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The trouble with renting out your property is that even if you do your best to vet your tenants, you have very little control over what they do once they’re on your property.

Catherine Deare found this out the hard way when a “warm and friendly and nice” couple moved into her house in Lochner Road, Constantia.

They were leasing the house for a year because, she says, they needed to “organise a bond”.

This, via TimesLIVE, which reports that things turned sour when the “tenants from hell” stopped paying rent, something that turned out to be just one of the problems that she’d have to deal with going forward.

Firstly, the bond never materialised.

Then Deare found herself in the midst of confrontations involving the police, lawyers, security guards, and eventually the Cape Town High Court.

The tenants managed to get a court order against her for not returning their security deposit, despite extensive damages to the house.

She confronted them on the property to demand the keys, but a group of “threatening looking” people arrived in a flashy car and demanded she produce the deposit. “I thought I was going to be shot,” she said.

Deare, running out of money, and facing lengthy litigation, eventually gave up.

The home, which had been valued at around R5 million, was given to the bank, and then sold for R1,9 million.

Deare is bankrupt and still owes the bank “millions”.

The property investment company that bought it is still trying to evict the same tenants a year later.

Image: Esa Alexander

Wayne Hufkie, the company’s lawyer, says that they’ve been trying to secure a court order, but the people in the house are refusing to accept a summons, even after the sheriff broke down the fence in an attempt to serve it.

“We’ve sent the sheriff out there two or three times,” said Hufkie. “To evict anybody you must have a court order. But in this matter, each time the occupancy keeps changing.”

The City of Cape Town problem building unit can’t get into the house. The “illegal occupants” refused officials entry to inspect, said the council’s head of safety and security Richard Bosman.

There is also an unpaid utilities bill in excess of R55 0000, and neighbours fear the home is dragging down property values in the area.

Right now, the house looks like a mess, there’s a solitary shopping trolley idling in the yard, and the battle continues.

[source:timeslive]