Trashed House

[Glen]

Interesting site.
Its amazing how totally ignorant some people can be, with no respect for anybody elses property.
Check out the photo gallery.
Makes you appreciate your decent tenants aye!

http://www.trashedhouse.com/

[BusyLizzy]

Hmmm.. very true....but it also sounds like the owners need to take a bit of responsiblity for their decisions as well.

[KayMcM]

Hi Folks

I just found this excellent forum and joined up so I could reply to this posting.

As the owner and co-author of the website mentioned above (thanks for the recommendation!) I'd like to respond to the comment saying that we need to take a bit of responsibility for our actions.

I don't really see what more we could've done under the circumstances.

We paid a significant amount of commission (15% for the first year, then 10%) to a registered Lettings Agent to take care of the property for us in our four-year absence from the country.

The Lettings Agent "inspected" the property frequently and reported to us that everything was in good order.

We also took out landlord's insurance to protect us just in case anything went wrong.

The Lettings Agent let us down badly. In fact when we finally got the property back one of their staff expressed surprise on hearing that it had been fully-furnished when we'd let it. And they were the ones who had done the inventory in the first place!

I don't know what else we could've done.

Anyway, it just goes to show that letting out property isn't an easy business. I think there's also a big difference between letting your home (for whatever reason) and being a landlord as a business.

Certainly I would never let out my home again if I could possibly avoid it.

Thanks for reading.

Kay

[Glen]

Welcome Kay,

I'll repeat myself

Interesting site.
Its amazing how totally ignorant some people can be, with no respect for anybody elses property.
Check out the photo gallery.
Makes you appreciate your decent tenants aye!
http://www.trashedhouse.com/

We've been slightly similar situations before with unrespectful, piggy tenants, which used to really get to me at the start, but now I accept that it's quite on the cards that something like this could happen, and so we make sure that we are in control as much as possible throughout the term of the tenancy, to help minimze any unforeseens at the end.

If tenants are insistant on contributing to the funding of my retirement, then they could at least have the courtesy to do it in a tidy fashion.

[Traff]

Hi Kay

I also think you have to take into account that you were letting out your own home, everybody is emotionally attached to their own home and the slighest thing that would go wrong, damage etc would be very hard to deal with. At least with an investment property you have never lived there and never will so the emotion side of it all is taken away.
I've been there had a property trashed 3 weeks after buying it, but it was my own fault letting it out to people in the condition it was in, but it still wasn't right of the tenants to do what they did, but hey it happened BIG mistake money wise, move on learn from it and never repeat it. The only thing that made me cry was seeing their pet cat with its neck broken (obviously by my wonderful tenants had done it) outside the backdoor.

[KayMcM]

Thanks for the welcome, and your comments and support. Much appreciated.

Yeah, it's an emotional thing to rent out your own home, but sometimes it's unavoidable. If I had to do it again I'd put all our good stuff into storage and furnish the place with things I didn't care about.

It was a horrible year for us trying to get our home back and fixing it up again (had to do it ourselves because tradesmen are very expensive in London) but we got through it and life goes on.

I made the Trashed House website because I wanted to tell the story. It's been picked up by at least one of the major newspapers in the UK, so at least some people have been interested.

I think what made it particularly shocking for us was that we've lived in rented (or provided) accommodation for several years and have never done any damage at all. Sure, you might have an accidental breakage - if we did, we simply replaced it. It just never occurred to us that someone would destroy our house and everything in it.