An apology to cash flows
There's nothing worse than someone who doesn't practice what they preach and I must confess that I have learned a valuable lesson this week.
I am constantly telling people to watch their cash flows closely and I am normally very disciplined about my cash flows. However, the past 3 months with us moving office, the business expanding, Christmas and the fact that Arlene has been away in Australia planning our wedding on Sydney Harbour in 2 months, has meant that I dropped the ball and didn't check that I was receiving my rent from all my tenants.
Now I don't tell you the reasons why my system fell down as an excuse or justification, I tell you because it is so so easy to let other ‘more important' things at the time get in the way and very quickly three months goes by.
Well in the five and a half years that I have been in the UK I have never had a single tenant miss a rent payment by more than 30 days, I was always on top of them straight away.
Anyway I sat down on the weekend to check my accounts and realised that one of my tenants has not paid rent for three months!
I should have been on top of it inside the month, anyway when I spoke to the agent who spoke to the tenant, the tenants answer was ‘Yes, I am aware that I hadn't paid!‘
Anyway we issued the Section 8 notice (in the UK that's a notice to tell him to vacate the premises within 2 months) because he had breached the terms of the Tenancy Agreement and the agent is organising how the tenant is going to catch up on the rent arrears.
It's funny in all the time that I have owned property this is only the second time this has happened and both times has been when I took my eye off the cash flow of my investment property.
Life kind of operates like that doesn't it…
So I am again practising what I preach having learned another valuable lesson. 🙂
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Live with passion,
Brett Alegre-Wood
