Landlord Sia Tabibi, 75, lost £21,000 after a group of subletters secretly turned his flat into a cannabis farm.
Sia, from London, has 13 properties across the capital and has been renting them out since 1992.
He has owned the flat in question since 2018 and rented it out to various tenants over the years who caused no issues – but in 2023, that changed.
Just over a year into the tenancy, he got a message from one of the neighbours of the flat, telling him it had been raided by police.
When he visited, he found that “everything was ruined,” and the tenant had been subletting the property to a group of people that were growing cannabis within the home.
He added: “They planted cannabis basically throughout the whole flat. They bypassed the electricity meter, made a hole in the wall to get to the chimney for ventilation and the bathroom was ruined. The smell was tremendous.”
Sia had to spend a year renovating the entire flat which included replacing carpets, repairing and repainting the walls and changing the entire bathroom.
The flat was only ready to let out again in February this year.
He estimates the issue has cost him around £21,000 in renovation costs as well as rental income loss.
The rogue tenant and several others he was subletting the flat to fled the scene shortly before the police raided it, and have since “disappeared”, according to Sia.
He says no issues were raised to him before the incident, with the managing agent for the property not inspecting it prior, because the tenant – who had passed all referencing checks – was seemingly not causing issues and had paid rent on time consistently.
Despite this, Sia said his overall experience as a landlord has been positive, and that this incident was a one-off.
He described the large majority of the tenants he has had over the years as “nice and good people”, with some living in his properties for 15 years.
The weed growers installed multiple sockets in the flatSia’s experience is one of the most dramatic instances of tenancy fraud, where a tenant sublets their rented accommodation without the landlord’s permission or provides false information to obtain a tenancy.
Analysis by rental market platform Goodlord found that fraudulent tenancy applications could be exposing the private rented sector to up to £4.1bn in financial losses every year.
It found fraudsters were creating false identities to pass reference checks by using AI to make fake employment references and payslips.
Sometimes they then rent the properties out for a higher rent than they are being charged, to people who would otherwise not pass tenancy checks.
Reflecting on his experience, Sia said: “I have become a lot more cautious in terms of making sure the vetting process is much more robust. You can get all sorts of people, but you just don’t know what they are like.
“It’s like when you interview someone for a job and they can tell you all sorts of stuff but until they join and start working for you, you just don’t know.”
Sia feels the recent Renters’ Rights Act, which came into effect in May this year, has shifted the pendulum in favour of tenants more than landlords.
The law bans landlords from issuing no-fault evictions and requires them to use a process known as “Section 8” to take back a property if they have valid legal grounds to do so.
Landlords have argued Section 21 was often the most straightforward way to end a tenancy and avoided complex, bureaucratic processes, but many tenants worry landlords could use it as a revenge tactic if they asked for repairs or complained about rent.
Sia said: “The laws are far too lenient towards tenants now and it is not a fair situation at the moment.”
Despite this, he’s not planning to sell anytime soon, because he said that if he did, he would end up with a big tax bill, as his properties have grown massively in value, and he would face a capital gains tax charge on the profits made.
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