Updating post from Reddit.
After 7 months of unpaid rent the possession order was granted for the tenant to leave the property on 9th of October. I went to the property this weekend and the tenant was still there, I messaged the tenant saying that you received a possession order to leave the property and to pay the money + all the penalties and the tenant replied that I will have another court.
Now, I am talking with my solicitor to get bailiff to evict the tenant. This tenant is a pain and doesn't understand anything. Any ideas how long takes for bailiff to evict the tenant?
The Council may well have told them to wait until evicted by the Bailiff (assuming this is what the tenant means by 'court') and could even be covering any costs incurred by the tenant in doing so. It will likely be cheaper than meeting their obligation to house the tenant themselves.
You'll have to continue to pursue the unpaid monies through the Courts as well... I believe they have the power to garnish wages and so forth.
It’s a truly ridiculous situation that councils are so underfunded they have to advise people who have been lawfully evicted by the courts, to stay anyway until physically removed
I always thought if you intentionally make yourself homeless so not paying rent then the council does not help. That advice is usually given by council when the landlord is issuing a section 21 maybe to sell.
Yeah that's part of it, but also just that it reduces the load for the over-loaded council
At the time you're given an eviction notice by a court that should be sufficient to consider that the person "hasn't made themselves homeless" - we shouldn't be forcing people to ignore the courts just to stay housed. "Just ignore the courts when it suits you" is a bad precedent to be setting at the best of times
Yeah getting the money back is going to take you years and cost lots more money. Your only option at the moment is to proceed with the bailiffs to evict. I didn't want to throw lots more money and effort at getting my rent arrears from the ex tenants so found a really annoying debt collector that pesters the ex tenants continuously until they pay. So far they have recovered 50% of the rent arrears but could be many more months to see any of it. The usual stance is prioritise getting the keys and think of the arrears as gone as its very rare to get any money back.
50% recovery is well worth having though! Hopefully some more will trickle in over time. It'd be good to see you get what you're owed.
I mean I was about to see if anyone would buy the debt pennies to the pound and wash my hands on that chapter as it's been a whole year but I had an email to update me. I only went with the debt collector as I had an initial call to see what services they provided they took my details and hammered the hell out of me until I was getting annoyed so I thought hmmm if I hire them they would do the same to the ex tenant. Not heard anything for 11 months then got an update 🤣. They get a 10% cut but it was a complete bonus I guess.
that is excellent, would you be able to share their details?
One tenant ran off owning me over 8k in rent , that was over a decade ago. I took out a CCJ, but that episode taught me a valuable lesson, only rent to tenants who have something to lose .
you can ask the court to freeze his accounts and his employee to pay everything back.
You couldn't let me know who you used for the debt collection, they sound excellent.
For us the bailiffs at the county court in Edmonton (north London) took about 8 months. It is understood that you can speed this up by transferring to the high court for a small fee. But still expect 2 to 4 months probably with high court bailiffs
Next step is to get a warrant for the bailiffs to enforce the repossession order. I used the guys over at
Worked out far cheaper than what the solicitors were charging, and just as quickly. They even helped with a moneyclaim for recovering money owed.
High Court 3 months at least
What type of eviction notice did you serve?
All this sounds really scary...I think the tenant reference check was done okay? What are some effective ways to avoid getting into unpaid rent and eviction situation?
It just took me four months to get a bailiff appointment, and because it is close to Christmas, they won't want to upset your tenants by evicting them prior to the festive period!!!!
My solicitor thinks the bailiffs will have no problem evicting before Christmas. I'm hoping to get rid of a problem tenant before then
Wishing you lots of luck, I think you can go for a High Court enforcement, which costs more, but is quicker. I'm not sure how it works, but it might be worth checking with your solicitor.
Even if they don't celebrate Christmas? (curious)
Indeed, they wouldn't want to be so presumptuous. The whole system is a joke, stacked in favour of the tenants. It will be interesting to see how this ends up further down the line when Labour has chased away the bulk of the private landlords!!
Agree. Govt are shockingly willing to buy into the whole demonisation of landlords. It's depressingly popular to spit and hiss about landlords as though they are one homogeneous group of vampires. It is a horribly oversimplified view.
Useful scapegoat I suppose, as ultimately Govt can skim off all the profits of renting but don't have to build or maintain any properties. Much more cost effective than building council houses or ensuring sensible wages for manual jobs.
I do feel sorry for hardworking families that aren't high earners in this country right now. So hard to catch a break. But making it impossible to find anywhere to rent by reducing the available stock is not helping.
It is really strange, you don't have to be brain of Britain to understand that the amount of available properties for rent are going to dramatically reduce over the next few years. Why on earth would any government encourage that?