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Hello everyone. My first rental property, got tenant and did references. Reference failed, requested a guarantor and she used her mum. I should have declined at the point of her reference failing and I take responsibility for that mistake. She explained to me it was her former partner that made her have CCJ so she paid 3 months rent upfront. This lasted up to December 2024. Since then, rent has been consistently coming late. February 2025 rent is still unpaid up till now, she eventually paid March rent, April and May rents were paid in June claiming she’ll pay the February. She stopped taking calls or replying to messages and emails since April 2025 and will not answer the door when I visit the property so I stopped going there. I have approached the guarantor too and they’re both just taken a piss and I’m really drained and tired of all these. Zero communication and she stopped paying rent altogether. I’m struggling to pay my personal mortgage and the rental property as I lost my job so I’m really stressed financially paying 2 mortgages. I have issued a S8 and she completely ignored it the first time, I re-issued another one on the advice of a solicitor and she didn’t collect from Royal mail the 2 times posted. I have now applied for a possession order, rent arrears totalling £4,000 atm so I need advice on what to expect and what to do. AST ends by 29 September, 2025.
Thank you so much.
You need to speak to your solicitor. Make sure you have done everything correct with prescribed information etc.
Also, you’re thinking about late rents wrong. The outstanding rent is not February but rather the last one/ones.
The March payment is Feb’s rent and so on.
Do whatever your solicitor tells you to do. If you don’t have one anymore, get one because I’ve a feeling this tenant is going nowhere when that possession order expires.
Thanks for the insight, she specifically stated March rent in her reference so I assumed so but now I get your point. I can’t currently afford a solicitor and that’s why I need all the advice I can get xx. Thank you so much for your contributions
but…
If what you’ve described above is accurate, you can’t afford NOT to have a solicitor. If she’s “stopped paying rent altogether” then you are likely facing no rent at all until she leaves the property. That might not be until the bailiffs (which you have to pay for) arrive. That could be over a year from now.
Get a solicitor and section 8 them, hand posted with a photo of you posting it through the letter box and a witness-you have no other choice, unless you want to keep losing money. The solicitor has a postal clerk that will do this. If you try and win the possession order without a solicitor then I wish you the best of luck. A judge will just defer the judgement and give them another 8 weeks to try and start paying off the old debt and all that means is that if they actually do start paying that off, they’ll claim that they can afford the current rent and you’ll just carry on losing even more money, so at least if your going to lose money, make sure it’s on a solicitor, who will give you half a chance of eviction, rather than no chance. If you’ve given them all of the correct documentation, section 21 them for good measure.