Defaulting tenants to be shamed as rent ‘dodgers’

Oct 7 2008 by Liam Murphy, Liverpool Daily Post

“It’s only a tiny minority of cases, when they don’t pay their rent it’s extremely harmful to the rest of the property business.”

Mr Slattery, who owns “a good few properties” in the Liverpool area, said his properties were mortgaged and people not paying rent would destroy his credit rating.

Mr Heffey said recent changes in how benefits are paid, which are intended to give tenants great-er control over their rent pay-ments, had seen more and more people falling behind. This also comes as the credit crunch sees property owners finding it more difficult to maintain mortgages.

Mr Heffey admitted the tactic is likely to “cause confrontation”, but insisted it was a last resort.

He said: “It depends on the circumstances. But, for a tenant who is changing their phone number, ignoring letters, not answering the door to us, it’s a long and expensive process, and all that time someone has to pay the mortgage on the property.

“For someone who calls us, explains that they are having problems, we would not persevere with this if they are suffering difficulties.”

The first sign went up a week ago outside what appears to be a well-maintained property in Birk-enhead, and there was no answer at the house yesterday – although the sign had been torn down.

Mr Heffey said the sign had been put up outside another house in Liverpool, and added: “As of next week, you will probably see a lot more of the signs.”

He said some had questioned the legality of the signs, and he had even been threatened, but in-sisted other organisations used “naming and shaming”, and he believed it would either encour-age those not paying to sort out the problem, or move out in embarrassment.

But John Tuson, head of com-mercial property at Kirwans Solicitors, said he would advise landlord clients to follow the legal process instead.

Mr Tuson, an experienced com-mercial property lawyer, said he had never encountered anything like this, and naming and sham-ing by others usually followed prosecution through the courts.

He said the estate agent’s signs could potentially open them up to legal action. Among the areas for concern, he pointed out, were the possibility of defamation, incite-ment to assault or affray, harass-ment, breach of the tenancy agreement, or even trespass.

Mr Tuson said: “There is also confidentiality, in that the land-lord should not expose informa-tion about the tenant to a third party, and there’s the issue of priv-acy under Article Eight of Euro-pean Convention of Human Rights, along with data protection issues. And I dread to think what the consequences would be if the signs were accidentally put on the wrong houses.”

OPINION: PAGE 8

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