Thank you Simon I will check up about the CAF
David,Thank you very much for your reply
Thank you Leanne, very interesting I will contact the agent tommorow and ask I have no idea about which scheme they were on. The apartment was rented furnished does that make a difference???
Thank you for your reply
Julie, yes a deposit was taken but this has already been used to pay towards the legal costs. Thank you for your reply, it felt a little better just getting it written down.
Yes, Simon and Kate have said it all really, and I must agree that your decorator friend is pulling your ....
I wus wondering if you had read this!
Simon says it all. Talk to the CAF and also with your local ANIL who give free advice to landlords and tenants but I fear there's little you can recover at this late stage. If you didn't have the insurance against the tenants not paying the rent then there's little you can do. You can only be glad that they've gone and get the work done as cheaply as possible and relet it - maybe take the loyers impayes insurance this time - your agent should sort this for you and if not, find another agent - which also covers you for some damage when tenants leave and the deposit doesn't cover it (cost is usually around 3-4% of the rent and is tax deductible).
The great thing about the insurance is that they'll only cover tenants who are low risk so it's less likely you're going to have a problem with them in the first place. Wait and get the right tenant - it's worth leaving it empty rather than someone who doesn't pay.
We rent unfurnished apartments and after 3 years no problems but then we vet them personally and ensure they have the credentials (and maybe a cautionnaire) that we need.
The decoration quote you've had sounds rather steep to say the least...
Absolutely normal... although the agent should have reacted IMMEDIATELY he/she knew that the rent wasn't being paid. Tenant should have been assigned to the Tribunal de 1er instance 5 days after his refusal to pay. Nevertheless, it takes up to 3 years and a load of lawyers' fees to get them out. I don't think you can get much change out of agent or insurance.
The CAF, however, who I imagine were paying part of the rent with housing benefit, should pay you back at least half of the outstanding rent .... presuming that the tenant was still entitled to it.
The moral of the story is to react at once as soon as something goes wrong ... or to let only furnished premises.
I had a fairly similar problem in London but the tenant was not as bad as yours and the agent managed to get on top of the situation and we gradually got the arrears back. It does sound like your agent has not been doing the job properly and there certainly should have been a deposit although that's going to be a drop in the ocean. It sounds like it's going to be a long hard road. One piece of advice- make sure that you have all the paperwork to back up the repairs bills as they will be useful if you ever sell the place and as offsets against French income tax. Take advice- you may be able to roll over the costs. In our village in Brittany the commune owns the butcher's and there a tenant (large new black 4x4 natch) moved in, paid no rent and absconded with all the equipment that the commune had provided. That at least seems to be a criminal offence. I would have thought your ex tenant would be liable for what sounds like theft of electricity (you didn't do that) and maybe criminal damage too. Concentrate on getting it straight though and not a witch hunt. Good luck. Hollande has now banned rent rises in a gaggle of French cities recently as the property owners are of course all ruthless profiteers!
Sorry Keith, one more thing..... You say that the tenants had governmental assistance to pay the rent. Do you know the details? For example, were they under the Garantie des risques locatifs (GRL) scheme? If so, there may be a way you can reclaim through the scheme - it allows you to claim up to 7000 euros or there abouts worth of damage caused by tenants. Worth asking some questions of the agents....
If you have a french bank account check with them, it is just possible despite not having insurance against bad tenants that you do have some cover at least for legal aid. You could try emailing the local notaire and/or hussier de justice to ask for free advice. Maybe the agent is at some fault and could be partly liable? But in general I agree with the comments above.
Dear Keith, I am so sorry to hear about your situation, but alas I fear there is little you can do. I have heard similar terrible tales about renting out unfurnished properties and for this reason everyone we know puts a little furniture into an apartment as the renting conditions are totally different. Maybe thats something you can do for next time. I do however think that you may have a case with the agency, who found and vouched for the tennant for you, especially as you were paying them for this service. The agency should have professional indemnity insurance, even if you don't, so its definitely worth a try. This insurance would cover damage leading from bad professional advice (I personally think advising you to take a tenant who needed financial assistance to pay the rent was bad advice). I would also see if the agent might be responsible for some of the bailiff bills as again this would be the reason you were doing it through an agency and not privately. And like Julie said, there must have been a caution taken by the agent that you would at least have access to for making some repairs. 12,600 euros sounds like a huge amount of repair though, so maybe get some other quotes too and do the minimum until the apartment starts earning you an income again.
I really feel for you.
Keith, no encouraging words because I think you are screwed. There is a gite within view of us in the next hamlet. At the beginning of July a booking turned up, went to the people who look after the keys who had his name and looked at his letter of confirmation, handed over the keys. Other neighbours tell of a white van following in ten minutes later. It is still there, I looked over having read this earlier, whilst walking my dogs in our field that has a clear view to the gite.
The next guests showed up of course but were out of luck, followed by the owners from Paris or wherever, who normally use it for perhaps two or three weeks a year themselves. The people in and refusing to leave have put beds with the bedding outside along with other furnishings, there have been enough heavy rainfalls for the bed stuff to be ruined. The maire and some gendarmes have been there but the dozen or so people just will not let them in or say when they will go. They are throwing rubbish into the field next door, for which nothing can be done, and onto the road (they are less than 200m from the bins) so have had fines for fly tipping which they clearly ignore. The mayor says that eventually a few more rubbish fines unpaid and they may be able to go in in force and arrest the person who rented the gite, as for the others (around a dozen adults and children) they are just hoping they will pack up and go at the end of the summer. It will apparently take time for the owner to get bailiffs and gendarmes in and then he has, like you, to bear the costs plus all refurbishment will be in his hands too.
The gendarmes appear to be saying it happens all the time and if they had to deal with that they would sometimes have no time to do anything else (drivers would love that... no radar traps). The maire does not know what to do since this is the first time on his watch, but the previous maire says he always left it to owners to have dealt with. If that is the form then I think you are on your own. For others looking at this, probably the message is to insure. As for the agents, no answer there because I think the gite was let directly by the owner according to what the people next door to the gite are saying.