Occasionally the tenants from hell make the headlines though I am sure that for every poor tenant experience there’s 1,000 that are exemplary.
Now let’s hear it for THE LANDLORDS FROM HELL.
A friend of mine once lived for seven years at a partner’s home in perfect harmony; as husband and wife. Monthly he paid a wacking great contribution to household costs and also helped pay for improvements. Such is life the relationship went through a difficult period and after a late night row they parted company.
I don’t exaggerate when I say that at 2.00am on a January morning all his possessions were hurled out, piled into the back of his car. What he couldn’t get in was abandoned. Such was the hour and the circumstances of his eviction he even left the keys to his shop inside the house; and passport, birth certificate etc; which she withheld. Until he rented a place he had to sofa-surf at friends homes.
The point? He had no legal rights whatsoever. It was her place; he didn’t even have a rent book.
More recently a friend rented near Torrevieja. There for eleven months his tenancy couldn’t be faulted. He looked after the place, even improved on it; paid all the bills, and the rent was always on time.
Then the owner got into financial difficulties and constantly wanted the rent before it was due. In the end he told her that she would have it on the agreed day; the 1st of the month. She summarily gave him a month’s notice ‘for being unhelpful.’
With ten days left of his already paid for tenancy she was hysterical; calling him every epiphet imaginable even to the coarsest of ears; threatening, abusive. He had to barricade himself in.
He left before the rent was due - no, he didn’t leave; he escaped. If I know of two such cases then multiply that by the experiences of others and you have a big problem with the landlords from hell.
To play devils advocate, I wouldn’t say the first case is anything like a Landlord-tenant agreement. They were in a relationship and at some point she opened her home to him, generally speaking who was to blame for the split is irrelevant. It was her home, he moved in under the agreement that he wasn’t on the tenancy-she wasn’t a landlord from hell! Just an irate ex with a grudge, women AND men do things like that all of the time, mostly they end up guilt ridden and allow them to come home but it does happen. I wouldn’t say he was innocent though, she kicked him out for some reason right? It must have been something bad for her to throw him out at that time of night, unfortunately without being a fly on the wall, you will never know exactly what he did, regardless of how long you have been friends.
Remeber there are three sides to ever story, his, hers and the truth :D
The second one is not nice though…
I have a friend who had a bad experience with her landlord. She moved in without a contract (stupidly) and then when they wanted her out because they wanted to sell they put the rent up to a stupid amount and she quickly got into debt, without a contract she couldn’t prove that they had even upped the rent. As such she didn’t have a leg to stand on when she became three months late…
