I'm finally about to regain control of my property
Regular readers of my column will likely remember the ongoing saga of my tenant eviction.
To refresh your memory, it's the one where the tenants asked me to serve a Section 21 so they could get a council house.
We will bypass the moral outrage and get to the meat of the story which is the Section 21 was issued on January 23 2024. It expired and the tenants should have left on March 28 2024.
As the council advised them to stay put, they did, and we went to court late in 2024 whereby the tenant was ordered to give up possession of the property on or before December 30 2024.
The council advised the tenants to stay put until the bailiffs arrived and, in the interim, offered to pay me thousands of pounds to keep the very same tenants in the very same property. I was tempted by the offer, but, anxious what the tenants may do if they found out I'd sold out to the offer from the council, I continued with the possession action.
Fast forward to May 2025, and I finally got a date. The bailiffs are attending on June 19 2025 – precisely 449 days from when the Section 21 expired. When you take into consideration the date from when I actually served the notice, it's 514 days.
Now, I know you're probably familiar with stories about tenants being hoofed out overnight by greedy landlords, their possessions scattered across the pavement, and I'm here to tell you it's all BS.
And what is further twaddle is Labour's Renters' Reform Bill, which aims to abolish Section 21. I have no idea what the Labour Party think it's doing when it already takes an eternity to try and get your own property back.
Without Section 21, I am just weeping at the number of tenants who will lose their homes as I – and many others – continue to sell up rather than remain in this insane industry.
I only thank the property gods that my tenant is still paying rent and looking after the place. Just imagine the financial misery and hardship that would be put on a landlord if that wasn't the case.
I know (as many readers continue to tell me) that I'm screaming into the wind, but I am going to yell very loudly all the same, because what is happening is truly bonkers.
The latest Ministry of Justice figures show landlords waited over seven months on average to regain a property through the courts in the first three months of 2025.
Obviously, that's an average and doesn't even take into account the colossal wait for a bailiff (add on an extra five months).
But what my real-life case does demonstrate is how utterly broken the housing justice system is.
It is ludicrous that Labour continues their rampage against private landlords in the face of such major problems. The Conservatives may have started this war on landlords, but at least they had the good sense to recognise how ill-prepared the system was and say: 'Hey, we better fix this before we pour more oil on the fire.'
Write to me: secretlandlord@telegraph.co.uk.
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