The things we learnt when dealing with a "difficult" tenant

Below is a rough guide on what we had to do to navigate a "tough" tenant within one of our properties. Hopefully the tips below will help those Landlords that are managing properties like ourselves and just need a loose guide.

Recently in one of our more recent refurb properties we had to deal with a tough tenant, who didn't get along with other tenants at the property.

This should have been a quite easy fix, in terms of finding out the core issues between tenants and helping resolve them. Or if they were grown up enough to deal with it themselves and steer clear of one another.

There are lot of posts on the subject and the consensus is that, as Landlords we should not get involved. Whilst that does make sense to a degree a bad tenant can sour your relationship with other tenants, so it's in your best interest to find out what's going on and help anyway you can.

Our credit and reference checks showed nothing unusual, she had a guarantor in place as she was a freelance "make-up" artist so income and credit didn't meet our reference checks for affordability.

Aside from that we decided to proceed with allowing her to rent a room in our property, as we thought we had covered our bases in terms of risk and payments.

This particularly tough tenant, was causing other tenants grief on a daily basis. As yet we do not know why she was acting in this way but she had lost her job over Christmas (we found out later that she had said something to her boss at a Christmas party and was immediately dismissed). I believe if the tenant was working she would be far too busy to argue or cause trouble for other tenants let alone taunt, swear, harass.

Below are a list of things that were of particular concern to us and other tenants :

• False accusations of tenants being aggressive

• Throwing away other tenants belongings in the bin

• False allegations of us as a Landlord not doing our job or adhering to standards

• Refusing mediation with local police - after engaging them to false accusations

• Engaging local authority with false accusations - to which the local authority appear to not take notice

• Leaving the property in an awful mess and state

• Contesting of deposit when there was clear evidence of purposeful neglect to the property and her room

• Not securing the property on leaving, when she was the last person in the property

• Being aggressive and exhibiting unstable behaviour

• Harassing behaviour

• Police being called for false allegations

• False allegations of heating being controlled outside the property

• Opening windows and doors whilst running the heating

• Maliciously opening windows and external doors whilst heating on full to waste energy

• Running all hot water from tank and complaining about lack of hot water

• Disabling or hard resetting the communal router to upset other tenants

• Over 350 emails sent to inundate support requests within a 6 month period

• Everything was an emergency status, from missing shopping to remote control not working

• Staying past the served Section 21 form notice date

• Leaving the keys at the property prior to the check out appointment and contesting our claim on the deposit even though backed up by photographic and video evidence (that was upheld by the DPS)

Her cleanliness of communal areas was poor and would encroach on other people's stay and the health and safety of others - be warned some graphic photos ahead:

Left under kitchen cabinet void

Baking tray left unclean

Soiled toilet

How we overcame our "tough" tenant:

Hopefully you get the idea of what actually we, as an ethical Landlord, had to put up with and hopefully the below steps will help you in your current or future situations with a "tough" tenant:

• Do tenant reference checks and credit checks

• Use platforms to advertise the type of tenant you are looking for

• Make sure you insure against credit worth tenants (this will help when they refuse to pay rent and help for eviction purposes)

• Get a guarantor if they fail affordability/credit checks (reference the guarantor also)

• "Interview" the tenant - ask them questions about previous landlord, why they are moving, get a sense of what they are like, listen to your instincts. They are usually right.

• Do a proper inventory check at check in

• Write everything down and or write up minutes of any face to face conversations and distribute

• Check a tenant's passport (right to rent)

• Create a welcome pack for tenants (Gas Certificate - if applicable, right to rent document, copy of contract, electrical certificate copy)

• Keep all text messages until these are no longer needed - preferably until the tenant moves out

• Prioritise "issues" always respond and address - regardless if you have done so before

• Be consistent in your responses

• Be part of an organisation to gather more information of your responsibilities if not clear cut (we use the RLA - http://www.rla.org.uk/referral and use code ELI-272 for a discount)

• Do not rely on Local Authority to be on your side (Lewisham Council - were particularly unhelpful with our issue - instead preferred to be silent when we asked for direct help with this tenant and only reminded us that we were not allowed to change the locks when the tenants refused to move)

• Be patient - try not to reply in haste or anger and be patient at all times. Landlords have to be seen as always good and on the ball. Do not give bad tenants an excuse to muddy the water.

• A valid section 21 notice must be served for you to gain possession (at the time of writing this "no fault" notice may change). This is the only way and to go through the courts, but if you're insured rent will always be covered

• Contact the guarantor as they may not be aware of the situation with the tenant, try and do this via email or text

When this tenant became very difficult for us to interact with we tried to minimise face to face interactions and calls direct. Instead our approach was to use to email as our first port of call, for any and all issues and to allow us to have a trail of responses.

Having a written trail is crucial if anything is missed or contested you have a written backup. Most landlords won't have this avenue but from the above it was invaluable to have especially when we were being accused of not acting correctly as Landlords.

Also I would recommend go for an inspection every 1-2 months of the property even if renting per room. This is so you can keep an eye on things and make sure the condition is not going below your standards and this will be a forum to highlight issues or concerns, do this via writing.

If ANY concerns are raised by the tenant, even if you think they are without merit always access and reply. Things should be deemed to the priority list you have regardless of tenants' priorities, they tend to not line up all the time.

For instance, when heating isn't turning on at 21C but the outside and indoor temperatures are 23C this would be deemed a low priority. If however the heating is not going on and the outside temperature is low, this would be classed as a priority and would have to be actioned quickly.

To give you a sense of priority levels we have:

• Emergency - real time response of what to do - phone

• Urgent - within 2 hours or immediate depending on when received and by which method - email or phone

• Important --> Low - within 2 days - email or online form

If you follow some or all of these points you will be able to gain possession of your property back or even resolve issues with the parties involved.

If you have any other tips we would love to hear them - sign up and write your comments below.

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