Best way to deal with a non paying tenant in rented farmhouse

[Longlowdog]

Holy crap, there are an awful lot of folk on here who want a capitalist price for their farm produce who have a very socialist view of others owning multiple houses. No-one considers farming to be a charity funded by the lowest common denominator so why should letting houses be shameful or frowned upon. We are in business to make money not to pander to the poor. It is possible to be compassionate about cost of renting so long as the return justifies the investment but no-one should be held up for scorn for making a bob or two or trying to get rid of freeloaders who don't pay. The government has a responsibility to house and feed the poor not farmers or landlords.
'They had to leave the area because they couldn't afford to rent anything else nearby'...means
1 They were paying less to live there than everyone else.
and
2 The landlord was making less than all the other landlords.
It sucks to be 1 and it sucks to be 2. 2 has a means to change that and 1 has no right to live more cheaply than anyone else.

 

[slackjawedyokel]

There is also a worry over the EPC assessment. A farming neighbour future-proofed a cottage by insulating walls, ceilings etc, taking photos of what they were doing as they went along. The EPC assessor came along but they weren’t allowed to score anything they couldn’t see. My neighbour proffered their photos of the insulation in-situ but the assessor wouldn’t accept that either on the grounds that they could’ve ‘put it in for the photo then taken it out again’
The property didn’t get the EPC they’d hoped for.

 

[Huno]

No one forces anyone to become a landlord

Yes the do!! My landlords expect me to rent out 5 x ex farmworker cottages for them and wont pay compensation to take them back in hand due to Inheritance Tax Relief... they make very little profit... where as many people are forced to be tenants...

 

[slackjawedyokel]

No one forces anyone to become a landlord

Well that is strictly true, but it is a very narrow and simplistic way of looking at it. Certainly anyone going on a landlord forum saying “Help-I’m an accidental landlord” will get shot down in flames.
The way I see it, there are three main routes into becoming a landlord:
1) Professional BTL landlords who view it as a business investment and who have done their sums.
2) Naive folks that inherit a property and often make a pigs ear if renting it out.
3) Farmers/landowners that have property with their land.

I’m in the 3 category having inherited the farm and two cottages about a decade ago. True no-one forced me to rent them out but the options at the time were limited. I dismissed the two main alternatives of selling them (they’re in the middle of the farm so that would be sowing long term problems, plus they are reliant on the farm for a private water supply) and doing holiday lets (I didn’t have the time to put the time into managing them while getting to grips with the business and doing both my own work and that which my Dad used to do). I suppose I could have gone for a fourth radical option of demolition, which I would have done over selling them, but at the time I could not have afforded to re-build them.
So letting them out was the only realistic option.

I’ve had three sets of tenants- one set that are currently still resident are model tenants; a fairly young couple that (I assume) want a modestly priced let while they save to buy.
I’ve also had two pairs of fairly difficult tenants.

I think that the removal of S21 will particularly affect farmers who are landlords because we are often in the position of living in close proximity to our tenants. We see them every day so if we don’t rub along ok then that can cause long-term problems (even anxiety and depression).

With our last set of ‘bad’ tenants, they rubbed everyone up the wrong way- all of my family members, their neighbours, any workmen that attended the property to the extent that it was difficult to get workmen to return to the house (particularly difficult in Northumberland as decent workmen aren’t exactly easy to locate in this sparsely populated county). The final straw for me was that, having been pretty nasty to my Mum a few times, they had a go at her one day in the supermarket car park, quite upsetting my Mum. They got a S21 notice shortly afterward.

None of the stuff they did, which was low level antisocial behaviour, would be actionable to get them to leave without S21. I doubt on interviewing prospective tenants you can possibly foresee what your relationship with them will be if they are still resident in your property in 5, 10 or 20 years time.

Rural landlords should think on this and beware.

 

[SRRC]

There is also a worry over the EPC assessment. A farming neighbour future-proofed a cottage by insulating walls, ceilings etc, taking photos of what they were doing as they went along. The EPC assessor came along but they weren’t allowed to score anything they couldn’t see. My neighbour proffered their photos of the insulation in-situ but the assessor wouldn’t accept that either on the grounds that they could’ve ‘put it in for the photo then taken it out again’
The property didn’t get the EPC they’d hoped for.

I've had exactly the same on a newish build which is highly insulated, not even the architect's drawings were enough. Apparently planning control documents from the local authority would be acceptable though.

 

[roscoe erf]

People who dont own property and can't afford to buy sort of have to be tenants .
I am not a tenant

The then they will need a landlord

 

[slackjawedyokel]

I've had exactly the same on a newish build which is highly insulated, not even the architect's drawings were enough. Apparently planning control documents from the local authority would be acceptable though.

Do you have any such documents though? We built our house ~10 yrs ago and I don’t think we have any such documents.

Also, I suspect many of the more practical owners of older properties will get on and insulate/board-out properties themselves between lets so they won’t have any such documentation.

 

[unlacedgecko]

There is also a worry over the EPC assessment. A farming neighbour future-proofed a cottage by insulating walls, ceilings etc, taking photos of what they were doing as they went along. The EPC assessor came along but they weren’t allowed to score anything they couldn’t see. My neighbour proffered their photos of the insulation in-situ but the assessor wouldn’t accept that either on the grounds that they could’ve ‘put it in for the photo then taken it out again’
The property didn’t get the EPC they’d hoped for.

Clip board wielding pr!cks existing as parasites off working people as usual.

I've never had an EPC done, so didn't realise it was a purely paper excise. What a meaningless document.

I was under the impression EPCs involved physical tests.

 

[toquark]

Clip board wielding pr!cks existing as parasites off working people as usual.

I've never had an EPC done, so didn't realise it was a purely paper excise. What a meaningless document.

I was under the impression EPCs involved physical tests.

When I sold my last place it needed an update on the EPC. I called the surveyors who had done the last survey about 5 years previously, they asked over the phone if there had been any substantial changes in the structure/insulation or heating system since we took ownership, there hadn't been, so they offered to just re-fresh (re-date) the old EPC to cover us for the sale.

Charged me £200 for the privilege! Talk about money for old rope.

 

[Tubbylew]

Well that is strictly true, but it is a very narrow and simplistic way of looking at it. Certainly anyone going on a landlord forum saying “Help-I’m an accidental landlord” will get shot down in flames.
The way I see it, there are three main routes into becoming a landlord:
1) Professional BTL landlords who view it as a business investment and who have done their sums.
2) Naive folks that inherit a property and often make a pigs ear if renting it out.
3) Farmers/landowners that have property with their land.

I’m in the 3 category having inherited the farm and two cottages about a decade ago. True no-one forced me to rent them out but the options at the time were limited. I dismissed the two main alternatives of selling them (they’re in the middle of the farm so that would be sowing long term problems, plus they are reliant on the farm for a private water supply) and doing holiday lets (I didn’t have the time to put the time into managing them while getting to grips with the business and doing both my own work and that which my Dad used to do). I suppose I could have gone for a fourth radical option of demolition, which I would have done over selling them, but at the time I could not have afforded to re-build them.
So letting them out was the only realistic option.

I’ve had three sets of tenants- one set that are currently still resident are model tenants; a fairly young couple that (I assume) want a modestly priced let while they save to buy.
I’ve also had two pairs of fairly difficult tenants.

I think that the removal of S21 will particularly affect farmers who are landlords because we are often in the position of living in close proximity to our tenants. We see them every day so if we don’t run along ok then that can cause long-term problems (even anxiety and depression).

With our last set of ‘bad’ tenants, they rubbed everyone up the wrong way- all of my family members, their neighbours, any workmen that attended the property to the extent that it was difficult to get workmen to return to the house (particularly difficult in Northumberland as decent workmen aren’t exactly easy to locate in this sparsely populated county). The final straw for me was that, having been pretty nasty to my Mum a few times, they had a go at her one day in the supermarket car park, quite upsetting my Mum. They got a S21 notice shortly afterward.

None of the stuff they did, which was low level antisocial behaviour, would be actionable to get them to leave without S21. I doubt on interviewing prospective tenants you can possibly foresee what your relationship with them will be if they are still resident in your property in 5, 10 or 20 years time.

Rural landlords should think on this and beware.

I'm in catagory 2/3 having just tipped all my money into a cottage on the farm that my elderly relations lived in, first tenants are moving in on the weekend, I'm not really looking foward to the experience tbh, I'd have probably holiday let it if I could have afforded to furnish it, but part of me is reluctant to do so, the local community is dying on it's ass with all the holiday lets here now. If I hadn't got kids it'd probably have been sold.

 

[Huno]

Well that is strictly true, but it is a very narrow and simplistic way of looking at it. Certainly anyone going on a landlord forum saying “Help-I’m an accidental landlord” will get shot down in flames.
The way I see it, there are three main routes into becoming a landlord:
1) Professional BTL landlords who view it as a business investment and who have done their sums.
2) Naive folks that inherit a property and often make a pigs ear if renting it out.
3) Farmers/landowners that have property with their land.

I’m in the 3 category having inherited the farm and two cottages about a decade ago. True no-one forced me to rent them out but the options at the time were limited. I dismissed the two main alternatives of selling them (they’re in the middle of the farm so that would be sowing long term problems, plus they are reliant on the farm for a private water supply) and doing holiday lets (I didn’t have the time to put the time into managing them while getting to grips with the business and doing both my own work and that which my Dad used to do). I suppose I could have gone for a fourth radical option of demolition, which I would have done over selling them, but at the time I could not have afforded to re-build them.
So letting them out was the only realistic option.

I’ve had three sets of tenants- one set that are currently still resident are model tenants; a fairly young couple that (I assume) want a modestly priced let while they save to buy.
I’ve also had two pairs of fairly difficult tenants.

I think that the removal of S21 will particularly affect farmers who are landlords because we are often in the position of living in close proximity to our tenants. We see them every day so if we don’t run along ok then that can cause long-term problems (even anxiety and depression).

With our last set of ‘bad’ tenants, they rubbed everyone up the wrong way- all of my family members, their neighbours, any workmen that attended the property to the extent that it was difficult to get workmen to return to the house (particularly difficult in Northumberland as decent workmen aren’t exactly easy to locate in this sparsely populated county). The final straw for me was that, having been pretty nasty to my Mum a few times, they had a go at her one day in the supermarket car park, quite upsetting my Mum. They got a S21 notice shortly afterward.

None of the stuff they did, which was low level antisocial behaviour, would be actionable to get them to leave without S21. I doubt on interviewing prospective tenants you can possibly foresee what your relationship with them will be if they are still resident in your property in 5, 10 or 20 years time.

Rural landlords should think on this and beware.

Thank you for sharing that message.. our situation is very similar except i sub let as tenant myself and have 5 cottages with varying characters in them! At least the cost and lack of profit keeps my overall farm business rent down

 

[slackjawedyokel]

I'm in catagory 2/3 having just tipped all my money into a cottage on the farm that my elderly relations lived in, first tenants are moving in on the weekend, I'm not really looking foward to the experience tbh, I'd have probably holiday let it if I could have afforded to furnish it, but part of me is reluctant to do so, the local community is dying on it's ass with all the holiday lets here now. If I hadn't got kids it'd probably have been sold.

At least with a new tenancy agreement now you should get S21 rights for at least a period into the future once S21 is abolished.

 

[Tubbylew]

At least with a new tenancy agreement now you should get S21 rights for at least a period into the future once S21 is abolished.

Just having a cursory read up, there doesn't seem to be any more certainty with the renters reform bill than there does with elms, another boris balls up.

 

[Doing it for the kids]

My pair of cottages were in dire need of improvement, not been touched since the sixty's, but had happy tenants and no empty period to do anything, so electrics were essential, floor was an inch of cracking asphalt over quarry tiles on clay, heating was back boiler behind open fire, so took the opportunity of a break in tenancy and took it back to bare brick and rafters, insulated all walls internally, dug out floor insulated and concrete slab, new windows and doors, added conservatory, insulated loft, removed chimney and breasts gaining 5m2 of floor space added conservatory, new electrics oil fired condensing boiler and new radiators, lathed and p[asterboard all walls, plastered, painted, new carpets, new kitchen, upgraded water pipe from 15mm to32mm and outside new patio and a bit of landscaping.
valuation before renovation 125k after 180k. The 30k I spent didnt include my own labour roughly 15k at at minimum wage.
So can't really blame letting rules, but well pee'd off that they moved the goalposts from E to C.
during lockdown I did the same in my other cottage sadly having to say goodbye to a very good 16yr tenant.

Christ how long ago was this, please tell me 5+ yrs, all that work sounds very, very good value! How big was it?

Rent before renovation £400/month after £525 still well below agents prices but my new tenants will be there until I die or until they change the rules and make it impossible to let.

What size is this, what might market rent be? I am always astounded of the disparity in rent levels around the country, it’s frightening because surely wages can’t be that different to be equal relatively speaking?

Holy crap, there are an awful lot of folk on here who want a capitalist price for their farm produce who have a very socialist view of others owning multiple houses. No-one considers farming to be a charity funded by the lowest common denominator so why should letting houses be shameful or frowned upon. We are in business to make money not to pander to the poor. It is possible to be compassionate about cost of renting so long as the return justifies the investment but no-one should be held up for scorn for making a bob or two or trying to get rid of freeloaders who don't pay. The government has a responsibility to house and feed the poor not farmers or landlords.
'They had to leave the area because they couldn't afford to rent anything else nearby'...means
1 They were paying less to live there than everyone else.
and
2 The landlord was making less than all the other landlords.
It sucks to be 1 and it sucks to be 2. 2 has a means to change that and 1 has no right to live more cheaply than anyone else.

TBf with the exception of the Scot who’s name sounds like greenhouse, most don’t have / almost sympathise with landlords!

To clarify your last point, my ex Tenats were not really in 1) they were paying a market rate in so much as no one else would want to live there. It was grotty to say the least but they lived like pigs and were happy.

Rent is always reflected by

There is also a worry over the EPC assessment. A farming neighbour future-proofed a cottage by insulating walls, ceilings etc, taking photos of what they were doing as they went along. The EPC assessor came along but they weren’t allowed to score anything they couldn’t see. My neighbour proffered their photos of the insulation in-situ but the assessor wouldn’t accept that either on the grounds that they could’ve ‘put it in for the photo then taken it out again’
The property didn’t get the EPC they’d hoped for.

He sounds like a tit, plenty out there, have to shop around.

Well that is strictly true, but it is a very narrow and simplistic way of looking at it. Certainly anyone going on a landlord forum saying “Help-I’m an accidental landlord” will get shot down in flames.
The way I see it, there are three main routes into becoming a landlord:
1) Professional BTL landlords who view it as a business investment and who have done their sums.
2) Naive folks that inherit a property and often make a pigs ear if renting it out.
3) Farmers/landowners that have property with their land.

I’m in the 3 category having inherited the farm and two cottages about a decade ago. True no-one forced me to rent them out but the options at the time were limited. I dismissed the two main alternatives of selling them (they’re in the middle of the farm so that would be sowing long term problems, plus they are reliant on the farm for a private water supply) and doing holiday lets (I didn’t have the time to put the time into managing them while getting to grips with the business and doing both my own work and that which my Dad used to do). I suppose I could have gone for a fourth radical option of demolition, which I would have done over selling them, but at the time I could not have afforded to re-build them.
So letting them out was the only realistic option.

I’ve had three sets of tenants- one set that are currently still resident are model tenants; a fairly young couple that (I assume) want a modestly priced let while they save to buy.
I’ve also had two pairs of fairly difficult tenants.

I think that the removal of S21 will particularly affect farmers who are landlords because we are often in the position of living in close proximity to our tenants. We see them every day so if we don’t rub along ok then that can cause long-term problems (even anxiety and depression).

With our last set of ‘bad’ tenants, they rubbed everyone up the wrong way- all of my family members, their neighbours, any workmen that attended the property to the extent that it was difficult to get workmen to return to the house (particularly difficult in Northumberland as decent workmen aren’t exactly easy to locate in this sparsely populated county). The final straw for me was that, having been pretty nasty to my Mum a few times, they had a go at her one day in the supermarket car park, quite upsetting my Mum. They got a S21 notice shortly afterward.

None of the stuff they did, which was low level antisocial behaviour, would be actionable to get them to leave without S21. I doubt on interviewing prospective tenants you can possibly foresee what your relationship with them will be if they are still resident in your property in 5, 10 or 20 years time.

Rural landlords should think on this and beware.

a very good summary. We have several let’s integral to farm, huge implications with shared services / outlooks if we sold them unlike your average BTL LL

 

[glasshouse]

 

[Doing it for the kids]

I need to get one of those hats clearly

 

[possumbility]

Christ how long ago was this, please tell me 5+ yrs, all that work sounds very, very good value! How big was it?



What size is this, what might market rent be? I am always astounded of the disparity in rent levels around the country, it’s frightening because surely wages can’t be that different to be equal relatively speaking?



TBf with the exception of the Scot who’s name sounds like greenhouse, most don’t have / almost sympathise with landlords!

To clarify your last point, my ex Tenats were not really in 1) they were paying a market rate in so much as no one else would want to live there. It was grotty to say the least but they lived like pigs and were happy.

Rent is always reflected by


He sounds like a tit, plenty out there, have to shop around.



a very good summary. We have several let’s integral to farm, huge implications with shared services / outlooks if we sold them unlike your average BTL LL

A pair of 3 bed semis, typical farm cottages 1/2 a mile down a farm track. Bought cottages in 1998 off my father for 30k each to enable him to buy a new build in village of his choice when he retired (At 65. his younger brother took over is still running the farm at 87, I retired from farming 6 years ago aged 56 as no chance of running and our side of the family were bought out).
renovated first cottage from October 2018 tenant moved in November 19, did all work myself apart from connecting electrics, plumbing and windows. No building regs (naughty me) but epc assessor accepted my photos.
Market rent in this area is about £600 to 650/month through agents.
Second cottage started work August 2020 and new tenants moved in November 21 EPC assessor issued Epc with photo evidence without a visit as he had already assessed it as an F when he did the previous assessment.

 

[honeyend]

We have rented and empty property that we were eventually going to live in, and thought we were on top of things, all went through an agent, they passed the six months check, but when they moved out they had underestimated the electric bill, and had being growing very smelly plants which a car bomb in each room could not shift the smell, kept chickens in one of the rooms, and the grass you could have cut for hay even though we had left a lawnmower.
So now I just rent out rooms, and keep control, I have been doing it for about five years, no tax on it, no paperwork, and more important they are not a tenant. The current lodger has been here three years, far less trouble than my daughter, whose room he moved in to. He has his own shower and sitting room.
Having tried Airbnb, where you get more money, but also more cleaning and there are some very odd people, I would rather take less regular money and have someone who's only 'fault' is they live on Gunsters and pizza's .
We have an outbuilding which we let a neighbour use because they have no mains electric, they were going to have a supply put in. Its PAYG metre, so you would think it would be easy, only our electric fence runs off it, and its now nearly four years later. Twice they have gone off without topping it up, so the alarms are going on the fence. FB is a wonderful thing for find out what people are up to, and are fibbing to your face.
Most of my family had council houses and lived in them for many years, it was home. Now for work people move more often, there is a culture of not staying or investing in something you are going to be in long. My daughter rents in a very expensive area, she is paying £850, for a one bedroom flat that includes bills, the last was a two bedroom house she rented was £1300 a month, which she was in for five years. She tidied the garden, spent money on plants, but as there is no permanence, we could have put in a better kitchen, you do not want to spend money on someone else's property even if you could. The house she rented was inherited, so I assume they fell in to renting and were lucky that my daughter and her husband were good tenants.
The agents also make money out of churn, every time someone moves they get a chance to raise the rent, and charge their fees, and where my daughter lives they really could not care about the tenants.

 

[slackjawedyokel]

Another issue for farming landlords to have at the back of their minds (although it’s not a current threat) is that today the Govt is announcing an extension of the Right to Buy in the social housing sector.
A few years ago when Corbyn and Macdonald were around, had they got into power they would have liked to extend Right to Buy into the private rental sector.

So who knows whether that will actually ever happen or not in the future. As I’ve said before- I’d never want to sell the cottages that are in the middle of my farm because that has the potential for many problems. In the future, after S21 is abolished you could feasibly have tenants that then use RTB to force you to sell the house to them, probably at below market value.

Just another thing to bear in mind!

 

[Agrijas]

Boris Johnson sets out plan for benefit claimants to get mortgages https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-61739816
I didn’t know if I should put this here or what grinds your gears