How do I get bad tenants out fast

[karla]

Hi Grumpy...

It's very unfortunate that there is a percentage of tenants who absolutely do act as thieves and get away with taking any responsibility, and I do agree that in some ways they are protected. I also do agree with xris to a certain extent. I have met many landlords who through not knowing how to use the correct channels properly, make the situation very difficult because they are emotionally involved (it's their investment and lots of money at that) and take action which is unlawful (be wrong or right) and end up getting burnt for it. I guess as the old saying goes, two wrongs don't make a right....and there are also a lot of tenants who do things correctly and nicely and are treated bad by their landlords...

Anyway, I also say good on you for standing up for harsher laws on the bad tenants who lie and steal. More landlords should chase debts (I know it;s a pain), but many tenants do get away with it, just to be passed on to the next landlord. We all like having privacy laws etc for ourselves, but those laws proctect everyone! As andrew said, join Property Investors Assoc which is fast becoming a known voice out there.....let us know how you get on with your wayward tenants...

[Hound]

Grumpy, do let us know how your strategy pans out. I keep looking in to see if you've left an update.

I take it your plumber has gone fishing, as they are inclined to do!

[grumpy11]

About my outpouring of emotions as "xris" calls it, it is very easy not to be emotional if it is not your money or property that is at stake. Your suggestion, that I don’t know what I'm doing… maybe I don't…. However for 15 years now we had PM's looking after our 21 tenancies and every year
we get about 44 weeks rent average, the rest is written off because of similar situations like this one.
We find that about 1 out of 7 tenants is a problem one way or another. All because the PM can not
( be bothered to?) step up the pressure by claiming having to follow the rules. This time it was one step too far by the tenant and I opted to take it out of the PM's hands, because of the season involved and possible large parties going on in there without rent or control because the PM will be on vacation….., not to mention maybe many more people sleeping in the place.
The water is still off, muddy trenches, need to create drainage for the trench as well…
Have spoken to tenant who told me where to go as usual, but of course mad about the water.
Once again my emotions took over, so I advised them I would arrange for removal firm to remove contents of house latest by Thursday and they could get it all back once they pay arrears, which by
Thursday will be approx $ 2500.-
Will arrange today for security company to be present with two people, when two people from removal company pack the contents professionally and remove them to a proper secure dry storage lockup… The keys of this lockup will be held by security company until tenant pays the debts.
Lets see what happens now. Maybe they will pay the rent at the next place and you guys may get a better tenant….

[drelly]

WHOA! Get thee to a Property Investors' Association meeting ASAP! Links to website in my signature.

Unless you have an eviction notice, what you're doing is illegal. Even then, this should be done by court baliffs and you have no right to hold their possessions until they pay the rent.

Dump the emotional responses as they are obviously not helping. It's about money and responsibility. Yours.

Have you been to tribunal? If not, you will shortly be there to defend your actions and will probably receive a hefty fine to add to your problems.

There are so many things wrong here, it's hard to know where to start! Firstly, just because you have a property manager, it does not mean that you can then completely ignore your properties. 44 weeks rent on average is *terrible*!! Who is managing the property manager?

With 21 properties and 15 years behind you, you really should not be suffering to this degree. There are huge gaps in your understanding of the RTA that has clearly cost you considerably, in rent, damages, arrears and stress! If you know what is meant to happen, you can more effectively manage your PM. Right now it looks like you're making the situation worse, not better.

I suggest you contact someone from your local PIA as soon as possible and get some experienced advice. What part of the country are you in?

cheers,
Dave.

[Hound]

Drelly's right about your PM. If this was handled correctly from the start, the arrears would have been limited, plus these tenants might not have been selected for your property. However hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I can also see where Grumpy is coming from, sometimes a situation becomes so completely untenable that the potential consequences of any action are lessened somewhat. Given the timeframe of this coming Thursday, there is a chance that the tenant will be too occupied with crisis management to bother/afford filing a case with the T/T. As General Sherman once sagely put it "throw them on to the horns of a crisis"

Of course I don't recommend what Grumpy is proposing, but I imagine more than a few of us have entertained these thoughts in our darkest fantasies!

Overall, it's best to have a safe fall-back position, which in landlording is called the RTA.

Keep us posted Grumpy.

-Hound

[xris]

Hello Grumpy,

Thank you for your restrained response to my earlier post. It was meant to have a hint of provocation in it, even though I still stand by everything I wrote. I hope some people at least could see through the superficial bluntness to a deeper truth below, which has made them think about what they are doing and how they are doing it.

Your latest post is also interesting. I thought about how to reply, but I do not now need to because I could not better drelly’s advice.

I will make a couple of points though.

Forget the money for the moment. Deal with that later.

Priority number one: stop acting illegally.

Two, get them out as soon as legally possible.

Three, get someone else to take over for you, whatever they charge. Your local PIA will have people willing to do this for you.

Once you have an empty house, and assuming you are not summoned to the TT, you can put this behind you and start again. (Sorry, but with 21 properties and 15 years experience, any Adjudicator will not treat you kindly.)

You might next want to consider:

A/ Claiming against the PM who allowed this mess to happen.
B/ Asking at the PIA for recommendations on good PM’s.

An average occupancy of 44 weeks is shocking. I can think of only three reasons why this should be happening. Either you have had consistently bad PM’s; or you neglect your properties to such an extent that they are asking to be left vacant; or that you constantly interfere in what the PM is doing. Often these three reasons go hand in hand (in hand): good PM’s refuse to take on poorly maintained properties with interfering owners, which leaves poor owners employing poor managers.

Anyway, it will be interesting if you could keep us posted.

xris

[grumpy11]

I know you mean well and I have done things PC for a long time, only to find the tenant not following the rules was better off than me every time.
Last hearing with TT about 2 years ago went totally against us. (our lawyer could not understand this one either) But for $ 1800.- of course no point to go further.
My trouble tenants just bought a new very large Plasma TV ( $ 6 - 8000.-) so why does he not pay the rent?
Considering that a murderer got off with 2 years, a property developer that made a cool Million
Profit on a transaction he was not meant to do - got fined $ 17'000.- to be taught a lesson….
I do not think they will be able to hang me because I stood up (without violence) to a tenant ignoring the rules.
If these squatters stays in my place until late January ( according to TT they have very limited recourses during the X-mas break and the 21 days processing starts from end of presentation of the
10 working day letter I would be out of rent for another $ 3000.- by the time of the hearing.
( then I just about paid for his plasma TV)
Apparently if tenant is unable to pay we will not get any either…
So if the fine is say $ 1000.- I made a good business decision after all.
For your info xris, all our properties are well maintained and redecorated regularly so that we could flick them off any time we wanted to. But they are expensive and we seem to get a lot of dreamers coming along that pretend they can pay the rent and after a short time they leave because it was a struggle. Most however pay the rent as long as they can and are up front when they need to leave.
.
But because of that there are many rent-breaks admittedly causing partly the result of 44 weeks, sometimes just overseas visitors renting for 6 weeks with the intention for longer periods, until they find out they prefer Australia or they can not stay in NZ…..
The tenants are left alone, until they fall behind in rent that is. They are not expected to do any work around the properties.
This is the first time I interfered with the PM because I could not believe that this was possible in NZ

Will definitely join PIA in new year, want to get this problem over with first.

[manic_mansions]

the plasma tv would have been on five-finger discount, or they may even be hiding it for someone until something blows over.

If you turn up with security guards and removalists, the police may (eventually) turn up too, and tell you to stop it.

[xris]

Grumpy,

(You do not need to reply to this post.)

Your last post is enough.

You have knowingly chosen to break the law. You have been advised quite strongly by a number of people here to stop, and you have received advice on ways to proceed from here. But, you have chosen to ignore that advice and to continue breaking the law.

Let me be quite clear about this. You do not speak for me, nor do you speak for the vast majority of honest, hard-working landlords. In many ways you are doing more damage to the landlording industry than the tenants you have described. You do indeed appear not to know (or want to know) what you are doing. But ignorance is no defence: it isn’t now and never will be.

The sooner tenants like the ones you describe are removed from the system the better; the sooner landlords like the one you have so clearly portrayed are removed from the system the better, too.

To be perfectly honest, I hope you get taken to the cleaners. You will have nobody at all to blame but yourself.

xris

[Aston]

Grumpy,

I think your name says it all.

I sympathise with your situation but I tend to agree with Xris. You're going about this thing the wrong way and you're going to end up in more strife than you're in at the moment.

I think Drelly's idea of getting touch with your local PIA and getting some help with this situation is the way to go.

Maybe it's time to sell up, I think they're getting the better of you matey.

Aston.

[cube]

However for 15 years now we had PM's looking after our 21 tenancies and every year
we get about 44 weeks rent average, the rest is written off because of similar situations like this one.
We find that about 1 out of 7 tenants is a problem one way or another.

If its such a frequent occurrence, why the hell did you, and you are ultimately responsible for your actions, let it get out of hand so badly.

My tenants are (generally) good payers, but I still check the rent each and every week, and they get a 10 day notice if its a day late.

If you can't manage your own properties and you can't manage a PM, then PI may not be for you - even if it has taken 15 years to work it out!

cube

[Hound]

Well Grumpy, it appears the people have spoken!

That, of course, doesn't mean that some of us aren't curious to hear how it comes out in the wash. The law does not always equate with justice. The law cannot be back-dated, when situations are not immediately addressed.

The person you describe sounds like a right dirt-bag, who has discredited the majority of honest & principled tenants. I shouldn't say this, but I think you may pull it off. Certain individuals in society prefer not to get authorities involved. This may be the one factor that ensures you aren't fined.

[Perry]

Grumpy
Someone suggested - in amongst the many - that you
make sure you have a reliable, (non-associated) person
with you, next time you called. The idea was that if you
were theatened, in front of an impeccable witness, your
position was singularly strengthened.

Your most recent post gives the impression you have
again called on the tenant since your original post. Did
you take that easy bit of advice? If not, why not?
It sounded like a great suggestion, to me.

Like Hound and one other, I hope you succeed, despite the
odds seeming to be against it. Some innovators are lucky.

BTW, folks, what happened to the land lady who emptied
a tenants house of its furniture and put it on the pavement
then phoned her to come and get it? The tenant had obtained
the tenancy on false pretences. But the sequel (if any) was
something I missed. Was it in Christchurch?

Good luck, Grumpy.

[xris]

Hello perry,

If you are referring to the lady who made a fool of herself on national TV news, yes, she was down in Christchurch. She was taken to the Tribunal and an order was made against her which included a monetary penalty, (for what exactly I cannot recall).

I understand that the problem arose primarily from her poor and naive management skills, but despite this she carried on refusing to face that fact, and in so doing made herself look even more foolish.

That is all I can remember.

xris

[grumpy11]

Thanks Hound and Perry for your little bit of comfort.
I would not be in this situation if it was not for two very fine PM /Landlord which had given this lot of thugs some first class references with respect to previous tenancies. They stated the tenants had bad luck and had to move out of properties within 90 and 60 days because they had just been sold.
60 and 90-day terms sound familiar now, but they did not then, because of the good references and the well-groomed business people appearances and flash car. It all fitted too well. They assured long term which is what we want (but in exchange for rent of course).
Guess why these PM's gave them good references? To get them out fast, without fuss or damage, palm them off onto someone else to be rid of the problem they present. Due to the privacy laws we must not broadcast PM, LL or tenants names, but maybe these are the nice people which xris and others should slam first of all.
I have visited the tenants every day to ask for my rent, and yes I have used the plumber as my witness! Unfortunately the tenants do know when and how to behave, until the other person is far enough away… In front of the plumber I get promised (eye contact and no flinch) that the rent had "on that very day" been paid directly into the nominated account and apologies for the delay…. This of course needs checking and takes the heat off again until at least the next day.
When I wrote my first "help-line" in this forum, I expected someone to tell me that the law is not as one-sided as it is and maybe a legal way to get faster action than outlined via TT. But instead all I get is advise to be totally PC, to forget about the money, or to sell up get out of PI, PI is not for you etc.
Are my tenants the way they are because of all this PC and pussyfooting around them which I too am expected to follow? This is the worst nightmare so far, way ahead of the tenant that fitted his very large fridge into a new kitchen with a chainsaw through the wall into the bedroom because the fridge provided was too small for him….