What to expect from a bad renter

We found a person willing to rent our flat. He was a foreigner and didn’t have a steady income but he could provide with a warrantor, his brother, who agreed formally on paying anything his brother would fail to pay. The warrantor had had steady income the previous year and was starting his business this year. We could feel that it wasn’t the ideal renter (ideal being probably a student with both parents as warrantors, having a job) but we also felt that we, as renters, didn’t fit the ideal profile either (both entrepreneurs and foreigners!) and we just didn’t feel like discriminating people that were just like us, not mentioning that we were in a hurry because loan payments had to be paid every month.

So the day we gave the keys, we did an inventory that the warrantor closely supervised, he signed a warranty agreement, he paid the safety deposit and first month of rent, everything seemed fine. But the 4th month, our renter left a message on our phone to explain that he was having family problems and couldn’t pay the rent this month, that it was exceptional and wouldn’t happen again. Luckily, we had just started hiring the services of a management company so we asked them to take care of it.

We could understand that the guy was having problems but he had a warrantor to fall back on. Also, we didn’t like the fact that he didn’t let us know ahead of time and waited one week after the due date to call us and tell us that HE had decided on the date he would pay us his late rent. And finally, we also thought that the rent was a small one (nothing to do with prices that go to the roof like in big cities) and that it shouldn’t be such a big problem to gather the money to pay for it.

Anyway, this is when problems really started because he accumulated a second late rent. We finally recovered one month out of the two but it went on and after some not nice phone conversations between him or his brother and our management company, we ended up finding out that he had left the flat without respecting our agreement (he was owing three months by then) and that his warrantor wouldn’t give us back the keys unless we would cancel his debt to us (though he had formally agreed on paying us should his brother failed to do so).

We initially considered legal action but we would have had to pay for the expenses and it wasn’t worth the trouble and stress for three months of rent. So we eventually just agreed on surrendering to the warrantor’s blackmail. That’s also when we realized that we hadn’t chosen the right management company, but I will come back to it in another post. The problem is not completely solved yet: we finally got the keys back (the coward dropped them in the management company letterbox) but we still have no idea of how his brother left our studio. We already know that these two brothers are not reliable nor good payers and that they use emotional blackmail to get their way. We now hope that they are not vandals and left the place in good shape. We will find out soon.