Discussions

For all you who are smaller landlords, - you know, Mom and Pop type , one or two houses and not large companies.....  
 
What do you do when you have been completely screwed over by a pathetic, ignorant, insert more expletives here tenant who not only walks out on rent but also has left thousands of dollars of damage to your property? Much of which was not obvious on our walk through because this loser covered up a lot of it and lied about other damages. Totally misrepresented himself when we rented to him too, we have come to find out.  
 
Need to know what options I have, MB tenancy wants me to file with them, but has anyone tried that and had any success? Also considering legal action as we are over $5000 in damages alone, never mind the rent we were shorted.  
 
It's really pathetic that we are only allowed to take a 1/2 mth rent damage deposit - that no where near covers the costs when you have these losers take advantage of you.  
 
What do we do?

You can go thru the tenancy branch. Make sure you have documentation and pictures and quotes for the repairs. Be prepared to get awarded only a portion of your claim. Even after you get a positive result from tenancy branch you will still likely not get paid anything. You will need to bring them to court with the help of the tenancy decision if you can find the tenant to serve them the documents. If they are working you can garish their wage or you can apply to garnish their bank account. In cases like these often there is nothing or very little to take. If they change jobs the wage garnishment does not automatically transfer.  
 
Unless you know they have the money or a steady job I would likely cut my losses based on previous experience.  
 
My tip to you is check the mail at the house for anything addressed to the former tenant sometimes they can be persuaded to trade for it. A bit unethical perhaps but necessary when dealing with this type of sh!thead.  
 
Edited by bean, 2021-10-29 19:49:19

i have heard a thing called notice of promisary, not sure how legal it is in Manitoba. Basically its a legal contract that if they break anything they are responsible to pay for it. Also you could add to lease agreement about a monthly walk through with the tenant. One of my friends does this with a rental house. Its more of a proactive measure that if he notice that something is wearing out or not working he can fix it before its an issue, and also give you a leg to stand on if they damage something or did not notify you of repairs that needed to be done.

Either tenants and landlords should be more friendly to each other or some rules need to be changed for protection of small landlords.  
 
Small landlords saved and sacrificed for long time to have an investment as rental property. They do not earn much money after regular expenses such as paying for mortgage, property tax, insurance, etc, not to mention the damages caused by bad tenants. They want a good relationship with their tenants. They want tenants to pay their rent and take good care of the place they are living in, so both can enjoy more friendly atmosphere.  
 
In my mind tenants and landlords should be friends to each other and not against each other.  
 
Damage deposit should be increased to 2 months rent to cover a bit of damages of bad tenants, such as the situation like what OP states. Half month rent for damage deposit does not cover much when comes to any damage, it does not even cover the cost of fixing and one coat of painting of walls that left dirty and full of nail holes.  
 
Increasing the damage deposit also benefit good tenants. They try to save some money for damage deposit and not spend all their paychecks. When they leave that place, they will get their damage deposit back.  
 
The small landlords should request the change of the amount of damage deposit from some authority personnel that cares about landloards protection as well as tenants protection. Any body knows where to bring small landlords voice?  
 
Edited by Deb1, 2021-10-29 23:30:49

Deposit should be at least two months rent. AT LEAST!

the landlord ups the rent by, say $50 a month, which he then pays into a separate account to be used for damage/cleaning/repair costs with the balance being returned to the renters.  
Of course this would mean having to trust the landlord as much as now trusting the tenants. There are possibly as many bad landlords as tenants.  
The biggest problem is that the tenants can be the nicest folk in the world when viewing but once in the property true colours emerge. Doing due diligence before renting does not solve anything, but can be helpful.  
At the end of the day the old adage "you can't get blood out of a stone" applies, write the cost off to experience and charge the costs to the tax man, at least you will get some of it back.

Delmbm, note that good tenants never penalized if the damage deposit goes up, because,they will get it back at the end of tenancy.  
Potential bad tenants, think about loosing their 2 months rent before being careless about their tenancy.  
Bad tenants will pay for all or part of their damages, so next time they will be more careful about renting other people's investment and ruin it .  
Lanloard can get all or part of their damage back.  
 
So it is good for both tenants and landlords. It is not good for people that benefit from ruining relationships between tenants and small landlords.  
 
Edited by Deb1, 2021-10-30 10:59:02

Unless you know where the tenant has gone (forwarding address), there probably isn’t too much that you can do. Tenancies Branch requires that the landlord hand deliver any paperwork needed to go through them and they will not help you out, even if there is a way for them to know the tenants new address (I don’t know if there is). It was my experience that any tenant who would slip out on months of rent and leave the place badly damaged are not going to leave you a forwarding address.  
 
I sold my last rental property early this year because of things like this. It just wasn’t worth it anymore.

If I had $1,800-$3,000 just sitting around for a damage deposit, I'd be buying a house, not continuing to rent.  
 
Bad tenants ruin it for us good ones, who are just trying to live life within our means.  
 
Edited by SilentObserver, 2021-10-30 14:38:12

Sure, the Tenancies Branch wants you to file. Easy money for them (Rentalsmen), but not for you. Here what happens... You file, then spend the next month or so stewing about it while waiting for a hearing date. You finally get to present your case and will probably win, if you're prepared. However, it's unlikely you will be awarded the full claim, due to proof without doubt or due to the unrealistic expectations of what the Tenancies believes of true costs (even with receipts presented) or repairs, clean-up, loss of revenue or the value of your time. Even with the accused former tenant not showing up... They'll (Rentalsmen) find something to disagree with the claim. So now, you win the case and are rewarded the deposit (which often the tenancies wants to hold, if the former tenant wants to dispute) and whatever extra allowances they so choose to grant (Oh, the power trip they must have to "get off" on this). Next step is getting the money. What joy that brings. *sarcasm* The costs , aggravation and time to do this will really question yourself on why you started this claim in the first place. Look FOXTROT11, five grand is nothing to sneeze at, but just break you claim down to material costs. Your time is expected to be free and all labour costs will be on you. Congratulations, you're becoming a "slum lord" with the help of the Tenancies Branch. Being forced to use your limited skills and cheapest materials will be the only way to get "out of the red" faster. That's the life of a "smalltime" landlord. We can't waste any more money and resources to chase what's owed to us by hiring help. And the "bad tenants" know this, so they aren't afraid to do this again to the next "small time" landlord. There's no known fix to this, unless you have a lawyer. The big developers have legal help worked into their system and is part of their overhead costs. Plus, their screening process is far more stricter and are far more successful in obtaining enough financial information from the application to significantly pose as a threat to future finances of the tenant. This is why, these buggers will go to the small landlords to screw them over. Because we can't afford to fight back.  
 
Now only if there was a registry to defunct tenants? Oh wait, we can't have one. ...Privacy issues. Even brutal tenants have more rights than the landlord. I just wish the Manitoba Tenancy Board would have an easy way to access their records to find the names, dates and amounts of all those who had judgement set against them. ...Then it would be all worth it to file a claim against them, for there will be a history on these people. Wouldn't that be great? Just log-in to a site and place a name and see if anything was set against them. What a dream that would be to make life for the landlords application process easier. Because as it sits now, the system of the Tenancies Branch is flawed to weigh heavily in the advantage of the tenants. ...Good or bad.  
 
My advice, if you feel prepared, know their new address and current workplace, then file the claim and go through the steps. See it yourself how poor justice works from the Rentalsmen onto landlords. Maybe you will win and get some money... But I think it's likely that you'll win and loose more money on this venture. You should experience this process at least once to truly understand how much of an "uphill battle" it is to collect when they bugger off.  
 
Just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Probably tnancy branch makes money out if dispute between tenants and landlords, so they make more bad tenants with not punishing them. Instead of promote more responsible tenant's & landlords,  
they make more bad tenants and more angry landloards.  
My landlord friend had experience in Winnipeg, even thought the rules are the same but people working in their office were much more helpful than people in Brandon branch.  
 
Edited by Deb1, 2021-10-30 16:38:21

We have discovered the queens bench search is a handy tool when choosing our tenants. We had to find out the hard way after renting to a horrible tenant that this website existed. A lot of damage, filth left, and unpaid water bill. After we searched his name in queens bench we found out his shady history and would have never rented to him. We did file a claim and won and luckily one of the tenants on the lease worked for a business and we were able to garnish her wage and recoup an amount we were happy with. If you know where they work you can go to their place of work and serve them there. That’s how we were successful in serving our undesirable tenants. Plus the added benefit in making a claim is that it will show up on their queens bench that their landlord had to make a claim against them so it hopefully will prevent another poor landlord from renting to them.