Creative rent collecting strategies....

Aaaaahhhh the not so glitzy side of property... the non-paying tenant.

A female colleague of mine and I were chatting today and she's at her wits end. She has a male tenant in one of her properties and he is simply refusing to pay his rent. She has tried to be nice by giving him extra time to pay his arrears and tried debt collectors and lawyers letters.

The more she pushes the legal route the more aggressive the tenant gets and she's feeling completely at a loss to try and get the money out of this guy.

She's served notice on them and the tenant has disregarded the letters saying that he will leave when he has found another place...

I saw the topic came up on one of the trading websites and I saw some suggestions for a little creative pressure on the tenant:

1. Two Nigerian heavies outweigh one Sandton yuppie on steroids...

2. Another suggestion was to send the maintenance man around in the late afternoon to remove the front door or gate for that much needed coat of paint. The money might suddenly materialise when they realise you don't intend having the door back overnight....

Thought maybe I'd throw the idea out and see if anyone has got any ideas for some creative (even legal) debt collecting solutions for this kind of situation??

ApexHi

As a shareholder / Unitholder in ApexHi I can't say I'm very happy with the offer from Redefine income fund to buy out the unit holders in ApexHi and Madison.

I believe shareholders are better served by staying invested in ApexHi and will enjoy stronger dividends from the ApexHi portfolio.

I intend voting against the offer.

Ouch!

I went to go and get Chinese last night and pulled into our favourite takeaway place near Cresta.

The shopping centre I went in had 7 (thats right 7!) shops that had been boarded up and were listed as TO LET out of 25.

A key anchor tenant who had a double story restaurant was one of the most noticeable tenants missing.

Says a lot for the state of the commercial property market in SA... Going to be interesting to see what effect this has on SA commercial property rentals. Anyone noticed whether rental rates are coming off yet??