I’ve had a few experiences with renting to teenagers. Whether by good judgement or just good luck, my first teenage tenant was reliable, responsible, paid the rent on time and looked after the property. Don’t stop reading here and assume all teenage tenants are ok! After later experiences, I’ve decided that teenage tenants just aren’t worth the risk, regardless of the conditions that you place on them, or the guarantees that you get from their adoring parents.
Teenage tenants with Guarantors
A few years ago, I was approached by a presentable business woman, her son and his girlfriend. The teens wanted to rent my three bedroom house as their first place out of the nest. The Mother was very reassuring about how responsible they were. She was even a property investor herself and so could sympathise with the concern that a potential teenage tenant could provoke! They explained that they had a friend who would move in with them and his Mother even agreed to go on the tenancy as a guarantor! How bad could it be?
Every thing seemed to go ok for a couple of months. The rent was being paid and the surreptitious drive-bys I did seemed to confirm that the house hadn’t been reduced to a pile of rubble! Then it all went wrong. It wasn’t a call from the tenant or their Mother, or even a inspection that alerted me. It was a call from a concerned neighbour. Gah.
Teenage tenant nightmares
The neighbour, whom I’d never even met, had been so motivated that he’d tracked me down somehow through the local Council or property records. I don’t think I heard how, as he started to explain what had happened. Apparently, the previous weekend, the kids had decided to have some friends around for a party… according to the Police report. Yes… “Police Report”! The neighbour said that there had been a steady stream of “young people” trailing down the road to the house all evening and they had eventually called the Police later that night. A call to the local boys in blue confirmed the story. The story goes that the tenants had texted a few friends to come around for a drink. Texts between teenagers seem to spread like syphillus at an orgy, and it was passed around town all afternoon. When they realised what had happened, they didn’t have the power to do anything about it. By the time the Police arrived, there were hundreds of teenagers on the property and it had gotten totally out of hand. There were bottles everywhere and they had to pepper-spray and arrest some of the more unruly ones that didn’t want to leave.
It was a few days later when the neighbour phoned me (no call from the Police!), so most of the mess had been tidied up by the time I arrived on the scene. The “teenants” cowered as I walked silently through the house, squelching over the wet, muddy carpets. Think of an outdoor concert attended by hundreds of people with a long carpeted hallway to a single toilet. Not pretty. Amazingly, there was little damage other than the soiled carpets and some graffiti on the base of the house that I was able to paint over.
That was the last communication I had with the teens. I spoke with the Mother who assured me that it would be taken care of and the tenancy was ended by mutual consent. On the day of the clean-up, I went around to the house to find the Mother and her friend doing all the cleaning without any help from the kids at all. Apparently, they were “busy” doing something else. To her credit, she did a great clean-up and paid all the bills.
Teenage tenant attitudes
It’s not the stupidity of their actions that I find most annoying, it’s the lack of responsibility for correcting their mistakes that bugs me. I did some stupid things when I was younger but I also paid the price for my bad decisions. No one cleaned up after me! Since then, I’ve rented to other teenagers and had other problems that were mainly down to attitude rather than ignorance.
I find it hard to write my opinions on renting to teenage tenants without sounding like a relic of a bygone age – I’m only 40! However, in my experience, teenagers through to the rest of Generation Y have a sense of entitlement that just didn’t exist when I was their age. They want to have the best of everything but without paying for it in either money or effort and if they can’t have that, they look for someone else to fix it for them.
My advice is not to rent to teenage tenants unless you’re specialising in that market and are prepared for what it involves, regardless of what guarantees you get. You are dealing with someone that does not have enough life experience to have gained the common sense that the rest of us take for granted. You also need to check the tenancy rules for people under 18 as any agreement you have with them may not be binding.
