taking tenant to court for rent

My personal opinion is that landlord insurance is not really worth it for tenant arrears. We had it once (CGU), tried to claim a loss and they told us that the bond should cover it. This was in the early days when we had a “professional” agent taking care of the leases and there was no bond!

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If you have a residential tenant in your house and they aren’t playing the game, it’s going to cost you alot of time / money and stress. That’s a given. Your question really is how do you limit the damage.

Best place to start is to very much lower your expectations and forget about the lack of money or “fair” or “justice”…just throw them all away before you start. Ask your Lender to do the same and see how they react. It’s called the meat in the sandwich….all investors thrive on it.

This isn’t the best place to pick up info on how to quickly get rid of recalcitrant tenants…especially if it is residential. There have been numerous posts about this before – if you are looking for a quick cheap solution you are out of luck. The law and RTA is very heavily weighted against you. You are only the Owner and therefore, you and your economic dilemma rank very low on the priority scale…despite you thinking that it is important.

For industrial places it’s easy peasy…but that doesn’t help you.

If the tenant has been a few rounds of the tribunal and knows how to play the game…you are in for even a longer and more stressful build up.

What’s the solution you ask to your problem. We struggled for years on this one but finally came up with a permanent solution. Our struggle took so long because we didn’t want to accept that as Owners of residential property, we weren’t considered the top priority. We now know we aren’t.

We now only purchase places where people don’t live…mothers and screaming children aren’t involved…and everything can be shifted in 12 hours from 7pm to 5am with a forklift and truck and a locksmith loves working at 6am.

We charge 1 months security bond and 2 months ‘bank guarantee’, as well as keeping the rent monthly in advance, automatic by direct debit. We therefore get 4 months buffer up our sleeve if they start playing silly buggers. I’m thinking of upping the bond to 3 months in future, as 4 months is pretty slim.

This RTA which restricts ressy Landlord’s to 4 weeks bond and maybe $ 100 for a short list of some animals is outrageously too low…as you are about to find out. Try giving your tenant a free plasma TV or some movie tickets or a free night out or a free roof over their heads or something….that might bring them around. Works for heaps of people apparently – haven’t tried it myself.

As a last resort, there is a guy here on the forum’s…Richard something, I think who has some advice for residential disputes. He works primarily for the tenant though, so you’d better hope and pray that your tenant isn’t also talking with him – otherwise it’ll get a whole lot messier and your hip pocket will need to step down another peg or two on the heirachy of importance.

Or maybe join all the optimists out there and think of it like this ;
1. It’s great experience for you.
2. Perhaps you are being too harsh and the tenant needs your understanding.
3. Just think of the great big tax deductions – wacko !!
4. You’re still getting some capital gains on the dirt, unless you live in the Eastern States.
5. Just think of the balance and Karma involved – you’ve enjoyed higher returns than bank interest and this little incident is balancing that up with some realised risk.

Good luck with it all, send another post in December when you finally get them out and have cleaned up the damage.

Cheers,

Dazzling

“No point having a cake if you can’t eat it.”

Hiya Wild One,

I’ve been down a few avenues with these guys. Check your contract very carefully. Usually these guys are very willing to hand you the cash owed to you (who determines that !!!) straight away and then chase the bad risk, as they usually secure the debt with a caveat over your title if they don’t get it back from the tenant.

Call me cynical, but I’d rather chase the debtor myself or walk away from the money than have some heavies placing caveats and warrants on my title deed.

Pure business sense dictates that for a measly $ 198 you ain’t gonna get much bang for your buck. You have one bad tenant who is behind $ 2K in rent and leaves $ 10K damage, that’s worth 60 policies….and that doesn’t include any wages, insurances, profits or running costs….nope…there is way more to it than that.

Each to his own though. You may be happy with caveats placed on your title deed.

Cheers,

Dazzling

“No point having a cake if you can’t eat it.”

I had friends who’s tenants turned to hippies and built a teepee in the back yard, didn’t pay rent for ages. They rang them at work and left a lot of details messages to shame them into paying, which they eventually did and what about listing them with baycorp? Not sure if you can do that? Thankfully haven’t experienced that side of tenants, so good luck with it.

Get your money working for you instead of a bank! You could earn up to 4% PER MONTH. Ask me how!

Tenancy tribunals always favour the poor things who are out of work,snivellin kids- we all know but this tenant has a job. Might it be possible to hit him with a Statement of Claim in the courts– and bypass all the Tribunal Bleedin heart rubbish? A suburban solicitor could prepare and serve it on him– make it as juicy as possible– loss of rent ,damages, your loss of time in pursuing him etc etc— The Tenant would then have to defend it in Court— get legal advice etc– the idea is to get it out of Tenancy Tribunal–When it starts costing him money he will be more inclined to cough up– This is a suggeestion only– I am totally unqualified to advise but remember an old axiom-“Anyone can sue anyone for Anything” The onus will be on the Tenant to defend your Statement of Claim and he is obliged to appear in Court- otherwise he can be arrested. As he has a job he will be able to be pursued . Sic him,Carlin.

Hi Carlin
Been down this road, tenant moved out 2 weeks ago.
Tenant was in arrears to the tune of $1,700, bond was $600. The tenant had been renting my IP for 3 years, was always paying late etc. My mistake was that I fell for the “down and out story”.

Rather than go via the court system I tried on a number of occasions to negotiate with the tenant but this was going nowhere. Continually promising payments that did not eventuate.

Finally court date was set, as part of this process a mediator was involved in attempt to negotiate a deal prior to the hearing. The mediator was excellent.

I requested that my tenant pay half the money owing within 2 days and 7 days later final payment. An hour later he reluctantly agreed to this and if tenant did not comply with this official agreement a baliff would evict him at my request.

This outcome was not was I expected as fortunately I did not lose any money, though I did lose sleep.

I was actually told by the mediator that if I could not negotiate a deal and the tenant did not cough up not to bother trying to chase the money as it would be a waste of time. It wasn’t too hard to figure that one out.

I also did not have landlord insurance. I have heard good and bad in regards to this type of insurance, however I think I would prefer to have some protection after this experience.

Good luck
M

hey mate.

The only thing you can do is claim for the difference from the bond. eg. Bond = $800, compensation = $1500, claim amount = $700.

So if the tribunal orders the tenant to pay $700 plus the right for l.l to pay the bond, you will have to take the ten to a higher proceeding (magistrates) to claim the $700.

The system sucks and would prob work out to be more expensive through the mag. So to answer your question… No you probably won’t get it back unless the ten is honest (unlikely) or it’s for the principle.

Sorry for the unless info but it usually works out this way.

Stop busting balls. Simple.