One of the most painful tasks that most landlords hate is evicting their tenants for whatever reason. Usually, the reason is rent arrears that have been piling up for quite a while. However, this is not the only reason. Some tenants can be really careless with the way they handle the property and can cause damage to the property, which naturally upsets landlords, though they can’t do much about it except to evict the troublesome tenant.

When it comes to confronting the tenant, the experience can turn quite nightmarish, and even if the tenancy contract is about to end, most tenants have the audacity to stick on for however long possible. Suing the tenant is the last thing any landlord would want to do as the case can drag on for ages, what with adjournments happening too often, leaving both the landlord and tenant running around in circles. The worst part is the prohibitive legal costs that can spiral to over £10,000, not to mention loss of income and other incidentals. For landlords living in larger cities, the costs can be close to 50% higher.

However, there seems to be no dearth of such cases with a sharp increase being recorded in possession orders and the warrant process time that keeps extending. This was not the case a year back. Some landlords are close to ruining their lives as the fight to get possession of their properties can extend up to 45 weeks or more.

As of March 2017, over 35,000 possession cases were registered in England and Wales. As per the statistics released by the Ministry of Justice, more than 25% of these cases have dragged on to become repossession cases that had to be handled by a court bailiff. Most of the tenants refused to budge until they were forcibly evicted by these bailiffs.

How does one avoid such unpleasant incidents? Your best bet is to be thoughtful enough to have a strong agreement with a letting agent who can take care of the fees, should anything go wrong with the tenant. There are several landlords who silently suffer, not being able to evict defaulting tenants, and are left with hardly any recourse. Landlords need to make sure that they deal with a letting agent who includes rent guarantee and legal insurance while signing a rental/lease agreement, to be on the safe side.