Just been watching the first in a new series of a tenants/landlords from hell tv prog. Okay, I know these sort of progs are produced in such a way as to get viewers worked up, nevertheless the core content is a true reflection of what the tenants and landlords are going through.
One thing that genuinely confuses me is squatting, and I need to be careful that I don't go down a conspiracy theory route about it. Let me explain. They stated on the prog that squatting in residential property has been illegal since 2012. Result? Squatters simply started to squat more in commercial properties. Why wasn't this simply made illegal at the same time?
The prog gave an example of an elderly gentleman who had bought a piece of land, I think with a view to selling it on to further fund his retirement. When he bought it, there were people living on the land in caravans. He came to an agreement with them re stay for so long and then move out. Did they? I'm sure you don't need three guesses. End result, he needs to get the legal system involved and eventually between bailiffs and the police the squatters are evicted. The cost to the land owner for all of this? £15k!
This is where part of me thinks in a way, these sort of issues feed part of the legal and judicial machine. Bailiffs, eviction specialists, police, courts, prisons etc. And the cases seem to take forever to work their way through said system, with costs racking up all the time.
In another example shown on the prog, it took a landlord 18 months to get a non paying tenant out of his property. These people know how to play the (overly long and complex) system, buying themselves time. Okay there's a side debate about the rights and wrongs of private landlords, however the guy in this example had a mortgage on the place, so he had over a year of mortgage payments to make with no rental income. When she was eventually evicted and they got into the property, it was an absolute tip, and I mean almost literally like a tip! How much will the landlord get back from the evicted tenants? Probably zero.
I think the law needs to be simplified. If you can prove you own a property / piece of land and people squatting on it have no legal right to be there (e.g. tenancy agreement) it should take no more than a month from your legal rights being established to complete the eviction process. This refers to out and out squatters. For tenants who stop paying rent for whatever reason, the process should take no more than three months to get them evicted once it has been established the landlord has done nothing wrong in terms of tenancy compliance. Those involved would unfortunately still need to pay costs in relation to the legal processes, however the financial impact would be reduced if these cases didn't drag on for often in excess of a year!
One thing that genuinely confuses me is squatting, and I need to be careful that I don't go down a conspiracy theory route about it. Let me explain. They stated on the prog that squatting in residential property has been illegal since 2012. Result? Squatters simply started to squat more in commercial properties. Why wasn't this simply made illegal at the same time?
The prog gave an example of an elderly gentleman who had bought a piece of land, I think with a view to selling it on to further fund his retirement. When he bought it, there were people living on the land in caravans. He came to an agreement with them re stay for so long and then move out. Did they? I'm sure you don't need three guesses. End result, he needs to get the legal system involved and eventually between bailiffs and the police the squatters are evicted. The cost to the land owner for all of this? £15k!
This is where part of me thinks in a way, these sort of issues feed part of the legal and judicial machine. Bailiffs, eviction specialists, police, courts, prisons etc. And the cases seem to take forever to work their way through said system, with costs racking up all the time.
In another example shown on the prog, it took a landlord 18 months to get a non paying tenant out of his property. These people know how to play the (overly long and complex) system, buying themselves time. Okay there's a side debate about the rights and wrongs of private landlords, however the guy in this example had a mortgage on the place, so he had over a year of mortgage payments to make with no rental income. When she was eventually evicted and they got into the property, it was an absolute tip, and I mean almost literally like a tip! How much will the landlord get back from the evicted tenants? Probably zero.
I think the law needs to be simplified. If you can prove you own a property / piece of land and people squatting on it have no legal right to be there (e.g. tenancy agreement) it should take no more than a month from your legal rights being established to complete the eviction process. This refers to out and out squatters. For tenants who stop paying rent for whatever reason, the process should take no more than three months to get them evicted once it has been established the landlord has done nothing wrong in terms of tenancy compliance. Those involved would unfortunately still need to pay costs in relation to the legal processes, however the financial impact would be reduced if these cases didn't drag on for often in excess of a year!