My tenant's ignoring me, what should I do?

Tenants must be allowed 'peaceful enjoyment' of their rental home, but there are times when we legitimately need to speak to them, such as:

• Organising access for maintenance work
• Arranging a routine inspection
• Chasing up missed rent payments

Generally, tenants are quite happy to speak with their landlord and letting agent, but on occasion they do ignore emails and phone calls.

At Your Move, we are an experienced letting agent. We've dealt with all kinds of tenant issues, so if you're trying to contact your tenant and they are not responding, we should be your first port of call.

We consider maintaining a good line of communication with our tenants essential to our management services, and it's very rare for them to ignore us.

However, if you've tried contacting your tenant through multiple channels and they are still not responding, here are some key things to know and steps we can take:

1. Tenants cannot be harassed, so no repeated calls or knocks on their door several days in a row, particularly into the evening.
    
2. Ensure that every method of contact has been exhausted, including phone, email and hand delivered letters.
    
3. Keep a detailed paper trail as proof you have been reasonable in your efforts to make contact.
    
4. Understand your legal right to enter the property. Without direct permission from the tenant, or a genuine emergency such as a flood or gas leak, you cannot enter the property - even with the appropriate amount of notice or if you believe the tenant has already left.
    
5. If the tenant is behind on rent payments, remember you can serve them with a Section 8 as soon as they're two months late. If they pay monthly, that can be as soon as one month and one day from the first missed payment. Send a copy of the Section 8 notice via email, requesting a 'read receipt' and deliver another hard copy via mail.
    
6. Tenants have the legal right to refuse entry to the property, even if you're trying to arrange access to carry out repairs. If they’re ignoring you/ourselves, this has to be interpreted as refusing to give permission. In this case, send them an email and letter clearly stating:
    
   1. why you’re trying to get hold of them
       
   2. if they continue to ignore you/ourselves, you will not be held liable for any subsequent deterioration of the property
       
   3. you will not be held liable if they suffer injury or their possessions are damaged because of a fault with the property that you haven’t been able to fix
       
7. If they continue to ignore you/ourselves, you should contact us to explore what options you can take next to regain possession of the property.

We’re always happy to help and advise landlords so, if you have a specific problem with a tenant, please contact your local Your Move branch and we can book a lettings review at a time and date to suit you.

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