My Story of the Nightmare Tenant- What experts call the professional tenant.

My story:

I am in the business of renting. I have been a landlord for 27 years and yes I got burned as a landlord. I ended up with a professional tenant that ran me $7,000 in legal fees and $12,000 in rent arrears and I could not evict him. I learned the hard way. A very expensive lesson. Everywhere I turned just cost me more money. Even the lawyers I turned to did not know how to handle the case. The first lawyer I called brought in a Paralegal and charged me $786.00 for a one and ahalf hour consultation because he had no idea what to do. He sat in on the meeting with the Paralegal and myself. Since he had no idea of what to do, it cost me money for him to learn. The result, he sent a letter to the tenant threatening legal action, of which he had no idea what the legal action would be except to scare the tenant into paying. It did not work. When I received my bill $786 I asked for an explanation for the exhorbitant amount for one letter sent. His explanation of the fees: the paralegal charged $150 per hour while the lawyer's fee was $350 per hour. All they did was listen to my case with no idea of what to do.

My tenant knew all the tricks on how to avoid paying the rent and how to prevent eviction. We filled out all the legal N4 and L1 papers and they were all completed correctly, but he managed to avoid enforcement. Although the tribunal ruled in my favour he was able to avoid eviction.( I am purposely leaving out specific details as to how he managed to avoid eviction in order to prevent unethical tenants from using the same system.

I found another lawyer in another city that dealt with tenancy issues who knew what he was doing and his final bill came in at $7,000. After almost a year I was able to have the tenants evicted but no rent was paid for the past 11 months and my legal fees were horrendous. Although I was able to obtain a judgement in my favour, went through small claims court I was unable to recover any of my costs or rent arrears. My tenant went to jail for other reasons unrelated to my case. It turned out he was on parole at the time that I rented the house to him and he has since been charged with over 100 fraud charges- having to do with giving out checks with insufficient funds and so the checks would bounce.

Landlords are all alone when it comes to help with their problems.. There are sites where you have to register as a landlord. It is worth the registaration for your protection as well as the tenant. Since a credit check is being done, this will go on record that you are checking their credit. You should have the tenant sign a consent form. This form will protect you in case of privacy issues that clearly demonstrates that you had his/her consent for the check.

Credit Checks may not be enough to determine whether a tenant is a good risk or not. You need the full check that also confirms their identity and confirms if the information they provided to you matches what is on file.