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I thought I would begin this article with a draft script for a commercial – yet to be implemented!

ATTENTION!



Are you a Landlord or Letting Agent who is at their wits end with unruly tenants? You know the type; the ones who don’t pay their rent on time, are anti social in their behaviour and cause damage or destruction to properties etc etc.

Well, good news! You may be entitled to compensation*! Nobody wants unwanted tenants!

Alternatively, if you are a tenant and feel unwanted for being unruly, not paying your rent, causing anti social behaviour etc , you may also be entitled to compensation*.

Nobody should feel unwanted, just think of the mental and psychological damage this could have on you.

So, contact us today and we could help you in your compensation claim.

*All applications will be considered, but we don’t want to pay any of the compensation, so we will find third parties who do by selling sending your details on. No guarantee that we will have any success in doing so. A small handling fee will apply alongside a non refundable deposit regardless of the outcome.



Yes, ok, it was me who quickly put this together, it was the first thing that came to mind when contemplating about the subject matter. However, a quick Google search of ‘tenant’ quickly directs you to Wikipedia:

“Tenant may refer to:
• An occupier of a leasehold estate
• Tenement (law), the holder of a legal interest in real estate
• A group of users who share a common access to a software system, see multitenancy
• Tenant farmer
• Anchor tenant or anchor store, one of the larger stores in a shopping mall
• The Tenant, 1976 Roman Polanski film
• The Tenants, 2005 film drama starring Dylan McDermott and Snoop Dogg
• The Tenants (band), from Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia”

So what about unwanted tenants? I started thinking, and realised there is more than approach when examining unwanted tenants. As Wiki shows us, there are many different types of tenants. Firstly, we can look at this from a colonial point of view and take a very literal approach:



Ten Unwanted Ants!

Unwanted tenants literally becomes 10 unwanted ants (ten ants)! When you think about it, nobody wants 10 ants and they are certainly unwanted in people’s homes. Fortunately such a small number will be easily taken care of with some beating about or toxic poisons. Being such a small number will make them feel unwanted by the large colonies, 10 ants alone will not be big enough to create a perilous colony!

Speaking of colonies, another approach can be taken. Colonisers could be viewed as unwanted tenants. When we look at former colonisations many problems are created and we ask ourselves who are the unwanted? Are those who we think to be unwanted, really the unwanted? I can think of one particular example which of many of you may relate to, something that still divides the population to this day: The British in India. I’m not going to go down that road but certainly it splits the arguments of many people whether the British were the wanted, or unwanted tenants of India.



We can see examples of this in other parts of the world in recent times: Hong Kong, The Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, many former USSR countries in Eastern Europe. You see, we have a problem. Who really are the unwanted tenants of the world? They may be unwanted to some, but are wanted by others. It’s nothing new, just look at the classic civilisations of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. I have deliberately not mentioned one problem happening in the world right now as I do not wish to digress any further. Hint: the Middle East…. I’ll say no more.

Ok, apologies for becoming a little too serious. I could go on looking at different approaches but let’s move on to something lighter. Here are a few real life funny unwanted tenant stories I have rounded up:

1. Tenants lived upstairs for 3 months, didn’t pay the third month’s rent, called in (as me) to cut off my utilities, reported me to Children’s Division for child abuse… moved out leaving 18 bags of garbage & reported me to the fire department for the garbage hazard.

2. I had a tenant pour concrete down the drains. There was no repair possible. It was literally more cost-effective to demolish, salvage what we could and rebuild. It even got into the septic system and we had to settle with the city for damaging their infrastructure. Biggest nightmare ever. We sued the former tenants, but when you’re suing a scumbag, best case scenario, you might get a 1990 Toyota Tercel.

3. Rented to a tenant that seemed to have his shit together. Well dressed, articulate, owned his own business, and great credit. That façade didn’t last too long. 2 months in, multiple noise complaints and police had to show up for various domestic assaults. We evicted him, and he left quietly, but not before he decided to fap off on all of the walls.

4. My parent’s place, maybe 12 years ago:
They rented out the house to what seemed like a nice family. Both parents, kids, stable job. They paid their rent on time and never caused any issues. After a year or so, my mom wanted to drop by to see how things were going. You need to give notice before an inspection, and we couldn’t get them on the phone, so we left a note on the door.
The next day, the guy shows up at our house and hands me a cheque for next month’s rent. He told me they were leaving, so long, good bye. Apparently they bought a new house in a much nicer neighbourhood. My parents thought this was a little odd, so they went to see the rented house, thinking that there’s a lot of damage.
The place was empty and clean. The only sign that anything was wrong was that there were some weird 7″ wide circular burns on the carpet downstairs, some steel tubing left against the wall, and a teeny little weed sapling, forgotten in the corner.

Well, this has been an unusual article for me I must admit with the topic leading me in many directions. I could have included more and looked at different approaches but I will leave it here as it is starting to get long!
I have been trying desperately to find a link to relate this song that I have been listening to a lot lately. All I can think of is the girl throughout the video is a tenant of sorts (you will see why), one which most guys would desperately want 😉 but by the end of the song, is she still wanted!? Confusing? Watch to find out what I mean.

Watch here (Youtube Link)

This leads me to one conclusion I can make from this whole unwanted tenant business that it is like a paradox. Some people and things in all sorts of tenancy context are unwanted, yet at the same time wanted!