My tenants have flooded my property but who’s problem is it?

Ask your tenants to pay an extra £ 5.00 or £ 10.00 per month to reduce their arrears. It will take a very long time for you to collect and you will need to account to your tenants every quarter or so, but at least they are paying the arrears off eventually. After a year or so you can praise them for their honesty and good intent and let them off with the balance / write it off. You have saved face in that they have paid something, and your tenants know that damages are chargeable and must be paid for. and will be carefull next time.

That's a decent Plan B Peter if they dig their heels in and don't go for my Plan A proposal when I do my "Church Mouse" impression as referred to by Ben Reeve-Lewis in this article >>> http://www.property118.com/?p=25391

I am sorry for you have this problem.Please always bear in mind tenants are tenants,I have all sort and kind of surprises in my life.I am letting houses from 1986. They always give surprises!!My tenants are very good. But some still give problem after problem and 3 still living in my houses for last 9 years. I had similar problem 7 years ago.cellar flooded and spiders/insects coming on the floor from corners , as floor carpeted.My tenant called me one night at 11pm. What can i do? I went with my son with torch and toolbox as standard. we noticed cellar filled with water about 4' and water is coming out from vent in the garden.I know we had concrete floor in cellar so no surprise for me. many things were floating so all insects finding there way out.I calm them down and told them try to clear some old furniture from cellar by tomorrow and they did so. we will come tomorrow and sort out . we went with Pump and clear all water from cellar. But problem remain unsolved as water still filling in when bath room been used . I called Thames water to look in to this matter they put dye in and they found out that Old S bend is broken 2 feet deep in ground and water not going in drain but found way in to the cellar.I called neighbor and he is very good with me so he called his friend and explained and replaced new S bend .there was movement in soil so that happened.Since i have no problem for cellar ,but cost we share with good neighbor as jointly owned S bent in garden.We happily deal withany issue.Thanks.

Hi Mark, just be careful that it was the tenants fault. For example was the bath over flow pipe connected.

Re the tenants, I always look at the business case. Some of my tenants are pains in the bum. I have one who each year I get an environmental health letter asking me to clear the garden of rubbish and it costs me circa £200. She's been in 8 years. Never asks for repairs. She is DSS and I get a 14% yield. I'm happy to pay the cost.

The moral case is pursue her for the money, but the business case is keep her sweet. Remember, you need to lose the odd battle to win the war.

Hi Glenn, yes it was definitely not a problem with the property/plumbing. Not my fault, not my tenants really as they were not at home either so I do feel a bit sorry for them. It's a shame their relatives that caused the problem didn't own up and fix it. Then again, maybe they did - I will never truly know. I will keep the tenant sweet and win the war but I don't have any inclination to be a 'soft touch' either.

Water damage would be covered by buildings insurance which would be your responsibility as the landlord. Assuming the damage was accidental, whilst stupid it doesn't sound as though it was malicious, so I don't know why you are pursuing the tenants for this.

OK, this is the email I've sent to my brother who manages all of the properties owned by the Alexander family. He's now in mediation mode (he's good at that) and will use this email to negotiate a settlement with my tenant. As you can see, the email is written more for the benefit of my tenants than for Adam. I'll let you know how I get on. Fingers crossed, wish me luck!

Hi Adam

Thank you for your call this weekend to update me on the
flooding problem at XXXXX Close.

As you know, I always believe in treating my tenants fairly.
I purchased this property as a long term investment and unlike some landlords I
have no intention of selling to make a quick profit. I also believe in
maintaining them and keeping rents at a fair level. I don’t make much profit on
the rents as it’s all swallowed up in mortgage payments, landlords insurance
and the fees for managing the property. For me, it’s a little nest egg for when
I retire in 20 years time, hopefully it will have gone up in value a fair bit
by then.

I’d like to think my tenants at XXXXX Close realise that I’m
a decent chap based on how I dealt with the issues of the leaky roof a few years ago. The
problem with the roof was my responsibility, I got it repaired as quickly as
possible and I even compensated the tenants by waiving a months’ rent at
Christmas for them which I didn’t need to do by law.

It’s clear to me though that the issue of the flooding is
not my responsibility as there was no water escape from the plumbing. I don’t
know exactly what happened but I can hazard a guess. That’s not the point
though, I’m not responsible for getting that fixed and my landlords insurance
has a policy excess of £500 so it's not worth making a claim. Also, I can’t force the tenants to buy or
claim on their own insurance.

I understand that you received a telephone call from my
tenants sister this weekend to say that no rent will be paid this month due to
my tenant having used her rent money to pay for the damage caused to the ceilings. I accept that she doesn't know how it happened either as she was not there and her relatives were house sitting. Nevertheless, we all agree that it wasn't due to and plumbing or pipework problems so it must have been an accident. A bath left to over-flow perhaps?
I could of
course insist on the rent being paid but I also accept that you can’t get blood
out of a stone. If my tenant has used the rent money to pay to fix the damages
caused I only have two options really.

Option one - I could ask you to serve a Section 21 notice to
gain possession of the house and re-let it. I’d prefer not to go down that
route though as my tenants do seem like nice people, they were very patient
when we had the leaky roof problems.

Option two - The only other option I can think of is to use
the one month damage deposit to cover the rent for this month. For this to
happen we will need the tenants to agree to this in writing. The deposit can
then be unprotected and used to pay this months’ rent.

I appreciate this is a bit risky as it leaves me with no
damage deposit but I need to do something because I need the rent to pay the
mortgage, the insurance and your fees for managing the property. I’m not made
of money either. If I don’t pay my mortgage the lender could reposes the
property and that’s bad news for both me and my tenants. We must avoid that at
all costs!

You have my permission to forward this email to my tenants
and I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards

Mark

Surely you have insurance to cover such an eventuality ?

As I've mentioned in other response comments, yes I do have insurance but I set the excess at £500 and the cost of repairs is only £575. On that basis it could be argued that I should only peruse the client for the excess. Actually, the more I think about that the more logical it is. If the damage had cost £20,000 to fix I would have claimed on the insurance and I'd have only pursued the tenants for the excess. I will leave that as a ace up my sleeve in the negotiation process.

Claim to fix damages barely exceeds the policy excess so no point.