How to Deal with Tenant Problems as a Landlord

Not being confident in how to deal with tenant problems that might occur is one of the reasons many people never build up enough confidence to become a landlord. There is a perception by many that the life of a landlord means having to deal with problem tenants all day and night and having to be at the end of your phone to deal with a leaky tap or a boiler problem 365 days a year. This article explores this perception and gives you tips and advice on how to deal with tenancy problems in as easy and straight forward a way as possible.

Reasons for Problem Tenants or Problems that come up in a Tenancy

There are many reasons why problems might occur during a tenancy. Sometimes a perfectly good tenant might have lost their job and therefore be struggling to pay the rent. Or perhaps they have broken up with their partner and they go off the rails a bit wondering if life is worth it and they take it out on your property by vandalising it. Other times, it comes down to the fact that they are just problem tenants and even though you did all the right checks on them before hand (well hopefully you did all the right checks) they were always going to be a problem no matter what.

Some problems are also landlord or letting agent made. Sometimes you as the landlord or the letting agent have just not dealt with the tenant well and have been slow to answer phone calls or deal with legitimate problems and because of that, what should have been perfectly good tenants, have turned into nightmares because they are going to let you pay for not treating them correctly.

Common Problems that Can Occur During a Tenancy

• Vandalism of property
• None payment of rent
• Complaints from Neighbours or others
• Tenant asking for a reduction in rent

These are just a few of the problems that can occur during a tenancy. Each problem requires it’s own solution. If you have a good company managing the property for you then they should be able to advise you and help you to deal with any of the above. However, in some situations you might want to deal with things or oversee things a little more closely yourself. Below is a bit of advice on how to deal with some of these problems.

How to Deal with Tenancy Problems

If you are managing your properties yourself, perhaps the first thing you should do is to try and establish communication with your tenants. This isn’t always easy to do, since if the problem has it’s origins in financial issues then people are notorious for wanting to bury their heads in the sand and not deal with them and that may include not wanting to talk to you as the landlord. It is essential that you break through this wall of silence.

Once you have built rapport you will be in a better position to really understand your tenant and to evaluate whether you want to continue having them as a tenant or whether the time is right to start making moves to get rid of them.

If things have got to a stage with your tenant problems that you want to evict them but they are refusing to leave, if you don’t yet have the confidence to deal with it yourself and you don’t want to pay your solicitor to deal with it, there are many specialist tenancy eviction companies.

I have listed two of the better-known tenant eviction companies below for your reference:

• Landlord Action
• Tenant Eviction

Keep in mind that if you are a member of a landlords association you can get advice from them and you could potentially even get the forms that you can use to evict a tenant legally yourself, meaning that you wouldn’t have to pay anyone else to do it for you. Visit our landlord resources page for a list of landlord associations you might be interested in joining.

How to Prevent Problem Tenants in the First Place

If you can follow the advice on how to deal with tenant problems in this article then you will be well on the way to getting rid of tenant problems in the life. Yes there will always be a small percentage of people that know matter you do will give you problems, but there are often risks involved in any business and in the whole scheme of things, risks relating to tenants, if managed correctly, will only have a small affect your business and most tenant problems can be dealt with very quickly and effectively. The nightmare stories that you hear tend to be from landlords who haven’t done one or more of the above correctly. However, it is the nature of any business dealing with the general public that there will occasionally be problems.

Here is the best advice to follow when dealing with a tenant problem:

1. Deal with any problems early and quickly, do not ignore them and hope they will go away.
2. If you begin to feel out of your depth. then call in or get advice from experts at dealing with tenant problems and tenancy issues.
3. Make sure you have an effective tenancy agreement in place and that it is signed by the tenant.
4. Make sure you credit check your tenants and that you get valid and good references. If you are using a management company to manage your tenants then they should do all this for you, but makes sure that you check their procedures and that they are doing it correctly. If you are doing things yourself then you can use somewhere like http://tenantverify.co.uk/ to credit check them.

If you have found this how to deal with tenant problems page useful then make sure you sign up for our investment property newsletter for more of our best advice, tips and helpful articles.

return from this tenant problems page to the home page of investment property guru

Return to top