can I take possession of rental Property immediately if risk of damage

S

smurf

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Tenant as no ESB for 6 months owes>3000 making no moves to reconnect. Porperty insurance invalidated by these actions, tenant aware of this. If I issue notice to vacate this I think could trigger retaliation from tenant.

What are my options. Tenant is not in property for next number of days.
Can I enter property within this parameter to protect property (proactively), change locks and give tenant opportunity to come and collect possessions while supervised.?

Thoughts --- legal advice Thanks
 
Why would your insurance be invalidated by their unwillingness to pay an ESB bill?
 
I understand that with no ESB .... then no insurance ....its in the T&C (I think)
 
It sounds that you might have a tenant who knows the limit of what he can do and get away with it. At least, without electricity you can be sure the tenant isn't growing spamspamspam!

You would be ill advised to enter the property or change the locks. This would be classed as not allowing the tenant to enjoy peaceful and exclusive occupation of the property.

If you change the locks, this will be deemed as illegal eviction. A claim with the PRTB against you could well be in excess of the 3k ESB bill. Hopefully it is in his name. Again, hopefully, he has not yet started to have rent arrears.

Most (good) leases have a clause that the property must be heated to a reasonable temperature to avoid damage to the property by way of frozen / burst water pipes.

You should make an appointment with the tenant for an inspection of the property and any misgiving about the state of the place should be put in writing and that they be remedied within 14 days (and another inspection at that time to ensure your reasonable requests have been done.

In order to regain possession of the property you MUST go through the correct procedures and this will depend on the reason for eviction and what type of lease is in place and possibly how long the tenant has been living there.
 
When can a LL enter a premises if the tenant does not answer the door nor reply to messages ? Especially when the LL knows there is a situation that could cause damage to the premises?

My answer would be NOW - because the law recognises force majeure. Am I wrong?
 
Are there many other countries who have a system as biased and with so much sympathy for bad tenants. I am talking about bad tenants who abuse the system not about the many good tenants.
 
I sympathise with the LL in this situation. The Law is a disgrace in this country re private rented housing.
Not alone are LL's under pressure with banks, falling property prices, negative equity, property taxes and the normal maintenance of housing, but when you have to deal with scum like this I wonder is it worth it all the hassle.
I learned a lesson the hard way also, a LL is better of to leave house vacant unless your tenant comes up clean on a proper 100 % vetting.
Dont ever take a chance on leasing to prospective tenant until you are 100% sure about references and a possible Garda vetting.
I agree with Dermot above, the majority of tenants are good,but my god when you have to deal with a bad one like Smurf the law is of no assistance. it is more concerned about the " Constitutional Rights" of the tenant then the criminal damage to LL's property and what I call the theft from the LL for non payment of rent and utilities.

Best of Luck with your situation, you will need it !!
 
You're asking whether it is legal to evict a tenant or not. Well you know the answer to that. You have to weigh up the cost of eviction (PRTB have in one case ordered the payment of 20K to a tenant for this), versus the costs of major damage.

Interestingly you have mentioned he's not paying ESB but said nothing about the rent?

What does he do for heat and light?

Alternatively is the option is to go the legal eviction route, do you think he would ignore this?

Another option is the bribery route.

What makes you think he will retaliate?
 
oldnick said:
When can a LL enter a premises if the tenant does not answer the door nor reply to messages ? Especially when the LL knows there is a situation that could cause damage to the premises?

My answer would be NOW - because the law recognises force majeure. Am I wrong?
Click to expand...
If a landlord has tried to make contact with the tenant on numerous occasions (and with proof of doing so), without a reply, he may indeed have reason to enter the property, deeming it an emergency, to check that the tenant is not dead or seriously injured.

It is not a good idea when sending mail to a tenant to use registered post - a person can refuse to accept such mail. However, the post office services do provide a receipted proof of delivery (which is cheaper than a registered letter (probably because the postman does not have to wait around for the recipient to sign for it).

David Jason, acting as a detective (Frost ?) policeman wanted to get into a property but was not able to, legally. So he picked up a stone and threw it through a window of the house which set off an alarm (do alarms actually work like that in real life?). As he "just happened to be passing at the time", he entered the property to check if there was a burglar inside! Q.E.D.
 
Dermot said:
Are there many other countries who have a system as biased and with so much sympathy for bad tenants. I am talking about bad tenants who abuse the system not about the many good tenants.
Click to expand...
It's exactly the same in the UK.

We had a tenant in our property, via a letting agent, who didn't pay rent for 6 months and when I called to the house, literally gave me the 2 fingers and said he knows his rights.

Went to the local police and asked what would happen if I went in when he was at work and changed the locks and chucked his stuff out. They told me they would arrest me for breaking and entering into my own house.

By the time we got him out, we had lost 6 months rent, having still had to pay the mortage, insurance, etc on the house, and were saddled with solicitor's fees, court fees, bailiff's fees and a huge amount of stress.

We were not wealthy landlords, but had to rent out our home and move abroad as my husband lost his job in the recession. We couldn't sell the property at the time as it was in severe negative equity.

There was no help or sympathy from any quarter for our plight and we were left thousands out of pocket.

It's high time the law was changed to deal with bad tenants who are not paying rent, they should be treated as squatters and evicted using the police.
 
I'm trying to pin this down facetious... the right of entry aspect.

Separate from the lack of response from tenant issue, are you aware in your encyclopaedic kwnowledge of tenancy case law of the force-majeure aspect ?

That is, without any contact with tenant, is it deemed reasonable/lawful for LLs to immediately enter the premises if :-
- they smell gas or smoke
- hear screams for help,
- a dog has been barking/whimpering incessantly for hours and neighbours have called LL
- water is leaking into the floor below.


Surely there MUST be ways for LLs to enter the premises, especially with a reliable witness, without Lls having to worry about the legal consequences.

Even if the LLS sincerely but wrongly believed they smelled gas etc or had misheard Jedward songs for a woman's scream for help, surely the Lls are in the clear ?

Do you have any case law on this?
 
oldnick said:
I'm trying to pin this down facetious... the right of entry aspect.

Separate from the lack of response from tenant issue, are you aware in your encyclopaedic kwnowledge of tenancy case law of the force-majeure aspect ?

That is, without any contact with tenant, is it deemed reasonable/lawful for LLs to immediately enter the premises if :-
- they smell gas or smoke
- hear screams for help,
- a dog has been barking/whimpering incessantly for hours and neighbours have called LL
- water is leaking into the floor below.


Surely there MUST be ways for LLs to enter the premises, especially with a reliable witness, without Lls having to worry about the legal consequences.

Even if the LLS sincerely but wrongly believed they smelled gas etc or had misheard Jedward songs for a woman's scream for help, surely the Lls are in the clear ?

Do you have any case law on this?
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Unfortunately, I do not know of any cases - PRTB or High Court of where a landlord has been cleared of entering a property thus preventing the tenant his due right to a peaceful and exclusive enjoyment of the property.

There are a significant number of cases, both Adjudications and Tribunals where the tenant has been awarded damages for the landlord's breach of the tenant's rights.

Although I believe that a landlord may enter a property legally "in an emergency", I now fail to find the exact text in the RTA 2004. The expression is freely quoted in other forums as the landlord's right.

As you suggest, this would seem a natural thing as the property, while being the tenant's home, it is ultimately the landlord's property which he will want to preserve in good state of repair and condition.
 
facetious said:
Unfortunately, I do not know of any cases - PRTB or High Court of where a landlord has been cleared of entering a property thus preventing the tenant his due right to a peaceful and exclusive enjoyment of the property.

.
Click to expand...


It will never happen. Landlords have to act within the law, more so than tenant's in general, and the sanctions against landlords will generally be onerous.

If landlords were allowed to go in, what would happen then is a multitude of forced evictions for spurious reasons.

It would weigh the balance too heavily in favour of the landlord.

But certainly the current rules are too biased to tenants in the situation of long non payment of rent in particular and landlords remedies for same. Unfortunatly this fact is serially abused by certain tenant's.

I've often wondered with the setting up of the PRTB why the rules weren't changed and it's probably a social policy of government who don't want to have to rehouse these type of people. And more recently the alarming trend of making landlords responsible for their tenant's behaviour without the landlord being able to legally deal with the tenant in any manner that doesn't result in landlords being seriously out of pocket.
 
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