How to handle a nightmare tenant

Last week we talked about how to manage a property yourself, and the week before that we covered how to let a property yourself.

If you do all of that properly, most of the time you should find that your properties run smoothly. But every so often, however careful you are, you’ll experience a phenomenon that makes any landlord’s blood run cold…the nightmare tenant!

We run through how to deal with this unfortunate situation, including:

• Avoid letting to them in the first place!
• Get Rent Guarantee Insurance
• Set up processes that boost your chance of success
• Keep it professional
• Know when to say enough is enough
• Understand your legal options
• Get professional help (we mentioned the NLA and RLA)
• Learn and move on!

It’s an episode that hopefully you’ll never need to use, but it’s worth being prepared for when the worst doesn’t happen.

Resource of the week

What’s better than an interactive map? Well, two interactive maps of course! These both come from the Office for National Statistics.

First, a handy visualisation of house prices in your area. When you’re in the broad stage of your property search, it’s a nice way to spot pockets of cheaper properties and get a sense for how average prices vary.

Then you can see how prices got that way, with this animated map of house price changes since 1995. It really shows the ripple effect out from London over the years – and how different regions reacted after the 2008 crash.

News this week

The proportion of landlords in Central London thinking about selling up has quadrupled since last year’s budget, according to this survey from the NLA.

In fact, the intention to sell has increased by an average of 12% across the whole UK. It could mean more stock coming onto the market…but it’s hard to know what proportion of those landlords will eventually decide to sell after weighing up all the factors.