Five steps for safeguarding your property from tenants

Have you come across situations in which tenants are not ready to vacate the house even after the lease tenure expires? If the property owners follow few precautionary measures before renting out the property, they can avoid being in such situation.

The following five steps would guide you on what should be done while renting out property with caution.

Background verification

Before signing the paperwork, first and foremost thing to do is to check the ancestral or social background of the tenant. Get references of friends/relatives and the previous landlords and make an enquiry about the tenant.

Do not skip to get a valid permanent address along with an address proof document, as it will be useful to track the tenant. Also try to get the address of the tenant’s office or workstation and carefully check the documents submitted by him/her.

Police verification is very important to ensure whether the tenant is trustworthy or not. Police verification is now mandatory too and ignoring it is a punishable offence under Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code. You can contact your nearest police station and fill in the details of the tenant in the police verification form. The form is even available online in many states. Along with the form, the owner will also have to submit a photo of the tenant and copies of the tenant’s id proof such as PAN card, lease agreement and address proof, at the police station. In case you are renting out your apartment, then a set of this should be submitted to your housing society office as well.
Police verification reduces the risk of letting out your house to tenants associated with a criminal background. In July 2013, in Delhi alone, nearly 50 cases have been registered against errant property owners and their tenants.

Lease registration

Make sure that you register the lease agreement, particularly for those which exceed tenure of over 11 months. Keeping in mind the fact that the lease agreements that exceed one year mandatorily requires registration, the parties usually enter an agreement for a period not exceeding 11 months, with the option to renew to further periods of 11 months after the expiry of the lease period.

A lease agreement should contain details including- Name, age and permanent address of the tenant, rent amount, value of the deposit money, lease tenure, any clauses that may result in cancellation of the agreement, penalty that would be applicable in case the tenant refuses to vacate, etc.

Registering the lease agreement provides some sort of security to the landlord in case the tenant refuses to vacate or pay rent. It safeguards the tenants as well, in case the owner asks them to vacate the house or demand extra money, even before the tenure expires.

Possible grounds for eviction

A landlord will have the right to ask the tenant to vacate the house/flat/plot, if he has completed the tenure as mentioned in the lease agreement. Other valid reasons in which the landlord can ask the tenant to leave would be- when tenant refuses to pay the rent, when the tenant indulges in unlawful activities on your property, if the tenant has rented out a portion of your property without your permission, etc.

Seek the help of designated authority

As per the new Rent Control Act, all the state governments have appointed a competent authority to look into the disputes related to rented property within its jurisdiction. For cases in which the intervention of police gets limited, a landlord is free to approach this state level organisation. The authority enquires both the parties and then arrives at a decision. But this process may take 5-6 months to be finalised.

Knock the doors of court

If the parties are not contending even after approaching the state competent authority, they can approach the small cause or city civil court. And if this does not work well, they can approach the High Court. For this, the landlord or the tenant will have to consult a lawyer and send a legal notice to the other party.

However, the issue with our court systems is that there will be no time limit for the cases to be resolved. It may take months and years before the final decision is taken.