As a landlord, you probably have an “ideal tenant” in mind whenever you place an advert for one of your properties. The list of ‘must-have’ attributes probably includes being solvent, reliable, and honest. So what do you do when you discover your tenants have stolen items from the property before moving on?
Sadly not all tenants are honest and upstanding members of the local community and no matter how respectable they might sometimes appear to be, quite a high number of tenants think it is perfectly acceptable to move out and take items such as the washing machine with them. In fact theft from rental properties is more common than you might imagine and most landlords can probably admit to experiencing tenant theft at least once in their careers.
A landlord insurance policy will go some way towards recompensing you for the theft of items from your properties, but the best way to approach the matter is to try and prevent theft from happening in the first place!
Obviously it is impractical to install some kind of anti-theft security tag on anything not nailed to the floor, so before you allow a new tenant to move into one of your properties, make sure you thoroughly check out their references. Financial status is a good indicator of whether a tenant is desperate enough to strip the sanitary ware from a house and if a tenant is massively in debt and owes money left right and centre, they should certainly be considered a high-risk prospect.
It is also essential to have a comprehensive inventory drawn up at the beginning of a new tenancy to help you flag up any anomalies when the tenant moves out.
