Tenants who become nightmares

Letting agents and landlords often get the blame, but it can be tenants who are the real nightmare.

Next Wednesday, BBC1’s Inside Out programme is due to feature Landlord Action director Paul Shamplina. We suggest you hold on for a white knuckle ride which will have consumer groups everywhere wondering how to spin the programme’s contents in favour of tenants, and make estate agents going into lettings wonder whether it is such a good idea.

Shamplina argues that 80% of tenants won’t pay back arrears and it is his job to get them out as quickly as possible. Which he does.

He set up a tenant eviction service in 1999 and has to date evicted over 12,000 bad tenants, often succeeding where others have failed.

One of the tenants highlighted in the programme was already on the Landlord Action radar and had been brought to their attention twice before by two separate landlords.

On the first occasion, five years ago, the tenant cost the landlord £30,000 in legal fees, making numerous court applications. He also owed rent totalling over £20,000. Three years later an overseas landlord came to Landlord Action wanting to evict the same tenant. He owed in excess of £13,000 plus legal fees.
 
The cameras follow Shamplina as he accompanies a locksmith ready for the eviction, only for there to be a no-show by the bailiff because the tenant has made a last-minute application to the court to hold up the eviction. However, this does not deter Shamplina who later confronts the man on camera and talks him into giving back the possession of the flat, obtaining the keys and saving the landlord more stress and cost.
 
Shamplina, a former solicitor’s clerk turned private investigator and certified bailiff, also talks about just how many rogue tenants there are out there. You have been warned!