Has your tenant left your property with significant damage, rental arrears or unpaid bills or left without notice? Have they stopped responding to phone calls or emails? Our expert tracing agents use a variety of investigative methods to locate the current address of your ex-tenant to enable our clients to re-establish contact or initiate proceedings.
- Is your tenant refusing to pay rent? Tenants can often leave a property without notice and in many cases leave the property with unpaid rent and / or damage to the property.
- Tenant tracing is the process of locating ex-tenants whose current addresses are not known
- Rent arrears landlord’s rights – Landlords will understandably want to recover any expenses incurred due to repairs, unpaid rent, or bills. This may involve taking the ex-tenant to court.
- To take court proceedings against a tenant, you will need an address for the tenant to serve the legal documents on.
1 – Contact a Tracing Agency
Rogue renters often ask ‘can my old landlord find my new address?’ or ‘what happens if you don’t pay rent?.’ The answer is trace them!
The first step in how to get rent arrears from a tenant is to contact a reputable tracing agency. Many tracing agencies rely on simple database searches to locate a new address for your subject. However, in many circumstances, the ex-tenant will try to use methods to avoid detection and tracing in the hope of avoiding payment.
This is where our professional tracing agency can help. Our tracing agents at Global Investigations go the extra mile, using a multi-source method that includes database searches, electoral roll searches, consented data searches, local sources, and credit reference agency data. Credit searches are only available via a licence, which means they cannot be accessed by the public. Many of these systems are updated daily, ensuring your subject is located at the very earliest opportunity.
What information do you need to provide?
Most landlords will collect information about potential tenants before handing over the keys to their property. Lots of this information can be provided to a tracing agency. Below are some of the best points of information to provide:
- Full name including a middle name: If a name is common, a full name can help to minimise our search
- Date of birth
- Last known address (or addresses): If you can, supply not only the address the tenant rented, but also any previous addresses they may have supplied in the referencing process.
- Contact information: Telephone numbers, email addresses, and other social media account information will also help to identify where the ex-tenant is.
- Employment Information: If you know your tenants current or previously employment
- Associates: Any known people the ex-tenant has associations with (partners, friends) will also help with the tenant trace as it can possibly identify movement and areas the subject is likely to now be located in.
Our tracing agents at Global Investigations will then use all this information to locate movement of your subject. Many subjects avoiding creditors will move multiple times, may be shielded by family or friends at the address or may have moved abroad so several enquiries need to be made to ensure we have located the correct person at the correct address.
The quick and simple database searches offered by other companies often result in incorrect information which can delay a successful trace and lead to further costs being incurred.
How long does a trace take?
- Standard Trace: Our standard traces can take up to 20 working days and allow our agents the time to follow every possible lead.
- Express Trace: We understand that some people may require the information quicker, and we therefore offer an express service of 24-48hours where our multiple agents will work your case and work through all leads at a faster rate
- Super Trace: In some circumstances, you may need to locate an ex-tenant as soon as possible. We offer a super trace of 6-8 working hours to help you locate your tenant on the same day.
What if the tenant has moved overseas?
Global Investigations have professional tracers in most countries to assist with our international traces. If our expert tracers discover that your ex-tenant has re-located abroad, we will advise you of our fees for a trace in that country, allowing you to assess if you would like to move forward with locating a person anywhere in the world!
2 – Contact your ex-tenant
Upon completion of a successful trace, you may wish to write to or contact your ex-tenant to settle the debt.
In the event they do not respond or refuse to pay, you may decide to issue a claim through the courts. Keep in mind; any fees you might incur from having to trace them can be classed as additional charges, which they will have to pay, so make sure to keep your receipts!
If you are attempting recovery of rent arrears from ex tenants or your rent is not paid by tenant, Global Investigations can help you locate your ex-tenant discreetly and at an affordable price. We are an ethical tracing agency which means you can be sure our traces are undertake lawfully using expert tracing methods. We have helped many landlords recover money from non-payment of rent or settle money relating to a previous tenant’s unpaid bills.
Contact a member of our team today to discuss how we can help on 0208 287 7770.
