My Sunday Photo - Documents for Dubai

My week has involved a flight from Johannesburg to Birmingham with a 7 hour stop over in Dubai arriving late Monday night.

Tuesday morning I was in Newport making a passport renewal application for my son, the new passport arrived Thursday.

On Friday morning our GRO copies of birth certificates and marriage licence arrived in Monmouth and Friday evening I drove to Bath to collect hubbies replacement driving licence.

On Monday I shall be seeing a solicitor to have certified copies made of all the above plus our degree certificates and then posting them all to the Foreign Office for verification, I will then be driving back to Birmingham to collect hubby from the airport.

Once that all arrives back it's off to the UAE Embassy in London for them all to be attested, then we fly to Dubai to submit the paperwork for work and residency visas.

On my return to South Africa I have to oversea the packing and shipping of our household goods and obtain export papers for the cat and dog, collect the children from OR Tambo Airport and on December 15th we all move to Dubai. Hubby is staying in Dubai while the applications are processed.

In between all of this, hubby and I are hoping that we can just rest while waiting for our papers to be returned and I hope next weeks My Sunday Photo will be a little more exciting.

The true costs of bad tenants

So here goes, 4 hours later and I've complied all the costs and evidence for my solicitor to attempt to claim damages and costs from the tenants, guarantor and rental agent.

The guarantor is only responsible for costs to the date the tenants left the property, in terms of outstanding rent. The tenants cannot be located and professionals have been hired to track them down. I cannot go into detail too much re the rental agents as I'm pursuing this matter either through my solicitor and/or the small claims court other than to highlight where I feel they've mismanaged the property.

Rent was not collected from November 2012 till I noticed in February 2013 having checked the UK bank accounts. It was then I realised that all payments had been made 2-3 weeks late and not once had the agents enforced the contract by charging an additional 10% for late payments, they however continues to take their 10% management fees on time up to and including after the eviction notice was served. They also gave the tenants 3 months notice instead of the 2 requested. When the tenants finally left after a costly trip to the UK to carry out the eviction procedure myself, I was informed by the neighburs and not the agent, who on entering the property called me to say 'the house was inhabitable and would require fumigating' yet his last inspection report in February 2013 stated 'light cleaning required' only. I was also informed by the agent that the house could not be re marketed while the tenants were in situ due to 'unwillingness of the tenants and the state of the house' yet the last inspection report in February 2013 stated the house required 'light cleaning only'

You can check out the other blog posts here, here, here, here and here with photos showing the extent of the damage and the efforts I went to, to evict the tenants.

Now it can be said we received money for 2 years, which we did, but we had a mortgage to pay, whilst renting a property in South Africa and UK tax to pay. We spent nearly 2000.00 GBP getting the house ready for the rental market and maintained the property during the rental period.

Our actual out of pocket costs are just under 2000.00 GBP, but if you see the list below you'll realise what it whole experience has actually cost and don't forget we carried out all the work, from cleaning to repainting and fixing holes in walls.

My costs to date are as follows:

Outstanding rent       1,900.00 GBP    June and July

                                      245.16 GBP    Aug 1- 8

Rent time house           704.84 GBP     Aug 9 -31

empty due to work        823.33 GBP    Sept 1-26

being done for re renting

Professional cleaning and repairs 

                                       943.15 GBP

Cleaning materials and DIY

                                        380.88 GBP

Personal costs inc phone, transport, postage

                                         433.93 GBP

Replacement to damaged and stolen items

                                          537.42 GBP

Return flights from the UK to evict tenants and carry out work

                                          19635.00 ZAR approx 1309.00 GBP

Total costs                         7277.71

minus deposit                      755.00

Outstanding                       6522.71

Error 404

I'm off to the UK again, I've only been back 5 weeks by the time I fly back out and so much has happened in that time.
The tenants are finally out, the quote for redecorating plus repairs and replacements, loss of rent, solicitors, cleaning etc, etc is currently around £8000...* sharp intake of breath*

My 14yo son left South Africa last week to attend Boarding school in the UK. I've throughly cleaned the house top to bottom, redecorated the boys bedrooms and the dining room. I've packed my bags and I'm ready to go.

So why Error 404.

Seriously, my life is complicated enough as it is.

Flights to the UK. I need to be there by the 6th of September at the very latest. The only flights available with Virgin Atlantic, BA, Emirates and Air France are this Sunday or September the 5th or my other alternatives are to book with Egypt Air with 2 stop overs and 2 carriers or Business or First class, neither or which I can afford.

So Sunday it is, August the 26th. Good job I got on with the cleaning and the decorating when I did.

But now I have to get from Heathrow Terminal 3 to Malvern. So I checked The Trainline. £50 single ticket change at Paddington. Click through the process to discover I have to collect my tickets prior to the start of the train journey.....mmmmmm can't collect tickets from Heathrow. So I booked a ticket from Paddington to malvern at the cost of £30. When I get to Heathrow I'll get the tube, bus, whatever, will figure that out when I get there at the cost of £8.40. A saving of £10.10 after the booking fee. And while we're at it, the trainline wasn't any cheaper than booking with National Rail direct.

Is your life as complicated? If not, please let me know the key to your success.

An update on the Accelerated possession Order

You can follow the story to date by clicking here

I've been in the UK. I contacted the solicitors on the 27th May, the first working day after the tenants Section 21a notice to vacate the property was up.

I then gave them 2 weeks notice to inform them I would be seeking a possession order, which expired on June 26th. My solicitor issued the possession order on July 1st.

Today it is still at the court, in Worcester, it hasn't been issued, they are busy 3-4 week backlog of work, not enough staff. But it has progressed a little since last Friday, it is sitting on the Judges desk now.

I've no idea when it will get issued, but when it does the Judge will give the tenants 2 weeks to move, but they won't move out as they need to wait for the warrant for possession which can only be issued the first working day after the possession order notice is served.

How long before the warrant is issued? Assume the possession order is issued on Friday 19th. The earliest I can apply for the warrant will be August 5th. But how long will it sit in the courts before it is issued? another 3-4 weeks or longer with stuff backing up more.

I'm back in the UK beginning of September. I hope to have my house back by then, but who knows?

You can read the definition of what Accelerated means. Silly me, I thought that meant the same thing also, but I failed to factor incompetence, short staffing and the fact that landlords have no rights.

How to evict tenants

First thing you do is contact your insurance agency and they will put you in touch with their solicitor and after submitting hundreds of documents they'll issue a notice of possession through the courts. The courts will deliver this within 48 hours. The tenants have 14 days to provide a defence. The solicitor then instructs the courts to issue the Possession order and if after 14 days from the date of issue, the tenants haven't moved out, you can apply for a warrant for a bailiff and tah dah 6 weeks later you get your house back.

 

Well that's a load of bollocks...this is what really happens:

Insurance company state they have no record of you, you phone them on May 23rd, you don't find out till June 6th that you're not covered. So you write to the tenants asking them what their intentions are.

Your solicitor starts the ball rolling and you're advised not to have any further contact with the tenants, otherwise harassment charges could be made.

You decide you're not happy with the Insurance company so you make a complaint, they tell you that you are covered, you send them the email they sent you 3 weeks earlier telling you, that you're not covered, so you email them and say, you made a mistake, you refund my costs and they say, they're not responsible for costs incurred before you contacted them, so you tell them to re read the email of complaint that states you're not covered under the policy so having wasted 2 weeks you contact your own solicitor.

I'll let you know when I resolve THAT issue.

You then discover that your solicitor at the cost of £775 didn't submit the possession order on June 27th as they should have done and 2 weeks on you're still waiting as the courts are 'busy'.

Now that you're covered with the Insurance they inform you they'll take over and ask you to return endless forms. This solicitor seems a bit more realistic with a time scale of up to 5 months to get the house back and 1-3 years to recover costs.

But.........

it just gets even better..........

I discover my tenant has done this before, was evicted. The helpful local council have told him to stay put until the warrant for bailiffs is issued. If they leave early they won't qualify for housing. It's also public record (google tenants name and last known address) local paper runs story about theft and fraud and guess what...no reference check carried out on him. Yes, original agent is to blame.

I inform housing that I am homeless due to tenants not paying rent and refusing to move out and that I have a mortgage to pay that I can't afford. The council tell me I can apply for hostel accommodation.

 

and then.......

There is post, post from Companies House, at my address, informing me a business is being operated from my there. I inform Companies House and they inform me that the tenants aren't the ones running the business it's a bloke from Birmingham. After a bit of googling I find several web sites where the company is listed and inform them all that the business has nothing to do with me and no permission was given to use my address and asked them to remove the listing.

...it gets even better as I'm informed by Action Fraud and Trading Standards that it isn't illegal to use someone else's address to register a company and Companies House informed me it's not their job to check that the business has permission from the property owner.

 

...but what finished me off was the suggestion from Trading Standards that I wrote to the Director and asked him what he was playing at.....I'll give it a go, but I suspect it'll be me opening the letter as I can assure you....I've never heard of him and he DOESN'T live at MY address.