Last year I purchased a 2 bed flat in…
Last year I purchased a 2 bed flat in Chard, Somerset. Nice little place, not too far from the town centre. I rented it to what I thought was a respectable couple using a local estate agent. They told me that they had done background checks and credit checks. That these people were good tenants and had a good rental history. So things started off OK, they paid the rent. Then about 9 months in, I get a text saying they're going on holiday and rent will be late. I figured it was because they were on holiday that they couldn't do the bank transfer. But no, turned out they spent the £450 rent on a holiday instead! Then the next month, another excuse why they can't pay me. Eventually, I had to send an eviction notice go to court and get a bailiff to kick them out. When I finally got access to the property I discovered they had stuck down this supposeded removable wallpaper - the sticky stuff that that suppsoedly peels off and also similar stuff on the worktop. When I was talking to the bailiff about the mess, he said that another landlord he'd recently helped out was using RenterBall. So I signed up, and filed a claim against them using the Renterball claiming system. In April, the tenants contacted me, demanding I remove the claim. I refused, giving the reasons why and said they can always agree to a repayment plan for the missing rent. They weren't happy to do it but they came back and said they agree to it, because they'd like to rent another property and the landlord uses Renterball.
So basically thanks to renterball, i can recover the rent! and I've signed up my next tenant onto Renterball using the site to find them and vet them myself and avoid giving about 10% to an agent who didn't even help me during this whole mess.
