What I’ve Learnt from my House Getting Trashed
You might
have seen on social media over the last couple of months that a tenant left one
of my rental houses in a horrific state.
Despite
the tenant only being in the property two years, and the first/only tenant
since it was all newly refurbished, poor choices meant things spiralled out of
control in their life, and the property suffered badly because of this
deterioration.
This
included: trashed and ruined carpets throughout, broken kitchen units, smashed
windows, a kicked-in door, damage to the walls and electrical sockets, a garage
filled with illegal waste removal items, plus a couple of tons of asbestos
dumped on the drive.
I was
left to deal with all this, along with the disposal of all the furniture,
rubbish and items left in the house, which had been abandoned. Oh and I nearly
forgot to mention getting rid of the cannabis farm that had been set up in the
loft.
Deep joy,
eh?
It took
several months and many thousands of pounds to get it back to a lettable state.
It caused me stress, headaches, drama, worry, sleepless nights, and money.
But
still, I’m a strong believer in karma, so I’m not too worried about those
people getting justice. Everyone gets exactly what they deserve in life;
whether that’s good or bad is down to them!
And
writing this blog is almost cathartic – because if we don’t learn anything from
the harsh unpleasantries in life, we are destined to repeat our mistakes until
we do learn the lesson!
So here
we go:
Five things I’ve learned from my house getting trashed:
No matter how nice or helpful or trusting you are of some people… some people just don’t give a shit about how much time, effort or money you’ve put into a property. It’s not theirs, so they’re not bothered if it gets trashed.
If you
get an initial unusually cautious feeling in your stomach when meeting them…
even if it’s only a teeny tiny gut reaction… listen to it, and don’t let your
empathy in wanting to help someone overrule the concerns.
Even pink flags are closer to red flags than white ones!
So check,
but verify.
Especially
if you get *that* feeling, no matter how minute.
2. The council doesn’t give a shit about you.
Don’t
think for a second the council want to help you as a private landlord.
They
don’t.
And even if they say they do, they drag their feet, and you have to chase them for weeks and weeks to get them to do the thing they’re are supposed to do.
There was only one lady at the council I was impressed with during all this fiasco, and she didn’t even work in any of the departments for housing, lettings, tenants or social services, but the environmental waste team. She worked harder than all the other civil servants I dealt with put together, and this issue wasn’t even her remit.
Also, the
council actually provided me with this tenant to begin with, under a housing
private landlord letting scheme. Let me be clear about why they do this: not
only because they have a shortage of houses, but sometimes they are actually
glad to have problem people off their books and onto yours. They are glad to
have washed their hands of certain tenants, because now they become your
problem, not theirs.
The
insurance loss adjustor man told me this, which leads me onto our next point…
3. The insurance company doesn’t give a shit about you.
Listen
carefully: Insurance loss adjustors are not your friend.
They might come and assess your house damage and smile and say nice reassuring things and pretend to be helpful, but they are not on your side. They are there to mitigate their loss.
In fact
here’s an industry secret, told to me by an insurance broker: many loss
adjustors actually get a bonus if they can manage to reduce your claim. ie
– they get monetary bonuses for you not getting money from the insurance.
That’s a sly little secret they keep quiet, isn’t it?!
Thus, my
claim for malicious damage was pooh-poohed away as ‘tenant lifestyle choices’
and ‘wear and tear’, despite photographic evidence to the contrary. Oh, and if
need be, they also pull out about a million tiny clauses from your policy,
meaning unless you can manage pull some particular minute obscure piece of
evidence out of your arse, the claim ‘cannot proceed without it’. ie: you get
nothing.
4. People
are wretches when a house is empty.
Fun and
games whilst the property is empty sometimes… not all neighbours are nice ones.
Apart from the asbestos dumping the tenant allowed, other lovely people also
took the opportunity of an empty property to fly tip the drive. Several times.
One
person lovingly handballed black bags of rubbish all the way to the front
door’s path, and a horrible landlord developer decided to offload all their
property refurbishment waste of rubble and plasterboard onto my land. Wretches.
Oh and
then local naughty kids/teenagers set fire to said rubbish in the garden,
meaning two nights running the fire brigade had to be called out to put out the
arson fires… whilst hooded teenagers watched them undo their incendiary work.
Lovely, eh?
This is what I did: asked the police to patrol the area more often. Allowed the council to put up a warning notice flytipping / CCTV sign. Locked the gate with a bike lock to deter more reversing vehicle flytips.
This is what I should have done: Put the actual camera up, fast. Get a timer switch much earlier so the lamps inside went on to make it look occupied at night. Got the mess of the trashed house sorted out quicker, and filled the house quicker.
Still, we
live and learn; every day’s a school day, eh?
And sometimes no matter what you do, certain people will always behave like scumbags.
5. Don’t
become jaded because of one bad experience, and continue to give people
chances.
Final lesson… listen: one bad tenant does not mean all tenants are bad. In fact, since starting landlording in 2008, that’s the worst tenant experience I’ve had in all that time, so that’s not bad going in 14 years.
Statistically
it had to happen at some point!
We can move past it now and just call it what it was: a bad time in the business.
Sometimes bad things happen so that better things can occur instead.
In this case, a new and very lovely tenant. In fact there were three lovely families who viewed the property on the same day that I would gladly have housed, all pleasant, polite, family-orientated, and genuinely nice and good people in need of accommodation.
I have a favourite phrase: don’t bleed all over someone who didn’t cut you.
This means you shouldn’t take things out on people when they didn’t cause you the distress in the first place. It’s not fair to them to do that.
Thus, a new tenant, a fresh start, with the same positive hopeful attitude towards them that all my new occupiers get.
We cannot tar all tenants with the same brush. I have many other lovely long-term tenants that always do the right thing, and for that I am very grateful.
So a snippet of bad luck, a stressful, horrendously difficult and unpleasant time, but now it’s time to learn from it and move onwards and upwards for the future.
I do hope you never have to go through such chaos, but at least we’ve learnt some lessons if you do.
And remember, when bad things happen, remind yourself: I’m too stubborn to let this take me down!
Thanks for reading, and my very best wishes,
Kellyann
x x x
