Confessions of a ..... Letting Agent! Issue 2

Landlords often ask us what goes on behind the scenes at The Key Place and so we thought we would share our experiences, and what we have learned from those experiences, with you.

This week I’ve got a story for you about how The Key Place goes the extra mile to help our tenants, and therefore our landlords too.

We had a tenant in full time paid employment (a supervisory role), who came with great references.  Very sadly his grandfather died, who he was very close to.  As a direct result of this, the tenant went off the rails.  He split up with his long term partner, and got the sack from work for not doing his job properly.  He was unable to pay his rent and while we were chasing him for non-payment, he disappeared.

The tenant was a local lad, and as The Key Place is largely staffed by local people, they started asking around to see if they could find him.  Using our fantastic contacts, we did locate him, and arranged for him to come into the office to discuss how we could find a resolution to the situation.

We managed to speak to the company he worked for who, once they understood what had been happening, offered him a job, although at a lower grade.  The tenant had racked up a few debts, including his rent, and so couldn’t afford to rent a flat from us anymore.  We worked with the landlord to allow the tenant out of his lease, so that we could re-let the flat as soon as possible and get rent in for the landlord.  The tenant left the property in great condition, and moved in with family.  We set up a repayment plan with the tenant so that we could recover the missing rent on behalf of the landlord.

It just goes to show that there may be more to a non-paying tenant than meets the eye.  Rather than writing this off, The Key Place managed to work with the tenant to resolve the problem.  The landlord now has a good long term let on his property and is also recouping the lost rent. The course of action we followed resulted in the best outcome for the landlord – our extensive experience of the practicalities, as opposed to just the laws/rules of letting, allowed us to reach this conclusion.   And the tenant is happy and getting his life back on track.  All’s well that ends well.

www.thekeyplace.co.uk