted anyhow…. Once again… If you insist into moving back in I will simply evict you, I have no choice, If you do not try to move nback in then I will forgive all debts and you can rent somewhere else with the 3000 pounds instead of facing a court case, up to you!” He gave up immediately. This and all my conversations are always recorded. I
I still had all his stuff, I sent him a message telling when and where to collect it and he never replied and never showed up To this day I still have his stuff somewhere in some loft in one of my houses. This is to explain how easy it is if you are tactical. Basically I never denied him entry and therefore even if he wanted he could not try and sue. Also of course I recorded all conversations over the phone and keep all records in some hard drive somewhere (just in case).
So
1 I never denied him entry, So I never evicted him from a mere legal point of view.
2 I had a strong defense with evidence even if he tried to sue and therefore I walked out ok with another lesson: do the vetting myself for as long as I manage my own building.
As you can see I do not advocate illegal evictions, there are many ways to convince the tenant to leave voluntarily, and this is what you are counting on. As you will see as long as you are tactical and firm you will almost never need to evict anyone. You need to have or grow a pair at times and show you mean business (basically bluff well). This cannot be taught in a book, but it can be practiced. In all my years of renting out and managing my housing stock I never had to evict anyone through the courts. It was not necessary.
In theory after an illegal eviction you could be successfully be sued for amounts up to 50K plus. But remember it is not a straight forward process and it requires a lawyer in order to be successful in court. Please note that in the UK lawyers are expensive and therefore if the tenant does not qualify for any legal aid there is no way they will be able to fork out the money for the upfront cost of a litigation lawer. Also see it from the tenant’s point of view, if they work for a living the most they can get is 5 to 10K usually , the other costs to be paid by the landlord are made up of legal fees to be paid to the litigation lawyer. However it is not always the case that the judge would order the landlord, or agent to pay 100 per cent of the legal fees.
Once again I am not saying you want to evict anyone illegally but what I am saying you always have to look at the situation from the tenants point of view. What is the likelihood they would even sue you? Please note that in rare cases there are people missing payments and messing landlords around on purpose so that they will lose their temper and evict them illegally. Please note that this has happened a number of times but is very rare.
This has happened to those landlords notorious for illegal evictions, the word goes around and the right people then rent one of their houses or rooms and and given the fact that they have a litigation lawyer in their family they later win high compensations in court. They know how to collect evidence and they know all the legal process so if you are foolish to rely on illegal evictions it is a matter of time, sooner or later someone will make you pay for your past mistakes.
If the tenant is forced out by any other means than a court order using bailiffs you could be culpable of illegal eviction. Once again this could constitute an illegal eviction, but this does not mean that it is an illegal eviction. Only the court can establish that an illegal eviction had taken place and no other body like the council police etc. In any case any illegal eviction has to be proven to have been committed out by the courts of law to be classed as such.
So understand that the only recourse that a tenant has: is court proceedings against the managing agent or the landlord after the fact. Court proceedings can be expensive, meaning that the tenant may be required to pay for the legal costs upfront. But not everyone wants to pay upfront for this type of action.
Remember that although this type of court proceeding is costly to start with the tenant maybe entitled to legal aid meaning that he/she would not need to pay for any legal costs.
So you may be worried more about a tenant on benefits (DSS) then a tenant who is on full time employment and is not entitled to legal aid and requires to pay for this type of expense upfront. Dss tenants are those who are entitled to legal aid and they have all the time in their life to look for lawyers because they do not have much to do anyway, and they do not need to pay for any legal costs most likely.
Conversely tenants who work
1 do not have time to look for a lawyer in the same way a someone who does not work does.
2 they need to pay for the legal expenses in full all in advance.
So they are less likely to spend their time to spend in a lawsuit.
There are many ways to effectively evict a tenant without a court order and still do it within the law as long as they will leave on their own accord without recourse to violence or undue cohercion. Remember words, firm and persistent attitude are very powerful tools that can save you loads of money and time in formal court proceedings. Asking politely but firmly a tenant to move out is not an illegal eviction and it is very unlikely any court would constitute it as such. After all you are only asking very firmly and this is not considered an illegal eviction. As long as the tenant packs up his/her stuff and leaves by his/her own will this is not considered an illegal eviction. You do not know how easy it is for the tenants to move out on their own accord by simply asking for it very firmly. You have to push as far as you can within the limits of the law and you are going to be fine. Remember words are very powerful tools, if you have the right tough, fearless and firm attitude you will succeed most of the times. You will be surprised at how quickly and easily you can resolve many evictions situations without going to court just by being very firm.
I always consider each tenant on an individual case. No tenant is the same I always try and figure out as soon as possible if they are taking the Micky. You normally know if they are genuine pretty easily. For example if they always paid rent without any issues for several months and then they call you to let you know they are in financial difficulties. Then it is safe to assume they are genuine and they will try their level best to pay. I always try and accommodate genuine tenants, even if I might lose out a a little. However if they start not to pick up your calls and they do what they say. But if they are not picking up the calls and not returning the calls there is no space for negotiation, they are out. Believe me my words are very powerful when I want someone out. Maybe it is my physique, my anger at being screwed over I do not know but so far I have been very effective.
Every now and then you will find a very minority of tenants who will stand their ground and try to stay in your accommodation without paying. This is despite your requests for them to move out on their own accord. What you will find is that those people who will try and resist your verbal requests to move out usually use the same techniques:
1 they will not pick up your calls
2 once you will confront them face to face they will try to find excuses and say that they will pay part of the rent on such and such date etc. Usually, if they tried to avoid me over the phone there is no negotiation on payment terms I know they are taking the mickey so I focus directly on asking them out of the premises as soon as possible. I negotiate only on the terms of their exit.
3 sometimes they will complain about the quality of the accommodation as an excuse not to pay to which I always reply: “I understand so please go find an accommodation you deem suitable instead of trying to stay here without paying rent.”
If you become a rent collector you will find these techniques used over and over. They are standard.
In those cases where you have established that they are taking the mickey in order not to pay their rent what I do is focus on their exit from the property and never negotiate rent payments. Negotiating rent payments with them it is going to be a nightmare going forward and you will need to evict them anyway. For example, they say: “I will pay half the rent in two weeks” and they are already one month behind. I promise”. My reply is: I appreciate the offer, however you will have to move out. I do not want your money anymore I just want you out as soon as possible. All I can do for you since you proposed to pay in two weeks time is that you have two weeks to move out and if you comply I will forfeit the rent that you owe me. This is a very good offer. I would take it if I were you. Given the situation we are not welcome in this property so you will leave, this is for sure, we would rather you did it in an amicable way.” It is important to emphasise the amicable way” after all the tenant , although may be aware of the law on the matter, he/she may not know for sure what you are going to do. You have to give the impression to be unpredictable, which means, they might think, you could just throw them out no questions asked. I assure you most people who do not pay rent do not live in a very peaceful state of mind, and they feel guilty unless they are sociopaths.
In case the tenant is in shared accommodation it is usually even easier to get rid of the one apple. This is because a bad payer is also usually someone who causes trouble to everybody else. They may be overly messy, plainly disrespectful etc, It is stereotypical for someone who does not want to pay rent in a shared accommodation to also be a nuisance to the other tenants. So your job is even easier, this is because the pressure for the bad tenant to move out can be also exerted from the other tenants. So as soon as you and the other tenants join forces usually the pressure for the bad apple is sufficient to give up and go. Despite the law on evictions ect, the issue is that, if there are a number of different tenants in one house, say 7 for instance, and one is causing issues to all the others what happens? Will all the others leave? This is most of the time not the case. Usually the majority of paying tenants will be on your side and come to help you get rid of the bad apple. Remember that despite what the law might say we all live in the real world and the rules of common sense apply in 99 per cent of the cases.
In all cases whatever you do make sure you find the most efficient way to encourage and incentivise the bad apple to move out on his/her own accord. Some landlords have even successfully recourse to monetary payments to convince the tenant to go. This means that yes the landlord paid the tenants who did not py them to go. This is nothing I have done yet but I could see how in some cases it would not be a very bad idea.
First and foremost prevention.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This is true in the residential rental business, especially due to the highly regulated tenant friendly legislation in many parts of the world.
Where you invest your capital is very important. Some countries are not as tenant friendly as others. Given the option it is always better to invest where the law makes evictions easy. However things can run very smoothly also where eviction laws are very tenant friendly. If you can invest in landlord friendly countries do so otherwise this book will help you mitigate the risks.
Tenant selection is the most important part of the equation. You need to select tenants who either have a good stable job or do have a strong Guarantor. Today in all our properties I try make sure I have a guarantor in place for each tenant,however this is not always possible. I reckon that as the writing of this book 70% of my tenants do have a strong guarantor.
Part of the prevention is have a high number of prospective tenants. In this way you can select the very best ones. But how can you have high demand for a property? Very simple:
, 1 Great Location in high demand
2 Extremely high unbeatable standards of accommodation
3 lower prices Than the competition.
If you have all three of these points going to you then you are guaranteed high demand and therefore you will be the one who vets the tenants and not the other way round.
Location. This is very straight forward always look for buildings that are as central as possible and as close as possible to major train stations, Universities, Hospitals and large employers in general. In this way there is always a large pool of people who is potentially interested in living in your building.
Standards of Accommodation. This is also very important, because you are providing a great product that people want to live in your building. I always have steam showers, Jacuzzi, Underfloor heating in each bathroom is a minimum standard for all my housing stock. I recently started installing smart toilets , smart taps and many other features that establish true monopolistic advantages to our housing stock.
Price. Despite all these high standards which nobody has in their buildings I make sure the price is even lower than comparable accommodation in the area.
This ensures natural high demand coupled with highest standards and lower prices. The result is almost 100% occupancy rate, low or non existent payment default and almost non existent management expenses.
What advantages do you get by renting the property below the rental market value. The hands off and rent guarantee strategy.
If you have a large apartment building complex of 50 units or above this will not apply because you may have in-house management and maintenance. In such case it may be worthwhile to find strategies to maximise the rental income from each unit, however this requires very tight management control, this is of course possible and the best strategy. However what do you do if you, like me, have some small units scattered around the world and you do want to keep them? Remember: “real estate is forever”. I made a promise to myself when I was in my late 20s that whatever I buy as long it is cash-flowing positive I would never sell and I would pass it on to the next generation. So far I have done that with the exception o f a piece of land that was not cash flowing and I decided not to build on.
So, how to retain this scattered real estate while still being able to select the best tenants and keep them. Please note that now I am scaling up and focusing on having as many units as possible in one place only, this makes management easier and the other building subject to economy of scale, therefore efficient and more profitable than having several small units scattered all around the place.
From the legacy of my work invested in my late 20s and early 30s I have premises scattered all over the place and I want the maximum peace of mind which means guaranteed rent, low maintenance and literally no hustle. Being a real estate owner is all about having an easier life. The real estate needs to elevate your standard and quality of living in any circumstances otherwise you will need to get rid of it.
Of course all my housing stock is high standard and in sought after location which guarantees a steady flow of high demand. The strategy I use is renting my housing stock at a lower rental market price. In other words I under-price my real estate when it comes to rent it out. So basically what I manage to do is rent high standard premises at a lower price (between 10 to 20%) than the going market rate and the accommodation is high standard. My accommodation is well above average standard but rented at a lower price than the average market rate for an average property. If for example a standard room in the area goes for 350 pcm, my room is rented for 320 pcm and it has a steam shower and a smart toilet and many other perks.
I do not use any letting agents, this is because they are useful only at taking money and nothing else. there is simply no reason for them to exist in my opinion. I fail to see any value they provide to anyone. They, in my opinion, add no value to anyone, neither to the landlord nor to the tenant. All they do is place ads online (which you as a landlord can do), carry out viewings and get ongoing commission on the rent of the property for as long as the tenant is in situ. But do not worry, if something goes wrong they may fix it at a very high price, far higher than the going fair market rate. They are a real rip off and what you find is that they usually have their own housing stock they rent out before they rent yours out, basically they are your competitors most of the time. So you are hoping that your competitors will help you. When it comes to estate Agents any other house or building they have in their books is extra income for them, so they can afford not to rent your real estate and also they can afford to lose you, remember they have your competitors and they will fill up theitr own housing stock before yours, they will lok after their tenants before yours. It is not to say thet there are no good people that will not help you as estate agents, but they are few and far in between.
For those reasons above I have decided to do is simply pass on the commission that I would pay to the letting agents which varies from 10% to 15% to the tenants themselves. This strategy has worked wonders so far because this allows me to rent the premises at a lower price than otherwise I would need to. It eliminates waste (the useless middleman) this in turn attracts and retains more tenants.
So lowering your rent in scattered small houses or flats:
1 attracts more tenants because the value for money is much better than other properties. This makes more people apply for your accommodation. Hence you can select the type of tenants you want. So you can discard people on benefit and those that provide low levels of guarantee. You can ask for guarantors and perform deeper levels of due diligence and if the prospective tenant gets annoyed bu this you know you can decline their application.
2 This strategy retains tenants. This is because tenants do know that they are getting value for money and therefore if they tried to find alternative accommodation they would not be able to get the same type of quality on the market place for the same money, they would inevitably need to pay more for a lesser standard property. Hence they tend to stay longer.
Please once again this is a viable strategy for those housing stock that is cash flowing positive and is scattered all over the place, but what you want it have most of your units in one Place or one large building which is better because you will benefit from economy of scale and tight management onsite. If you have 100 unit in one place for example you can afford to employ people full time for the site management and maintenance, all of the while maximizing the rent. This is the strategy I am going for today.
The Guarantor
Provided that you have a very desirable accommodation in a very useful area at an unbeatable price then you can use my trump card.
Guarantors is my trump card for ensuring peace of mind. My attitude is that if you lived in the UK and you do not have a guarantor there is something wrong with you. You may not be trustworthy, or you can be, but I am taking a chance? I had cases when people who had brothers and sisters and parents all alive and would not have any guarantor. None of their family would step in. My question is: “if someone who knows you for a long time would not trust you with a financial commitment to rent a place to live in why would I?”
Said that I assess any potential tenant one by one. At the moment in my housing stock 30% of tenants do not have a guarantor and they pay rent no issue at all!
It is not true that having a guarantor alone will guarantee that you will have no trouble. I have learned this lesson first hand a few years ago when I have rented one of my flats to two young girls . These two young girls had menial jobs, so I asked them if they could have a guarantor. They had one of their mothers to act as a guarantor. The three of them (two goirs and the mother of one of them) met me in the flat and we all together signed the contract. They were all happy and there was no sign that they would cause any issues with payments.
It only took 3 months for the issues to arise. One of the girls moved out and the one who had the mother as the guarantor decided to stay but could not afford to pay the rent. The contract was joint with a guarantor and lasted 12 months!
I was patient and gave her a little longer to pay but nothing.. she simply did not make enough money on her own. Please bear in mind that the rent was well below the market price and it was only £319 per month, it was nothing!! And yet she could not meet the payments! Unbelievable!
So at a certain point when I realized that by being patient I would have simply lost out so I decided to ask her to move out. It was not worth my time! There were tenatns who would fight to have that flat at a higher price let alone at the price she was not paying for it at! She needed to get out and soon.
But before I told her it was best for her to move out, I called the Mother who was also the guarantor. I was very surprised at the Mother’s (Guarantor) reaction. First of all please bear in mind that I called the guarantor while I was in China. I am telling you this to let you know that in order to be managing your residential housing stock you do not necessarily need to be close by. In fact for several years I lived outside the UK and my housing stock is spread ed all around the UK so I cannot be in the position of visiting the premises every time there is an issue.
The phone conversation went along these lines:
Me: “Madam, I am calling because your daughter is not paying the rent and she had decided to stay in the flat on her own and take over the contract, it is fine by me but I would kindly ask you to please clear her arrears.!” I assure you I did not say anything untoward, nothing that could be offensive.
The guarantor replied: “I have no money and there is nothing I can do.”
Me :”Madam you are responsible for the rent by contract alongside your daughter who wants to live in the flat, can you please pay the arrears? She cannot continue to live in the flat without paying”
The guarantor :” She cannot afford the rent, therefore you have to claim the money from social services, go speak to them”
This was completely made up. No social services owed the rent money to me…completely made up… Also her tone was polar opposite to what it was when she met me in the flat to sign the contract.
I replied : “Madam as far as I know I do not have a contract with Social services. As long as your Daughter is in the flat the money is owed by your daughter and yourself….” To that she hengup., I tried to call immediately after, I redialed and somebody else answered:
On the phone “Hello?” A male voice replied.
Me” The line got cut off can I please speak to Mrs Smith?”
On the other end of the phone: ” The line did not get cut off , she hung up on you and please do not call again! Goodbye.” He hung up too.
That literally shocked me. It was completely unexpected. At that point I knew the mistake I made was not checking on the guarantor. I literally did no due diligence on the guarantor at all. What I realised was that I never checked if he guarantor had a job, owned the flat or house she lived in …nothing, I just took her as a guarantor because she was a grown up and looked cordial at the time when I met her to sign the contract. This taught me a lesson which saved me from similar situations later on and in the future.
What I realised is that essentially that guarantor had nothing to lose therefore she did not care about being sued or having people chasing her for money, this is why she did not step in to help her daughter. I realised that if she owned anything at all she would have paid immediately or have her daughter to move out in case she did not want to pay the rent.
From then on I had to treat the guarantor as if he is a tenant, meaning that I had to perform the appropriate due diligence on the guarantor too. However the advantage of the guarantor is that he/she more likely to own property (like the house he lived in or even a business). The fact that someone owns a property is that it provides a clear indication that they are reliable, keep their financial commitment and even if they wanted to escape their debts they have a real asset that cannot move. This is a great advantage for the landlord. It is so good an advantage that If a guarantor owns a house or flat then all I do I check they really do own the piece of real estate, I then do not need to check if they have a job, what their credit file is like, affordability etc.
As you will see soon after this lesson saved me recently.
Going back to my experience, I was lucky enough that her Daughter living in my flat understood the situation. I thought of the best possible tactic to get rid of this non paying tenant. What you do not want to do as a landlord or property manager is pressing them to get out immediately, this is not a good idea in my opinion, it is best to still provide a bit of leeway. After the conversation with her mother, I immediately called the Girl in the flat and said: “Look I spoke to your mother and she does not want to pay your rent. Let me make this very clear, you are both liable for the arrears for the length of the contract and as long as you decide to stay in the flat. Even if you want to stay in the flat, it is not going to be a stable situation because not matter what it cannot last. Therefore deciding to stay in the flat without paying is not a very good idea for both you and your Mother. Here is what I suggest… As we both know, you are already in arrears, I am willing to give you two weeks, if you move out within these two weeks I will forfeit both contract and any arrears you have, I will even forfeit the rent owed for these these two weeks I give you. This is a very good deal and I am sure you agree, so you have plenty of time to move out and find alternative arrangements.,,,!”
She understood. What I am sure she thought was: “if I insist in staying I accumulate arrears and my Mother will be liable for it too. After all I cannot stay here without paying, it is not going to last anyway. Do I want to do this to my Mother and myself all at the same time?” Obviously the answer was “NO.” She would not take the risk of accumulate arrears in her name and her Mother’s name. So she decided to take on my offer, which to be fair, was a very good one.
This is an approach I always take when people fall in arrears and I am sure they are not going to pay, because they do not have that ability, they are broke. So there is no point on trying to get the money of the rent back and It is detrimental to keep them in the premises, Because the same premises could be let out to a paying tenant. The best strategy is to get rid of them fast by incentivise them, while giving them the impression that they have got away with something for free at the landlord’s expense (which is true).
I always play the same card, because it has always worked. Which is “the free two weeks to vacate and if they take it I forfeit all arrears”. The funny thing is that so far I did not have to even meet any non paying tenant face to face to get them out. This had been arranged over the phone so far.
So her reply was, and I believe she did not even think twice about it: “I will vacate the flat within the next two weeks. I will try to make payments towards my arrears into your account” . I said nothing about the payment of the arrears, to me my goal was very clear, get her out of the flat
To be fair she moved out, well before the two weeks were up, without causing any damage. Additionally I received very small payments from her after she was out of my flat. Obviously she was a girl of good will…
Why is this two weeks grace period important? It is very important because it provides good will in the eyes of the struggling tenant:
1 You are being accommodating and understanding but at the same time firm in communicating that the tenant owes you money.
2 It provides a great deal to the tenant, because you offer to forfeit a debt the tenant has with you. Therefore the tenant feels, and it is true , that he/she got something for nothing at someone else’s expense. In this case your expense and this is true.
3 it makes clear that if they insist in remaining in the premises then there is no more negotiation, they are being unreasonable and you will inevitably take action. Make clear that it is a matter of time but they will be out, and I sometimes (when I deem it necessary) make that very clear too. This third point is usually implied but sometimes, depending on the person and their attitude I would make this point very clear while being vague about the type of action.
After all they do not know how I will get them out, whether it is though legal means or others… (I try to leave this to their imagination, and their imagination will do the work for me). They need to be clear that they will be out and soon! It it wise to have them to second guess you and not be sure of your next actions, make sure you are unpredictable in their eyes, this will make their imagination do the work for you. Imply the consequences but never say exactly what you are going to do. No matter what never bring up court proceedings unless they do it first. In that case there i another strategy that works very well. But we will explore it later.
Over 10 years ago I had a lodger who really upset me for a number of reasons I prefer not to discuss here, it was to do with money and other stuff….One night when I request payment we had a disagreement, but ask be exactly what it was about I cannot remember. I only remember that she started to mention rights and something of the likes, (she was a lodger so no rights whatsoever). I am telling you I got furious with her, I remember saying the exact words : “be clear about this, I guarantee you are going to stay tonight but about tomorrow I am guaranteeing nothing!”. While very coky the previous night she vaporized before 12 am! It worked really well! To be fair I would not have changed the lock or anything, I was not prepared to do it. I always see my tenants as people who need money more htan I do, I regard myself as the bigger man so I would in reality try everything I could before changing a lock on them and placing them in an embarrassing situation.
SO use your voice firmly and use anger wisely, because these tools will work very well in most cases.
This is another very interesting story. This how i convinced my last paying tenant to leave forthwith. I had this guy moved into one of my rooms in Lincoln and the rent was only 280 pcm including all bills . The house is immaculate and very high standard, I make sure that the rent is well below market price to make sure I can select the best tenants and keep the rooms always full (which they are most of the time). This gentleman from Romania only paid the first mimonth rent to mobe in because I do not charge deposit for most Romanians as they are very good tenants usually, he was the exception. I checked when his rent was due and never paid, I contacted him and he said he would have paid in 2 weeks and he apologised, The two weeks came and went, and he never contacted me and never paid. At that point I called him again dod not answer as expected, but please note this is an HMO and I only need to make sure I ask some of my other tenants to make sure he answer the call. SO the tenants knocked on the door and he called me back. Once he called me back I said “wait, I will call you straight back via Video call”. This was important . I wanted him to see my anger! I called him back and I said to him “you have been taking the mickey for too long, I am not going to let you rob me …understand? This I can promise my dear I will not let you rob me! So, my advise is that you get out real fast in no longer than two days! Understand?”, He retorted “yes I understand” All this was in Italian because his English was not good. While I said the above, I made sure he could see all my anger through the video call (fake anger by the way…I could not care less). As usual this was so effective he was out within the timescale allotted.
I did not do any checks on Him before he moved in because he is Romanian and I almost only had very good experience with Romanians, I may be lucky who knows.
Therefore it is better that you also have in place a strong guarantor.. When I mention a strong guarantor I mean a guarantor who Either:
1 owns a house or land. In such case I only request proof of ownership and this is it. I do not need to see any bank account statements of perform credit check or anything. The simple ownership means that the person is more than trustworthy with his financial commitments. So far no guarantor who owns a property has ever failed me. In this case the tenant may even be on benefits and I would not mind as long as they are of decent character.
2 owns a limited company. It does not matter if the limited company is new, this shows me that the person is responsible, Owning a limited company (even as an empty shell) is a strong indicator of reliability. In this case I only require the company name and perform a check on company house.
3 has a strong job and or owns a car. This is another good indicator but I start asking for payslips and bank statements.
4 If the guarantor has a low paid job I can still accept it but I would ask for bank statements, payslips and I would perform a credit check. I would also be very wary of performing as probing as possible of the tenant.
These are the checks I have used successfully. I am always of the opinion that having a Guarantor is better than no Guarantor. So even if the guarantor is not perfectly meeting the standards above I always prefer to have a guarantor.
Remember that even a poor guarantor is better than no guarantor. SO always ask for a guarantor.
What Makes a good Guarantor.
A good guarantor is someone who owns properties or at least has a UK property or has a limited operating business. This is important because, as you have seen in my story, my experience tells me that when the s..t hits the fan and the tenant tries to misbehave in one way or another they will think about it twice if the guarantor does own a UK property. After all the tenant can disappear but the guarantor can be sued no problem and he cannot escape. Also as we know people who own properties are more reliable than people who have nothing to lose.
So what do I ask from a guarantor:
Proof or ownership ( picture of land registry title, picture of building insurance policy, or mortgage statements)
Proof of address (any recent utility bills)
ID Any picture of passport of driving license will do the job
Noting more usually.
Multiple Guarantors.
Nobody in law can limit the number of guarantors for any determined tenancy agreement, so if a guarantor is not a great one, always ask for multiple guarantors. It does not cost you anything to ask. But if you get more than one guarantor you have added safety. But you may ask yourself how can you get away with asking for so much? Very simple, you are never sure you can get away with it but…. if the tenant likes and needs the property then she/he will try to accommodate you. Therefore in my opinion it is always paramount to have the upper hand and have unique piece of properties in very sought after locations.
In our contracts we have space for multiple guarantors to guarantee for the same tenant. So you can have guarantor number 1 Guarantor n2 Grantor n3 etc. Guarantor n1 could be a parent, Guarantor n2 could be a cousin etc.
In case you have multiple guarantors then you would have a very strong indication that default on the rent would not occur, but most of all you would almost have the guarantee that the tenant would not take the mickey and try to stay in the premises without paying rent. There are far too many people to fall back on and in case the tenant would try to stay without paying rent then a number of people would get upset along side yourself.
So remember if one guarantor may be not very good then try asking for more and you will find that if the tenant like the property they will find the guarantor, and you will find peace of mind in the knowledge that their rent will be paid on time. .
When a Guarantor not Possible, what to do?
As I mentioned earlier in the region of 30% of my tenants do not have a guarantor and they are doing perfectly fine. This is the case of those people coming from abroad , who have been in the country for only half a year up to a couple of years In this case it is perfectly understandable that they maybe struggling t o have a guarantor. Said that many foreign students do still manage to find a guarantor since they may have family in the country. So it is always better to ask anyway.
If the foreign national has been in the country for longer than 2 years I can become slightly suspicious of the foreign national who can not find a guarantor, however this does not mean that I may not accept the foreign national as a tenant without a guarantor. As a matter of fact foreign nationals are usually the best tenants you can find, generally speaking of course because there are always exceptions. In any case I always prefer to have a guarantor rather than not.
Foreign Nationals are much better renters than British:
1 They have a strong attitude to work and responsibility , This is true in the vast majority of the cases but not in all cases.
2 They do not usually have access to legal aid and other benefits therefore in most cases they might not qualify for legal aid. This would make it hard for them to sue. However what you find is that the vast majority of foreigners are very good at keeping up with their payments.
The other case is of those who are 40 and above and do have a job. Generally the over 40s have stronger jobs than their younger counterpart (tenants int heir 20s and 30s), hence if they show that they have a very good job then I do away with a guarantor if they struggle with one. However please note that they need to have a very good stable job.
Also people over 40 may not have a guarantor. And this could be fine because good tenants over 40 usually have an advanced career and a relatively higher earning power than those people who are in their 20s or 30s, therefore just their career alone can be enough.
Also there is something called gut instinct. Sometimes even if a potential tenant does not meet all the requirements including having a guarantor then they can be so good, you can get so many good vibes that you just know they are going to be good and pay and do not cause any issue. However beware of those who are good pretenders because there are many and unless you are certain I would advice any landlord to avoid risks because they can be costly. An empty property is better an a property occupied by a tenant who does not want to pay and insists in staying no matter what. The empty property you can let the property occupied by a bad tenant you cannot let to any good tenant until the bad apple is out.
Use your intuition and question a lot.
The above are the basic rules but remember at the end of the day you are always screening for good people. No good person in their right mind would want to rob you form your rent no matter what.Therefore use your common sense a,d if someone gives you bad vibes you maybe have to listen to the vibes, no matter whether they have guarantors good jobs etc.
Conversely if someone may not meet all some of the criteria but sounds like a very good person you are unlikely to go wrong. Remember the story of the girls who had a her mother as the guarantor who did not pay for her daughter. It was because her daughter was a person of good will that I did not need to go the hard way to get her out.
What I find is that I press a lot in terms of asking for guarantors, proof of earnings, bank statements etc. These things can be time consuming however the response you get from the prospective tenant is very indicative of their overall attitude. Do they complain about this level of due diligence? if yes in most cases I let them go very fast, the application for accommodation is lost on the spot.
I recently had gentleman placing a holding deposit on one of my rooms and I asked
By the way…whenever they refer to me as “MATE” their application is void, if they do not have manners they do not pass my basic test, unless they have an extremely strong guarantor who owns a UK property of limited business
Estate Agents and peace of mind. A fallacy.
The fallacy many landlords I know many landlords who have been burned in many ways by letting agents. You haver to understand that letting agents have real etate themselves and will priorities their own housing stock no matter what. So they will naturally try to attract the best tenants for themselves not you. They may be talking the talk but you will find that tghey do pretty much noting. They are generally slow at renting your places, they will charge you an arm and a leg for simple maintenance, if the tenants stop paying they will not care and you will need to deal with them yourself.
In turn for the non service they will take 10 to 15% for the non management of the premises. Yes the Non management, becasue when the real problems arise you will still need to deal with it yourself. They will not care. If you do not believe me try high street estate agents as a landlord and you will love them!
What you will find is that, when maintenance issues arise they will either igore them, or overcharge you for any work they manage to get done. By talking to your tenants you will likely only hear they hate your letting agents, but do not worry, if you manage the proetrty yourself they will think the same about you….
The only solutions is to create systems of remote control of the issues which will arise.
The ultimate rock-fort of avoiding evictions and arrears.
What you are about to see here is the best way to avoiding bad tenants altogether so that you do not have to deal with any arrears, complaints, evictions and most other types of mess caused by bad tenants. The best way is to avoid them altogether.
Over the years after dealing with loads of tenants and being lucky enough not to need to go to court to evict any I have devices the best way to rent residential premises on a short-hold tenancy agreements without any fear of future hustle.
The ain way i guarantee the rental income for my properties is making sure the tenants will not take the mickey. But how do I do it? Is it though credit checks? Although credit checks provide you a good indication whether the tenant is a good payer it is not a guarantee and in the long terms you will realise it yourself. There will be one or two slipping though this referencing system. This is because if they have missed payments on other accommodation it is unlikely the landlord had gone to court to obtain a CCJ against the tenant. So in souych occasions you will not filter out the smart fraudulent ones. The ones who will try all the tricks of the systems to defraud you while trying to get away with it.
You may thing that adding a landlord reference to the credit report is a rock-fort too, but it is not. I personally know people who provided fake landlord references and did so successfully. After all a savvy fraudster will find ways to pass all these tests and secure the tenancy with all the legal rights that it entails. So when they decide to start playing you you will find yourself in hot water.
The way I have devised is securing a strong guarantor with the contract. When I mention a strong guarantor I do not mean a guarantor who has a high income although this could help. What I mean is a guarantor who owns a UK Property and or a limited business that had been running for a while. This means that unless an improbable catastrophe would ensue the rent is guaranteed. Of course this is because the guarantor will be responsible for any arrears and he has nowhere to hide like a tenant would. In the unlikely case the tenant stopped paying rent then in theory you could sue to guarantor for any arrears, win in court and the guarantor could only rely on selling all properties and businesses as quickly as possible in order not to pay. This is of course very unlikely. Therefore this type of guarantor will literally guarantee your rent.
It is not to say that I do not accept any other types of guarantors who have a good earning income or similar, but what I mean is that I always ask for a guarantor who has a tangible assets ownership so that they cannot escape any dept accrued by the nonpaying tenant.
I had one case in which I rented a flat to two girls on a joint tenancy agreement and I had one o the girls mother to act as a guarantor. This was years ago and I though this was bullet proof. However once the
What I invest in.
So far my focus is in investing in properties that have the higest possible upside. For this what I do I make sure that what I invest in is:
As central as possible and
As large as possible
As cheap as possible
My recurrent dream is that I find myself in one of my buildings and I get lost in it. I find new large, enormous rooms beautifully decorated in places I hardly remember. This is because the building is infinitely huge. Lots of potential. I had this dream over and over for years now.
I guess my investment philosophy is deeply ingrained in my subconscious for some reason.
The reason to be central is obvious. You find Starbucks, MacDonads and several other large brands in the centre and close to the centre, this is because this is where the action is going on . The same applies to the big brand hotel chains.They are there ans you should be there too. Central locations attracts tenants just because of the location. Central location means safety!
As large as possible does give you upside. A large building owned by one person has a higher intrinsic value than a small building per square foot in my opinion. This is because you have control of a large building all in one area. Look at the hotel chains, they all have high number of rooms and they are in large buildings. This is because being large allows you economy of scale there fore it is an upside in its own merits.
Cheap price is essential. This is because this will allow you room for development. The cheaper per square foot the more development you have room for and therefore you have room for added value to the property.
Persistent fearless negotiation.
Let s say you provide top quality accommodation, you perform all due diligence and something goes wrong. Maybe you had been slightly sloppy and rented out a flat or a room to a nightmare tenant. By the way, note that not all non paying tenants are nightmare tenants, most of the times they are very good and they do not mean not to pay they only are experiencing difficulties,, that is all. What you are trying to avoid is those tenants who do try to take the Mickey on purpose.
So what if despite all your efforts you bump into a nightmare tenant who will try everything to live in your property for as long a possible without paying rent. Believe me there are some of these people around. If you use the techniques above of prevention you are very unlikely to have to deal with these situations, however they can happen to any landlord. They think they are smart and they know the system and they can rob landlords.
Your Objective is to agree amicably to a move out date with these people who are trying to stay in your premises free of charge. At all times remember what your objective is. The objective is agreeing with them a move out date.
The tool you are using to achieve an agreed move out dater is constant contact with them even daily until they have agreed to a move out date.
Remember as long as you keep being persistent you will be able to get them out without a court order. All you have to avoid doing is chicken out and let them be. as long as you persist they will be out soon. Sooner than they even themselves can believe possible.
Believe me if you only keep trying the tenant will move out amicably, after all they are lazy and they do not want the hustle of being hustled. So what you find is that with only a little persistence you will be able to resolve pretty much all eviction problems amicably. No need for lawyers and litigation.
Remember your objective is for you r to agree a time limit with them to move out amicably.
If everything fails and you have to deal with a non paying tenant, you can always use persistent fearless negotiation. You have to be prepared to grow a pair if you do not have it. It is alliteratively easy.
All you do you never stop contacting them and speaking to the,. But what you might say is what if they do not want to respond to my calls, do not open the door or ignore me altogether? There is a good strategy for that and it will be covered next.
One of the reasons landlords do end up with non paying tenants for sometimes years, is that they lack cojones and are unable to confront the issue and being firm.
The tactic to use is very simple. Once you have realised that the tenant will never be able to payoff his her debts you become laser focused agreeing on a move out date and you should never get distracted by their excuses or , aggressiveness or provocations. For example they might say, I will have the money next week, If you are sure they will not be able to payoff their debt all you do is keep asking the question: “When are you moving out?” in various forms and variations.
If they complain about something not been fixed in the house what you do is you use as another reason for them to find suitable accommodation soon. It is my opinion that despite the law says you have to maintain the premises even when the tenants do not pay what happens if that you do the maintenance, however your maintenance personnel, is continuously sick, on paternity leave or have emergency work or you cannot get in touch with them.
You never deny non maintenance you simply are struggling to find people that are available to fix the issue. And then if they corner you which they willl not you can say, “look I cannot find anyone can you please help find someone to fix it?” They will not eb able to do it anyway and in case anything would go to court you have a strong defense anyway. So whatever rights they might have under the law you respect it but you find it hard for some reason to get the job done and you even ask for their help!
So if they say the house is falling apart and it is of poor quality, you say “I understand how you feel, how about you find alternative accommodation that suits you better within a couple of weeks? you know you do not like staying here, you do not pay and yet you stay without paying. Find something better so are you moving in one or two weeks? ” If they say “I do not know”, you reply something along the lines “well, if it is true that you do not pay because this place is not worth living as you say, the only thing that makes send se ifs for you to move somewhere else very soon, you know yourself this situation is not sustainable, so it is going to be one week or two weeks before you move out?” As you see yon need to act as a broken record, you go at it a umber of times, they are faceless and you have to be the same as they are. After all trying to screw you so why not risks being obnoxious , it pays in this cases.
If they say once again “I do not know when i can move out” then you go again. “look you say you do not like being here, and I take it is the truth but you have stayed here without paying rent for awhile and it cannot continue, as I said the best option is that you move out in either one or two weeks the most!”. Remember at the end of the day, they do not really know what you are capable of doing and you always want them to second guess you, imagine being in a place and not being paying rent. Despite the landlord asks you to move out you refuse, but you sense the landlord is not that soft or scared and he can get you out somehow, but you do not excatly how.
You do not know what runs in the non paying tenant’s heads, and the fear they are experiencing, they know deep inside that if they whats around comes around. They know they are doing something nasty and something nasty will happen but it is hard for them to second guess what! They are usually aware of something called karma so they know that one way or another they will have to leave . You just need to be determined. In case you try 10 times and they do not agree of a time limit then you say :”look I am not here to waste my time rest assured, I am only trying to be helpful and make sure we agree to a move out date amicably either within a week or maximum two weeks this is the most I can do for you. So is it going to be 1 or two weeks?”
You try as many times as possible and only stop once they agree a final date within two weeks. Why two weeks? This is the sweet spot, usually one week is not enough to truly find accommodation, but if someone is motivated to move out, it takes no longer than two weeks.
Once the two weeks are almost over you check with them if they are truly moving out. It is important that you check before the move out date, two to tree days before. This is important because if they are not moving out then this is serves as extra pressure to break their spirit. So you call to check, If they do not pickup you immediately serve an abandonment notice on the move out date. So they will reply.
In most cases you will not need an abandonment notice. They will have moved out or close to be moving out.
But lets say they still try which is unlikely, then you can use your voice. I have said once or twice to get people out: Now I have tried the
What if they “say are you trying to evict me illegally?”
All I am trying to do is find an amicable move out date with you, one thing is for sure this situation is not sustainable all I am trying to do is resolve this amicably. So are you moving out in one or two weeks? Two weeks is the maximum”
Do not worry almost nobody will say “you have to evict me through the courts”, but even this has happened to me. But there are solutions to this too that do not involve the courts either. One example is how I resolved this exact type of issue with the Scumbag Ayub.
So know that over 98% of the bad tenants who try to overstay viwtout paying rent are resolved quite eaily using the obove technique.
This is your tump card response. Look all I am saying is that your time in this house is very limited I guarantee you can stay tonight but I cannot guarantee for tomorrow. I want you to understand that tonight I guarantee but not tomorrow” (your tone is important)” Adn you shall not worry I will never evict you illegally! but I cannot guarantee in the near future if you do not move out amicably” We are gueared up for such situations do not worry all I guarantee is tonight” But tomorrow if there are new , VERY appropriate property managers I do not know and given the situation I will centrally pass it on, so do not worry about me, I tried to be reasonable ” Please note that you are hinting to something but never mention the details and leave it to their imaginations. If they ask what property managers you are the landlord, and you can say look this sort of thing I resolve amicably but sometimes if the situation becomes complicated I relive myself of all management of this property and leave it to the professional property mangers for this type of situation, they are responsible for it not me.” Once again you are playing their fear while you have not coherce dm threatened or anything you are asserting your right to appoint expert property managers for this type opf situation. Trust me almost no one wants to be under that type of pressure for too long so they will move out on their own.
Once again it is a psychological war and you are dealing with very psychologically weak people after all, if they were tough they would not be in such a situation.
What if they say “I have my rights and you need a court order”.
This is a very easy way to deal with usually. It is very important that you are ready to go for legal proceedings and you have a lawyer ready for action . So that you will leave it up to the lawyer. Yes you will have to for out some money for the lawyer and proceedings but if you communicate in the right way this is Very Rarely needed!
If a tenat say to you while he or she has not paid the rent ofr a while: “I know my rights the only way for you to get me out of here i for you to go for legal proceedings and this is expensive, therefore I will pay what , when I want and If I want, I will leave when and if I want and there is nothing you can go!” This is what that scumbag Ayub mentioned in the story earlier said almost to the letter.
Before I had the experience with Ayub I heard of a similar story when a tenant said something similar to her landlord. The reaction of the landlord was to say something along these lines:
“Look I recommend you find alternative accommodation very soon but if you do not leave on your own accord I will do as you say and I will start legal proceedings. And Remember it is not me that wanted me to start the proceedings, it is you who asked for it. I would like to remind you the consequence of the eviction proceedings and the County Court Judgement that comes with it. This will be on your credit report with its consequences. I recommend you seek legal independent advice on the consequences of this. Pleau if you force my hand to take this matter to court rest assured that once I will get a favorable order for arrears payment by the judge not only will you be evicted but I will chase you for the arrears and I will get a court order to deduct it from any future wages you might earn with interests. Up to you. I recommend you think about it and within two weeks you are out of here, I know two weeks is enough time to make alternative arrangements and if you go amicably I will not even chase you for any debt you have with me. Instead if you move out within two weeks you do not have to go through any of this, I do not want to do this, I really do not wish this on anyone. After all you have been a good tenant, the only issue is the arrears. Other than the arrears issue I would recommend you to anyone else!! I hope you make the right decision and I will wish you the best after that! You have been very good!”
There is not one case I know of where this have not worked yet. As far as I know it worked in all cases including the infamous Ayub Scumbag.
Notice they know they have to go to court and defend their case and they also know they will lose if they do not go to court and therefore will be evicted with a CCJ attached onto their name. It is true that you can get attached earning court order after, but this is not worthwhile in many cases. It is important they know about it, As you notice the praise at the end is very important too , you do not want to leave hard feelings without. If you do not leave hard feelings how can they go on and try to screw you? So not only will you make them fear the court proceedings but but you will make them feel bad about screwing you over. Double wham effect!
In the unlikely case they are there after the two weeks you will appoint the lawyer and he will do the rent, I have no experience with this part because over the years I never needed to talk anyone to court. However I guess I would still be in touch with them and try to negotiate their exit without going though the courts.
What to do if the tenant plays hard ball and stops responding? The Abandonment notice. They will talk to you.
This is the question everybody has. What happens is that the tenants who want to try everything in order to live in your property without paying rent on purpose, usually simply stop responding to you. Plain and simple. This trows most managers or employers off balance, what do you do? You try to call them and they never answer. They do this in the hope that you give up talking to them so that they continue not paying as long as feasibly possible. Then if you think about it your only option would be starting eviction proceedings, what can you do? If you start legal [proceedings then it is even better for the non paying tenant because they can wait for the bailiffs to come , after all it is going to take a few months….This is an old technique used by those tenants who successfully manage to stay in the premises until they bailiffs come for them.
Well there is a smart way which worked all the time! There is a technique that was shared with me years ago when a tenant stopped paying and stopped responding to me too.
But you can outsmart them with a very simple card so that they will find it hard to resist and they will have to talk to you. Remember to be a good manager you have to be very street smart. And this is a street smart move.
The story goes that this tenant stopped paying rent and responding to me as soon as I said I was about to inspect the property. I had not visited the property there for over one year or even over two years I do not quite remember, however as soon as I mentioned that I would have paid a visit to check on the flat the tenant simply did not respond to any of my calls. I tried several times but nothing, no payment either. I got worried and I started realizing that I had to do something about it.
I did not know what to do anymore and I started calling people for advise, I could not stop calling so desperate I was for help. This is my fail safe mechanism when I have a pending issue and I am stuck. I start calling people and ask for advise. I call literally anyone who I think could have the right answer tot he problem I have. After a few hours of calls I spoke to an estate agent who said to me:
“Be smart, you do not want to go to court and there are many ways to get rid of a stinky tenant without going to court. What to do when they do not talk to you is serving an abandonment notice.” the estate agent said ” You want to outsmart these people and I can assure they are not that smart. All you have to do is making sure they start talking to you again and they do not use the no talking card as an excuse not to pay. After all they cannot tell you too many times in your face I will pay you later, because they will eventually be going on their own without any eviction . What to do to get them to talk to you is serving an abandonment notice, you can do it in two ways:
1 send them a letter stating that if they do not respond within 7 working days you will assume the property has been abandoned and you by law take lawful repossession of it. They will look it up and realize you are correct and they will immediately start communicating with you
If you live nearby the property then you can also place a notice outside their door and this will be also very effective.”
Well I did exactly as I was told , it worked! Instead of the tenant contacting me , the tenant moved out very fast. What happened was that the tenant bypassed the electric meter. Also the same tenant was running a scam with council tax too. So the tenant for a long while was living in the flat not paying for heating electricity and not paying council tax, but only paying rent.
So this is a little secret that will save you tons of sleepless night and thousands of pounds because tenants who work the system and try to scam the landlords always use the not talking card. It is an effective card as I know a landlord who has a tenants who never paid for over two years playing that card. But the landlord is old and soft and not tough as we are. Also you have to realize that as you get older money is not that important to you anymore and the you can and will afford to get things slip away a bit. After all at that point money is not of that importance to you.
The people who cause trouble with other tenants in an HMO, housing in multiple occupation.
One of the issues that you might find is the bad apples in an HMO who do pay but are messy and people in the house cannot stand, maybe they play music the cause some sort of nuisance to other people. How to you get rid of them without a court order?
Very simple just tell them straight look “I have received a number of complaints from the other people in the house about you and they say it is either you go or all of them will go, obviously I can not replace everyone else because even if I did I suspect the new people would not want to stay. Therefore lets try to resolve this, what I propose is you you to stay for now but please plan t an alternative accommodation elsewhere, please do not feel I am rushing you out because you have been a good tenant. I am sure in another house you will find people that are more congenial with you. Because you have been such a good tenant og course I will provide great references for you! You have been absolutely great to me and I would like to thank you for that!”
As you see I have addressed the issue and I flooded the person with praise and I even provide great references for them , so they have nothing against me personally. I am taking no sides and the issue is resolved without court proceedings.
This type of situation has happened a number of times and worked really well for me the bad apple went very quickly. Notice I always praise them, but it is not a bad praise either it is true I really mean it. Other than the complaints they pay on time and are absolutely fine. So If you are planning of running an HMO then you should never worry about the bad apples in the HMOs because if they pay on time they are people of their word and they would not stay if they are not welcome.
Also remember that they also sense people are not happy with them and they will move quite quickly anyway without causing you any issue at all. only ask you to go .