There are a few types of tenants landlords should to avoid at all costs. One type is the Professional Bad Tenant: a tenant who goes from one property to another without any intention of paying the rent.
Make no mistake about it; this is the worst and arguably the most dangerous type of tenant a landlord can get.
Because professional bad tenants often know the law just as well as a solicitor, they are dangerous. Often, they use sham defences and spurious claims to try and delay any repossession actions from the landlord.
CASE STUDY: Anthony Alexander
Professional Bad Tenant: Anthony Alexander
Many people ask: ‘what is the worst Landlord Action have seen?’ There have been quite a few cases, but one in particular stands out.
The case is that of Anthony Alexander who, in 2003, rented a property in North London. It was the landlord’s only property purchased as an investment for his son.
As with all professional bad tenants, the rent didn’t come in and the games started pretty much from the outset. After going through the traditional ways of evicting the tenant, Alexander began putting in sham defences (for which the Courts eventually banned him, since he was a false litigant).
To evict him fully ended up costing the landlord nearly £30,000. What made the matter worse is that the landlord had to sell the property to raise money to pay the legal fees involved with taking this tenant on.
Fast forward a few years down the line to 2007, when a landlord in South Africa instructed us to evict a bad tenant who owed £13,000. This time, we exposed him on BBC Inside Out.
Landlords need to learn from cases like this. No method of referencing will ever be able to weed out 100% of rogue tenants. However, there are a few key things landlords need to do to spot a professional bad tenant:
• Request 3 months bank statements, which shows if the tenant can afford the tenancy. It also gives an idea about what financial commitments they have, and it shows whether they have been paying rent (or a mortgage) recently.
• Official photographic identification (passport of driver’s license). Ensure it is a genuine document, particularly if your tenant has a foreign passport. Use the internet to search for what that particular document should look like, and, how to tell if it is fraudulent.
• Recent utility bill in the tenant’s name: demonstrates that they have been paying utilities and the tenant put these utilities in their name.
• Employer reference: to check that the tenant is in employment. Also, landlords should follow up the reference with a call to the company’s office.
• Previous landlord reference: many argue that these should be taken with a pinch of salt, since if the tenant was rogue, the previous landlord will want to move the problem on. I think it is still good practice to obtain one.
• A professional tenant reference. They are inexpensive and there are many service providers. This will also usually involve some form of credit check too.
If a potential tenant, for whatever reason, does not want to provide any of this information, alarm bells should start ringing. In our experience, it is only the rogues and professional bad tenants who would take issue with providing a landlord with this information.
