A Burnaby landlord says a renter who drove a $100,000 luxury car “stiffed” him and two other local landlords for about $10,000 owed in rent and utilities in a single year.
And there is little recourse for them to recoup their money, the landlord said.
T.K. didn’t want his name used but shared the story after reading some of my other blogs about horror stories involving bad tenants and bad landlords.
We’ve all heard stories about bad landlords, but T.K. says there are terrible tenants too. One of these tenants rented a basement suite from him last fall but when it came time to pay the rent after one month, the tenant didn’t come up with the money.
“I came over to the house and knocked on the door to find out why the rent hadn’t been paid but nobody answered,” T.K. said. “The drapes were closed and I couldn’t hear anyone. I had texted him a bunch of times but go no answer.”
The whole thing was a shock to him because the tenant was driving a new Audi that was easily worth more than $100,000 and had an ‘N’ sticker on the back. The tenant wore nice clothes and had a slick watch, too.
“When I rented the place out I never imagined him not paying the rent because he seems to come from money,” said T.K.
Days went by and T.K. heard nothing back from the renter. The landlord dropped by at all times of the day but got no answer at the door. The tenant upstairs said the renter was still living there because she had seen him going in and out, but the swanky car was never in the driveway.
“I think he was parking it somewhere else so I wouldn’t see it,” he said.
After a couple of weeks, T.K. finally managed to catch the renter leaving the house. He confronted the young man, who apologized and claimed to be having financial difficulties. He promised T.K. that the rent money would be coming “soon” and there wasn’t much else T.K. could do at the moment.
But no money ever arrived. On the first of the following month, that rent wasn’t paid either, nor was the utilities money paid.
And so T.K. started the process to have the tenant evicted, but that doesn’t happen overnight. That dragged on and by the time T.K. got approval to evict the tenant, the young man with the fancy car had already moved out.
This is where things get stranger. T.K. found out through a complaint message board for landlords that this same renter had done the same thing to two other landlords – in the same year, although technically the situation started back in 2020 and carried over.
“This guy has bounced around the city and paid the first payments to secure the place but never paid after that,” T.K. said. “By the time we all got our eviction orders, he had moved on, using the same ‘good’ references to convince others to rent out their places … I’m not some rich landlord. I need that money to cover the mortgage and getting stiffed on rent really hurts. I provide nice housing for people and don’t deserve this.”
T.K. said his main frustration is with the limits to collecting money owed even if a landlord wins a Residential Tenancy Branch case. T.K. has no idea how to track down this person or if they even still live locally.
One major problem is even collecting damages from a tenant who has wrecked a rental unit, a different landlord previously told me.
“I have seen landlords whose homes have been completely destroyed and sure they can get a monetary order to recoup some of the costs but getting the money from these tenants is unlikely as they often leave without leaving a forwarding address and/or they have no income that can be garnished, and even trying to collect beyond sending them a ‘letter of demand’ as per the RTB, if they don’t voluntarily pay, then it can go to collections but this requires going to small claims and another lengthy process. The risk for landlords is at an all-time high.”
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
