Lawyer claims tenant register would slash disputes and litigation

My sister lost over £20,000 from lost rent because a corrupt estate agent put tenants from hell in her property just before pandemic. Even bailiffs recognised them from their previous evictions when they came to evict them. What support from the government? None.
Estate agent closed his business and ran off.

This database would have warned my sister at least.

Letting agents checks are very poor, mainly financial, easily evaded by a bad tenants. I expect a lot more letting agents to go bust, the tenant fees act slashed their income.

Searching court judgements is a waste of time as few landlords take things that far. A simple system that records tenants full names plus an identifier such as national insurance number along with possibly photo id would suffice along with a description of the misdemeanor e.g. unpaid rent, evidence of deposit claims or court order for possession. Records must be fully available to all interested parties such as agents, landlords, local authorities.

Am I missing something here? Just do an Experian Report and it shows their credit history in detail as well as their current debt commitments.

This is long over due

Even if it was not a list of all tenants, just a Rogue Tenant database, the same way the Councils have Rogue Landlord databases. Whish I think letting agents should be able to access, so we can see what we are taking on with a new landlord in terms of refusal to pay for maintenance, hiring cowboys who do substandard jobs to save money etc. I mean, everyone has made a mistake or been caught out by dodgy installers, it happens, but consistently is a concerning pattern.

Judging by the comments its clear that many don't have a clue how to reference tenants, its widely thought, 'as commented above', that Agents do the referencing when in fact most out source to referencing companies who complete a basic credit search and basic referencing, these referencing companies make a fortune by selling insurance and data to third parties who sell on to other services and the agents get a commission for the introductions. The excuse agents make is they don't have the time to complete referencing themselves and to obtain rent guarantee insurance the referencing companies insist that they use them. Ive been in this industry for over 30 years as an agent and landlord we have only ever evicted one tenants that we referenced the circumstances were unavoidable and therefore we can honestly say that it was not down to poor referencing, we have in the past used referencing companies to find how useless they are, we have been completing our own referencing now for a number of years and have a much more accurate system in place. I can't see the point of a tenant register we already have the knowledge on how to check them.

This lady, Nyree Applegarth of Higgs LLP, is absolutely right and quite daring in the modern world to point out that landlords have needs and rights too and there are rouge tenants too (and probably far-far more of them in reality that are rouge landlords).

There are plenty of good points and suggestions made in this article but, sadly, given the current state of things and the frenzy of hate stired up (I believe for political and ideological reasons) it's very unlikely to get anywhere.... no doubt it's against tenants' "human rights" (or something) to be named and shamed and then "discriminated against" just because they happen "through no fault of their own" to be tenants from hell...!!... whereas doing the same to/for "rouge landlords" is what they're all clamouring for!

As @Jeremy Clarke rightly points out though, it's rare for things to go as far as Court Orders and the majority of problems with bad (or even terrible) tenants are dealt with and settled (or more often written off) long before, so a National Database of Tenants (if we were ever lucky enough to have one... in our dreams) would need to take that into account to be genuinely useful.

I am not sure why there is such negativity towards agents and rent and legal protection insurance. All my tenants are referenced on the basis that I will be taking out insurance on them and I always do. Yes, it is another expense, but I insure the properrty, so why not the tenant. Just as I insure my car, dogs and home, it is something I hope I will not have to claim on, but it is there just in case.

• Hit Man
• 28 June 2023 11:59 AM

I've sold rent guarantee policies and they are not worth the paper wrote on. I don't think the problem is about rent arrears any amount of referencing can't anticipate or determine tenants changes in circumstances. Its more about completing good referencing not half hearted minimum standards that referencing companies and private landlords do.

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I have worked for solicitors in matters of debt collection and registrar's court hearings plus the old judgment summonses. Many times the same names have reappeared in court. The bailiffs know them, the enquiry agents also know them. I am now a landlord and mostly trust the tenants, especialy the foreign ones from my foreign agent. There are still some who will tell you any stories (not lies just very bent truths) High time there was a tenant register to protect landlords from loosing their investment but we have to beware of the DPA. How would a tenant feel if their savngs were deleted by a fraudster?