Tenants and Tantrums

On Sunday evening Darryl packed his bags and left my home two full days after I told him to vacate and two full days after I told him the cost of the damaged he had caused. Thankfully, as a licensee rather than a tenant with rights, I am at liberty to ask him to leave at any time.   I can only assume he has spent the interim at his parents licking the wounded pride of a homeless thirty five year old businessman who refused to live respectfully in my shared household.

Daryl did not show his face when he skulked away into the night with his dirty possessions and I was not unhappy about this at all.   I have not lost sleep over the somewhat ghastly realisation of what having Daryl living under my roof entailed but, none the less, it hasn’t been one of the highlights of my room letting endeavours. Business minded to the end, I emailed him the following day to request his bank details to enable me to send a partial rent refund direct to his account. This seemingly innocuous action on my part appears to have dispensed with Daryl’s normal inclination to silence in regard to money matters and triggered a torrent of indignation. Daryl may well have got a kick from my firm words of reprimand in the past but he definitely does not like the fact I have snaffled his deposit as recompense for the damaged he has caused.

I am able to make this statement with absolute certainty because he has emailed me, at length, five times today on this subject alone.  It appears he cannot believe steam cleaning curry and excrement out of carpets in two rooms, acid cleaning the flagstone floor, replacing a rug on which he has split every manner of food, and purchasing new bed linen due to the unmentionable stains of his self gratification would add up to a little in excess of £400.

Daryl tells me he really needs this money to re-establish himself elsewhere. He says, unlike me, he has no family or friends in the area on which to rely and nor does he have sufficient funds to be able to afford to forfeit money in this manner. He insists I should immediately return his deposit to him, in full, because he cannot manage if I don’t.  Conceding he did damage the carpets he continues his monologue by offering to pay all reasonable bills (subject to quotes) from next month’s pay packet if I will just refund his deposit in full now.

What Darryl forgets is he has already shown me, for three whole months, how easily lies trip off his tongue if there is any chance of currying favour. Every syllable he has ever uttered has illustrated how much he values his own importance above all else and every month his reluctance to part with any money, even if it is due to me in rent, has declared his already declared his lack of integrity loud and clear.

Darryl is blissfully unaware I am not just a landlady and mother of five but a one woman debt fighting machine living in a rented house for which I am answerable to our landlords for any damage.  Little does he know I battle the wrath of the banks daily while preparing to take on HBOS and Lloyds TSB in the Courts.  He is ignorant of the fact that for three years I have continued to live with this pressure day in day out for the love of my children and to save my family’s future.  Sadly for Darryl he will have no idea his tantrums and threats are falling on deaf and pre-occupied ears because my skin has grown inordinately thick with the relentless flailing of the debt collector’s whip.

Wisdom and Virtue

Although they say wisdom is knowing what to do next and virtue is doing it, I am hoping this week proves wisdom is also about knowing what not to do next.

During the last week I have made the decision not to do quite a lot.

•  I refused to have another Friends meeting purely to update the committee on how things are progressing with the Summer Ball. I made this decision on the basis that, had some members of the committee been helping me in the first place, they would not be in need of updating.  The consequence of making this decision has been to acquire some much needed time to complete some vital Ball related tasks only a handful of us stalwarts are prepared to progress.
• I declined our business banks proposal for us to enter an IVA to prevent the Bank of Scotland’s continued harassment. I did this on the basis I could not bring myself to do anything which would allow the Bank of Scotland’s heartless behaviour towards my family’s plight to go unnoticed. By making this decision I have, for the first time in three years, acquired a sense of dignity and purpose. By choosing to turn the tables on our oppressor it will be me taking the Bank of Scotland to task rather than them preying on my vulnerability.  
• I did not accept the Inland Revenues Capital Gains Tax calculations for back taxes owed over the last ten years.  I asked them to recalculate in the hope they would see my point view because I could not believe reason would not ultimately win the day.  After a two year battle I am relieved to report this has been the case. Being successful in this instance has given me a confidence in my abilities I have never enjoyed before. I cannot help but regard this by product as an immensely silvery lining to a very dark cloud which has hung over me for some time.
•  I have resisted, on behalf of my thirty year old daughter, the temptation to accept a job offer for less than the maximum advertised.  Knowing her prospective employers had advertised the pay at a higher amount, I could not see why my daughter should accept any less when she was offered the job.  By not jumping at their first proposal, my daughter secured a 6% pay increase as well as better hours from her new employers.
•  I have also refused to listen to any more of my lodger Darryl’s self obsessed hard luck stories.  Logic dictates, as I have never had trouble finding tenants in the past, I should easily be able to improve on Darryl in the future. Within twenty four hours of making this decision I achieved my objective and have given Darryl his marching orders.  This means I will no longer have to root out stinking fish from Darryl’s kitchen cupboard, wash unmentionable stains from his bedding or witness his excrement deposits on my cream carpets.

I cannot think of a better way to end the week!

Viva Espana

They say life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans and today I wholeheartedly subscribe to this observation.  In the space of hour I have visited my eighty four year old Mum, called in on a friend for a coffee, told my lodger Daryl not to leave rotting stinking food in our fridge, advised the Chairman of the school Governors their marketing strategy is flawed, praised the Friends secretary for all the hard work she is doing on the up and coming summer ball, explored how best to prepare for a court case against the Bank of Scotland with my solicitor, and discussed the legal implications with our tenant in Spain in the event of the imminent repossession of our apartment.

In reality any one of these subjects would be more than enough for my addled brain but knowing full well success usually comes to those who are too busy to go looking for it, I always feel compelled to do everything I have agreed to. The job I had planned for today was simply to establish what Banca Caja in Spain want to do with our apartment on the Costa Del Sol. We haven't been there for three years and have made no payments for most of this time to either Banca Caja, who hold the mortgage, or the community who provide the maintenance services for the complex. Bizarrely enough, it was only when some good friends found a long term tenant for me who expressed a interest in buying it, the real trouble started.

Discovering the rent being offered was enough to pay all the interest on the mortgage with Banca Caja as well as 95% of the Community fees, I foolishly thought those concerned would be pleased if I arranged for my tenant to pay these amounts direct to both of them. It was at this point the madness began. On moving in, my tenant, who enjoyed watching the BBC channels on TV was disappointed to find that the Community satellite was failing to provide them. He approached the community manager about a repair but was told it would not be forth coming without a committee vote. This was because our financial difficulties had resulted in 9000 euros of arrears.

At the committee meeting the Chairman of the Community recommended a vote to a force sale of the apartment on the pretext that the equity from this be used to recoup the amount owing. No amount of explaining on my part that the property had 100,000 euros of negative equity would deter him. I later discovered, his motive had less to do with settling an outstanding community account and a lot to do with acquiring our apartment cheap for his friend.

 My tenant, who by this time was feeling very insecure, suggested I write to my bank and my solicitor to verify his position.  I did this only to hear that the bank also wished to take possession of the apartment too but had not done so because they had forgotten to impliment it two years previously. I was assured that my tenant could remain in residence due to his protected tenancy and he would be allowed to purchase the apartment within a five year period. Banca Caja went on to say that they would, in exchange for my agreement to this, write off the 100,000 euros negative equity and arrears and settle all outstanding bills against the property including the Community fees.

Hallelujah, I thought.

Everyone is happy (except perhaps the Chairman of the Community’s bargain hunting friend) and no stupid “Bank of Scotland type” debt collecting persecution tactics for me to deal with either.
The icing on the cake was that, during the following weeks, Banca Caja stopped allocating the rent payments to my mortgage account. When I enquired why, they insisted that it was no longer necessary as any interest due when the repossession was implemented would form part of the write off. My tenant, whose solicitor advised him he had to pay rent to someone to protect his tenancy rights, has continued to pay it to me and I have now purchased a modest holiday with the proceeds.
Thanks Banca Caja you have been great but do you realise, I wonder, that you have still not repossessed my apartment.

I am now wondering if maybe you have forgotten again.

Call me Cynthia

By sharing our rented, rambling and rather drafty old farmhouse with lodgers we are able to generate the essential extra income necessary for us to live here. I can't say I mind too much. It's a little like being back at boarding school. This time around however, I have the role of matron, I make the rules and I decide the consequences if they are flouted.

I usually find employed gentlemen of over thirty five make the most suitable tenants. My criteria is narrow because  I have found it not only reduces the likelihood of damage and non payment of rent but it also seems to reduce the time they need to spend with me. I am not seeking additional friends or family members; it's all about maximising the return for minimal risk to my family life and my furnishings.  During the two years in which we have been renting this house, we have happily rubbed shoulders with a number of very pleasant transient gentlemen who seem to have enjoyed sharing with us. They have treated our home, and our privacy, with respect.....but, now there is Darryl.

Darryl moved into our home six weeks ago after his relationship failed with an older woman who I later discovered (in his own words) "found him very annoying". Deciding a change of location and a new job was the best way for him to make a fresh start, I had no reason to think he would be anything other than the perfect  replacement lodger for a long standing tenant who had moved on. Darryl was polite, well spoken and regularly overwhelmed by the slightest thing. He struggled with recycling his rubbish, washing his dishes and using plates for his food. He seemed unable to decant anything without spilling it while leaving the loo presentable after use appeared to be completely beyond him. Both I and my other gentlemen guests endeavoured to encourage him to smarten up his act but to little effect. This weekend's slovenliness was the last straw in an increasingly irritating catalogue of events.

Despite my suggesting I organise the changing of Darryl's bedding, he insisted he was happy to take care of it himself. Relieved to have one less thing to do, I gave him freshly laundered covers and pillow cases only to discover on Monday morning he had not only chosen to sleep all weekend in his bed without using  any bed linen but he had also dripped fish oil all over the carpets and left numerous empty tins of fish in his room to fester and smell. Incensed by his lack of respect for my home while angered and frustrated from two and a half years of consistently getting nowhere with HBOS, it was my intention to make sure Darryl was fully aware of my displeasure on his returned from work.

All I can say is, "Call me Cynthia Payne," because, although I gave Darryl a verbal pasting which would have had most people quaking in their boots, I got the distinct impression he rather enjoyed the venomous reprimand which came his way.  I am now left wondering if titillation in the face of the mother of all dressing downs makes it more or less likely Darryl will, in future, use his bed linen!

Unfortunately this remains an outcome I simply cannot second guess.