More than half of landlords in the UK say that damage to property and rent arrears are the two main causes of disputes with tenants and two-thirds of property owners went to court to settle them, with around 525 landlords a day resorting to the law between January and March this year.
However, going to court to repossess a property is not as easy as it might seem, as almost two-thirds of notices served by landlords on tenants are incorrect, if they try to do the paperwork themselves, and if an eviction notice has mistakes in it, it is likely to be thrown out by the courts.
The most common reasons for notices to be invalidated when a landlord is trying to get possession from a tenant with an Assured Shorthold Tenancy (AST) are incorrect expiry dates, failure to comply with deposit legislation, inaccurate accompanying rent arrears schedules, the way the notice was served and typing errors.
According to an organisation that looks after the needs of landlords, the number of problems with notices served by landlords and agents who have not used a lawyer has been increasing over the past year.
As a spokesman for the organisation pointed out, the worst case scenario for a landlord trying to regain possession of a property is to find out that they have to start the whole process over again because they didn’t get it right first time.
Not only are they losing money in rent but they will then have to pay for someone to do the job properly, which would have saved them a huge amount of time and money if they had done so in the first place.