You might assume that if you have gone to the time and trouble to take a tenant to court after they failed to pay their rent, the debt would subsequently appear on their credit history and prevent them from doing it all over again to another landlord. However, this is apparently not the case thanks to a recently discovered ‘loophole’ in the system.
Once a country court judge has ruled in a landlord’s favour and granted him a possession order, the tenant is then ordered to settle his or her rent arrears. Unfortunately, thanks to a glitch in the system, if a landlord doesn’t enforce the order, the rent debt won’t be added to the tenant’s credit file in the form of a country court judgement (CCJ).
Credit checks help make sure landlords don’t inadvertently offer a tenancy to someone who has a history of failing to pay the rent. Lenders and rent guarantee insurance companies also use credit histories to help them decide whether a tenant is a good or bad proposition, so if the information on the tenant’s file is incorrect, these companies can easily end up offering finance to unsuitable people or paying out on unpaid rent claims multiple times.
So if you have been awarded a possession order against your tenant, instead of thanking your lucky stars that you can now say good riddance to bad rubbish and forget about your tenant from Hell, make sure you enforce the court order. This will register the debt on the tenant’s credit file and help to ensure the tenant isn’t able to repeat their bad behaviour yet again.
