[SirAlec]

I don't know what is the rule down under, but there is a difference between Lease and Rent (Kirainama).

If its a lease and it was renewed by your Dad promptly, they have a strong case.

I suggest you go the way i mentioned above.

[Gansan]

@Mr.Bean
I saw that you had mentioned a lease agreement. Does it have a clause for notice period? It will normally have this - if either the tenant wants to vacate the property or the owner wants the tenant to leave, they will have to give n months of notice to each other. If it exists, invoke it and send him a due notice, requesting him to vacate.

Forget about discontinuing electricity and water payments. These utility items can't be withdrawn without a court order.

I would suggest an alternative - normally the association/society will collect the EB cards from all households and give it for meter reading when the EB guys come, as all the meters will be located in a common area in flats. After the reading is entered, the association will collect the money from the owners and pay the EB charge, a normal service extended by the association to the owners. I assume this set-up prevails at your place too.

If the owner defaults on the association dues, the association can withdraw this service, among others. Take the secretary in to confidence, and default on the monthly fee for a couple of months. Let them not collect the EB card from the tenant. Chances are he will not notice anything amiss. If the card is not given to to the EB fellow to note the reading, he will write door locked or something. If the EB dues are not paid for a few months, they will automatically disconnect the line. Thereafter I think only the owner can get it restored.

A word of caution, just in case - check discretely if the guy has any political connections. If he is a local guy and you happen to hail from outside the state, it can get complicated. Best of luck.

[ikoneer]

Bean: Normally you need to give 3 months notice or as mentioned in the agreement to the tenant. This should be a written agreement and you can choose to send by registered post with acknowledgement or take a photocopy and get him to sign the same. Unless it's written, he can always say that you did not give time and harasssing him and the fault would be you yours.

I would say that you can wait until the notice period starts, consult a lawyer and issue a statement that you need the premises for renovation and the contract is not being renewed and he needs to hand over the premises on the lease expiry date.

Meantime, try to have a good rapport and sugar coated talk etc. if there are any young ones - school, college going, try to talk them and tell your problems. You can even ask your mother to speak to the lady of your tenant.

If nothing happens, file a legal suit in court. It may take 4-5 years but you will eventually win the case.

If you have a strong backing, you can try force eviction otherwise dont' even think about it and take the legal route.

Trying to pick up the EB/Water card will not work as all the payments can be made online.

Try to be stern, sugar talk or legal notice. As said, keep talking, pestering and become a pain in their @$$. My god, what all a house owner has to go through.

[Mr_Bean]

Thanks Ikoneer, Gansan, Sir Alec & all for your key inputs

Originally Posted by ikoneer

Bean: Normally you need to give 3 months notice or as mentioned in the agreement to the tenant. This should be a written agreement and you can choose to send by registered post with acknowledgement or take a photocopy and get him to sign the same.

I approached a lawyer, the notice to the tenant was sent on November 1st. Lawyer told me that further course of action depends on how the tenant reacts to the notice.
I called the tenant today & the same old story started, " Sir, we are searching for house, we are ready to pay 12k but not getting a house,"...Now they want to stay till April and the lease expires on feb 9th..
The notice i issued on nov 1st through a lawyer expires on december 31st.
What is next? Police eviction notice?

Originally Posted by ikoneer

Try to be stern, sugar talk or legal notice. As said, keep talking, pestering and become a pain in their @$$. My god, what all a house owner has to go through.

This has gone on for around 2 years, I was kept in dark regarding this issue by my parents when I was working outside chennai. But over these days the tenant got a feeling that owner is very soft but I am gonna prove them wrong.

Originally Posted by Gansan

@Mr.Bean
I saw that you had mentioned a lease agreement. Does it have a clause for notice period? It will normally have this - if either the tenant wants to vacate the property or the owner wants the tenant to leave, they will have to give n months of notice to each other. If it exists, invoke it and send him a due notice, requesting him to vacate.


A word of caution, just in case - check discretely if the guy has any political connections. If he is a local guy and you happen to hail from outside the state, it can get complicated. Best of luck.

The notice has a clause where on issue of 2 month notice the tenant has to vacate. My parents are in Chennai for the past 40 years. So we are very much locals.
I need to check the background.

Originally Posted by GTO

Lease expires when, in January 2011? That's when you should make a stern request to him. If he doesn't abide by your instructions, gain access to the house when its empty (ONLY after the lease expires) and remove all of his belongings. Replace the locks with new ones, keep a tough security guard to look over, and occupy the place soon (empty houses are bad news). If he tries to harass you, register a complaint with the local Police station.

I frequently lease out properties and believe me, sometimes you have to act tough with the lessees.

GTO, Am I breaking the law by this action. Please throw more light on this.

[neofromcapone]

Quote:
Originally Posted by GTO
Lease expires when, in January 2011? That's when you should make a stern request to him. If he doesn't abide by your instructions, gain access to the house when its empty (ONLY after the lease expires) and remove all of his belongings. Replace the locks with new ones, keep a tough security guard to look over, and occupy the place soon (empty houses are bad news). If he tries to harass you, register a complaint with the local Police station.

I frequently lease out properties and believe me, sometimes you have to act tough with the lessees.
GTO, Am I breaking the law by this action. Please throw more light on this.

You will be putting yourself in a very delicate position if your tenent files a complaint against you, My ex-boss was in dispute with his landlord and not paying rent, xyz reason, the landlord had to fix some structural damages and he was getting rogered by the muncipal authorities, landlord opened the premise with his keys and fixed the structure. My ex-boss went and filed a police compliant on them, build up a false case and extracted 5 lacs to settle the matter outside the police.

Use your lawyer, and make sure you are on the right side of the law, and do everything legally......... you are almost home, dont stumble at the finishing line.

Be patient and do-not allow matter to go beyond control / police /courts.
The courts will seize the property till they decide on who is right, which will be you, but god knows how long + costs + headache.

NOT WORTH IT.

Get your lawyer to fix this with legal notices and pls dont show your anger to your tenant, just show him legal notices and be firm.

Just get possession of your property thats the best way to show him who's the boss.

All the best and be cool.

[Mr_Bean]

Originally Posted by neofromcapone

Get your lawyer to fix this with legal notices and pls dont show your anger to your tenant, just show him legal notices and be firm.

Just get possession of your property thats the best way to show him who's the boss.

All the best and be cool.

Thanks for the input, taking law into our own hands may backfire.

What is the next thing to do? What should I do if the tenant refuses to vacate after lease expiry & refuses to pay rent. I see the possibility of the tenant doing this because his behavior & tone has changed ever since I sent the legal notice.

[GearOn]

Sharing a experience my uncle had with his tenant. The tenant refused to leave property even after agreement expired and after issuing lots of notices and police pressure. Finally he left only after taking some monetary payments.So they actually had to pay the tenant to leave.

This kind of looting happens a lot in small cities and people with political connections are involved in this.

[pankaj_sachdeva]

Originally Posted by GearOn

Sharing a experience my uncle had with his tenant. The tenant refused to leave property even after agreement expired and after issuing lots of notices and police pressure. Finally he left only after taking some monetary payments.So they actually had to pay the tenant to leave.

This kind of looting happens a lot in small cities and people with political connections are involved in this.

You are so true on this as the exact happened with my father-in-law too. The tenant refused to leave, even after the police pressure and legal notices.finally after lot of mediating by influential people, my F-I-L had to pay close to 3 lakhs to get the property vacant.

the house was worth 50 big ones and the tenant was a close relative of a local politician.

[Fantasy]

reading all this is very interesting as problem tenants exist out here as well and laws don't make it easy to remove them in a timely manner. i've heard of situations where tenants accept payment before vacating. nothing short of frustrating.

as you mentioned the work that needs to be done is an extension to the house.....what if you got a construction crew hired up and got started on the extension work on the exterior of the house. get them to start really early in the morning, say just before sunrise or have them work late into the night....after bed time. i'm guessing this may require paying off the local police dept. to turn a blind eye if there are any noise complaints lodged.

another option might be to hire some local hermaphrodites to pay a visit at various times of business through out the day and put on a show. perhaps even outside the house so people avoid going inside for business purposes.

last suggestion i have is watch khosla ka ghosla and take notes. hahha...sorry i just had to. one of my favourite movies.

either way good luck with the situation. i'm hoping it gets resolved easily for you.

[hellstar]

one suggestion - do not even think of entering the house when it is empty or even forcibly entering the house to move things out ,by doing this your are are putting yourself on the wrong side of law and that in the end doesnt have pleasant side effects . Do everything through your lawyer and do not vent your frustration . anger on the tenant.

I would do what @neofromcapone has suggested to do.

[carboy]

I own a flat in Pune where I stayed for a few years and then rented it out to a couple who have now stayed there for 2 11 month lease terms. The lease is coming up for renewal and I was wondering if I should renew the lease - reading through this thread I am getting a little scared - and wondering if I should find a new tenant just so that the same person doesn't occupy the house for a long time.

However, this tenant of mine has been wonderful in all ways. He takes care of society maintenance bills & deducts it from rent. He pays the Pune Property Tax and deducts it from the rent & takes care of anything else & has been a totally headache free tenant.

[alpha1]

^ Just to confuse you further.
Consider this scenario - these tenants are fine and dandy, but you pull the plug after reading this thread and get new ones.

And the new tenants turn out to be the squatters ...

[srishiva]

My parents had let the outhouse on rent. Rent was not received for 3 months. Later when my father gave them a stern warning, they sent a notice to my father. The notice mentioned my father had strong connections etc and he was harassing them. The guy was a lawyer.
Finally, strong connections had to be used and rent for 5 months was lost. Laws are sometimes ambiguous and useless, notices can be sent without reason.

[fine69]

We ourselves own a house in the Ghaziabad area of NCR and have had multiple problems with the tenants over the last couple of years ranging from not paying rent to even breaking our 50k worth of modular kitchen.

Heck, we've even had our house raided by the cops while it was empty when our "trusted" property dealer was out in the market to find us the tenants, only that he was in our house with his woman friend (beat that).

From all the mistakes that we've made till now, it being our first & only property, we've decided on a couple of things.
1. There must always be a lease agreement.
2. Electricity/water bills to be paid only by us.
3. Instead of the rent reaching us comfortably every month, we go to our house to collect it every 3 months, helps us ascertain the condition of the house.
4. Have a tea at the neighbours place everytime we visit the house, they tell us how good/bad the tenants are (helps in deciding extension of the lease agreement)
5. Try to always rent it out to a serviceman, preferrably someone who's married, even better if he has kids.

But to share a fact with you, the house just below ours, was taken over by a local politician about 2 years back from the owner who now is not even traceable.

Now we've taken all precautions that we think we can but this thread does send a chill down the spine thinking of how a hard-earned property can be literally snatched from us anytime.

Can you guys throw some light on what other measures can one take to prevent any such incidents?

[carbookie]

That is why I prefer tenants who are outsiders, new to city, young and in good jobs. But then again you never know.