Currently share a rented house: How do we get a fellow tenant to leave?

rmelly said:
'House rules' in this situation are entirely voluntary and not 'enforceable' if one of the tenants decided not to comply - particularly if you won't involve the landlord.

Even if there's 20 of you and there's a 19 / 1 majority, what will make the 1 comply if he can't be bothered?
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Thats the problem we are facing. We know house rules are not effective here. Maybe if we had set house rules when we moved in, things may have been different. But to be honest, we didnt think it was important at the time.

Because the rest of us never be about that much together, we never really got to discuss any problems we might be having. I only found out after talking to one of the others about some of the things going on.

Our "Guests" bad habits range from never flushing the toilet ( After No 2's ), and just filling the toilet with toilet paper. To actually being caught numerous times using the toilet with the door wide open. These incidents happened when the guest knew that others were floating about the house. So it wasnt a case of " Oh i thought you were all out".

"Problem Tenants" bad habits ( Just a few )
- Leaving the electric cooker On a good few times after cooking ( On for 5 6 hours before somebody noticed).

-Using the cooking rings on the electric cooker to heat the kitchen when we ran out of heating that morning. It wasnt freezing outside, and it wasnt that cold inside.

-Leaving the heating in "Constant On" position in the evening, and heading out for the night. I've personally found the house hotter than Mexico the next morning on a few occasions.

The valuable items like Sound systems, Laptops, Ipods, Golf clubs, Tv's, Power tools, Printers, scanners are always around the house. The house itself is fairly secure, but not if you give some person you don't know a spare key. Our main concern is house security, not other minor things.
 
CluelessBob, if you think house rules are not enforceable and that you cannot find a way around making this person comply politely then I really dont see why you stay there.

Its either an issue thats important enough to you (and other tenants) to reduce the quality of life sufficently to move elsewhere or it isnt.

You say rent is cheap, parking is good etc... there is no reason why you couldnt find somewhere with similar good stuff - especially in the current rental market. Have you even investigated whats out there?

Im not really too sure what it is you want to hear here, there have been a number of different suggestions made from the other tenants leaving to go somewhere new together to laying down house rules, but you dont want to leave and you say house rules are not effective.

What is your ideal outcome or way of handling this situation?
 
I sympathise with you, I couldn't live with someone like that and their "guests". But seems like there is a communication problem in the house - have you all sat down and discussed the problem tenant ? Have you spoken to the tenant himself about your issues with him? Have you actually asked him to leave at any stage on the basis that you are incompatible with his style of tenancy?

It's easy to figure out the extras he's costing you in fuel consumption etc. Call ESB or Bord Gais for usage costs.

"Guests" should not have their own keys to the property. I would also speak to the landlord about this - I imagine he wouldn't be too happy to hear this either and could take some action himself. You should also mention all the other issues to the landlord (leaving on cooker etc - fire risk?), lack of hygiene etc. Surely any good landlord, who wants to keep good tenants, would respond appropriately i.e. serve him notice.
 
The way I see it, you have three options if you want to solve this, either you leave or the problem tenant leaves, or the tenant modifies his/her behaviour.
If it were me, I'd have one try at getting the PT to see sense, then I'd be out of there. Plenty of good places for rent right now, you don't have to stay somewhere that you're not comfortable.
You could of course also consider packing up his stuff and putting it in the hall, and moving someone else into his room, but from what you say he might not notice!
 
Different options were discussed. We talked about the rest of us moving to a new house. But that would prove to be good bit more expensive. As we really are getting this house a good bit cheaper than whats on the market at this very minute.

We figured it would be impossible to get rid of PT without legal problems. So i suggested we arrange with the Landlord to give us our notice, but only one of us actually would move. But the others didnt seem to think it would work. They seemed to think PT could still take legal action if they found out we were still living in the house. I don't really know what PT could do about it by then.

Moving all PT's stuff out was not discussed. That would probably cause a lot of fun.
 
There is absolutely nothing preventing you giving the landlord notice, and the remainder of your group re renting with a new lease from the landlord.
 
+1

Probably the best option tbh. Tell him you are all moving out and that he will have to find his own place.
 
Bronte said:
There is absolutely nothing preventing you giving the landlord notice, and the remainder of your group re renting with a new lease from the landlord.
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The OP makes it sound like the rent they are paying is well below market rate - if so this gives the landlord the option to adjust now, if he chooses...
 
"Guests" should not have their own keys to the property. I would also speak to the landlord about this - I imagine he wouldn't be too happy to hear this either and could take some action himself. You should also mention all the other issues to the landlord (leaving on cooker etc - fire risk?), lack of hygiene etc. Surely any good landlord, who wants to keep good tenants, would respond appropriately i.e. serve him notice.
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I would have thought that a complaint to the landlord that this tenant is effectively subletting his room to another person would get the landlord to act. You could force the issue by asking the landlord for lower rent on the basis that there are now X+1 rather than X people living in the house, so rent is to be divided by X+1 per tenant now.

If this guy has people living in the house on a more or less permanent basis, then he needs the landlords permission and needs to pay for an extra person in the house.

You should also insist that no 3rd parties are ever to have keys and if any of you find a stranger unattended in the house, you will turf him out immediately.
 
I assume the landlord has rented the house to 1 or 2 named persons and the rest are essentially sublets. How is the rent remitted to the landlord? All in one go from one person or individually from each person?

I can't see the landlord doing anything unless there is trouble for him. Is he registered with the PRTB?
 
Have any of your collective discussions included the PT? If not would you all be willing to sit down around the table with him? If you can't collectively face this ( or assembling together is difficult logistically, why not write him a letter stating your concerns and asking for action from him? If it's signed by everyone and left out for him it may do the trick. At least he will be under no illusions about where you stand! You could mention that if not sorted by xxxx then you will all leave and he'll be out on his ear. You don't have to leave of course, just make it appear like you are. No need to involve the landlord and risk renegotiation of rent. A few cardboard boxes in the hall and similar might do.
 
AlastairSC: No, PT has not been part of the collective discussions. And anytime a group meeting has been suggested, PT can never be there. PT prefers to talk to the rest of us on a one to one basis. PT won't ever hang around when there are more than one of us about. When the rest of us got talking, it wasnt a big discussion about PT. It was one of the others actually mentioned the guest being in the kitchen one morning, we all in turn stated that we has seen the same person at various times. Because we normally come and go at different times, we kinda all thought "How often is this person here?". We all be off work on different days as well, and don't normally be about the house on our days off. So the fact we all seen this guest coming and going sounded the alarm bells. We then recounted when we each had first seen the guest. But we never had an arranged meeting to discuss PT, it just happened we were all there that day. And PT's guest just came up. Up until that point we didnt even realise we had a problem.

bond-007: There was no lease signed. But the Landlord registered with the PRTB shortly after we moved in. rent is paid into the Landlords bank account individually. The landlord has been great with everything, which is why we don't want to involve him unless its really needed. Rent receipts are supplied every year for tax relief.

csirl: I still don't quite know what the arrangement is with the guest. The person stays approx 3 or 4 nights per week. This has been on going for 5 months. I doubt the guest is assisting PT with rent, but i could be wrong. PT trys to cover it, by having them arrive very late and exit the house early in the morning. The person could well be considered a girlfriend / boyfriend. I don't think we could charge extra for a girlfriend / boyfriend staying over 3 or 4 nights a week. None of us would mind that too much. What we do mind is the fact that the person is never mentioned, and seems to have a free reign of the house when we're not there. I don't know if they have a permanent set of keys to the house, and its not something PT would admit to giving them. PT is fairly cunning when it comes to avoiding extra costs, and would prob argue that the guest only stays over the odd night. And would likely say the guest uses little or no additional electricity / hot water. Normally a housemate would introduce a Girlfriend or boyfriend to the others in the house, Like hey this is "First Name". Just a discreet nod to everybody else that the guest will be around.


rmelly: Yeah it would cost us, if we went to the extreme of throwing them and their stuff out. I've seen a case recently, where a Landlord got fined 12k for turfing out tenants that didnt pay rent for 6 months and owed the Landlord 6k. But i assume the Landlord didnt give them proper notice in that case.
 
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