Thread: How to track someone down?

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Also try Googling their name, they may pop up in a cricket club or other social event. (Or Tenancy tribunal records!)

Do you know anyone at Centrelink who is prepared to risk their job by looking them up? Bad tenants are usually welfare recipients.

Work out if the anguish/ expense is worth it.

The legal way is most often than not the more expensive.

If you want to go ahead and get some not so legal I can help, only problem is you are in canberra.

From personnel experience with rentals etc. Just move on as bad tennants are often repeat offenders and the two times I had to evict, I grabbed them (literally), all their crap and told them to **** off.

There were many of us and most had short hair, some ink and a bit of gold.
It could have bitten me on the arse but if we had to wait 10 weeks for court orders, the place be completely trashed, I be owed more money and they be laughing all the way.

I do own a bar and have some un-savoury customers but if treated the right way can work in my favour if you know what I mean.

Question remains, is it worth it or should you just move on and cut your losses?
Perhaps a loss on your tax return etc will make up some loss of income there.

Originally Posted by big guy

Work out if the anguish/ expense is worth it.

The legal way is most often than not the more expensive.

If you want to go ahead and get some not so legal I can help, only problem is you are in canberra.

From personnel experience with rentals etc. Just move on as bad tennants are often repeat offenders and the two times I had to evict, I grabbed them (literally), all their crap and told them to **** off.

There were many of us and most had short hair, some ink and a bit of gold.
It could have bitten me on the arse but if we had to wait 10 weeks for court orders, the place be completely trashed, I be owed more money and they be laughing all the way.

I do own a bar and have some un-savoury customers but if treated the right way can work in my favour if you know what I mean.

Question remains, is it worth it or should you just move on and cut your losses?
Perhaps a loss on your tax return etc will make up some loss of income there.

Legal help not needed - just go to chamber magistrate and get an enforcement order for the Tribunal order that I already have.

All I need to do is get their address and then send the Sheriff around to collect the money or take their goods.

The only issue is if they have no goods which to collect.

Tenants know the system but it is still in the favour of Landlords if you also know the system. The only issue is if they have nothing for the sheriff to confiscate - they have a nice car that will easily offset the costs.

Garry

That's why I had landlord insurance. I had one tenant skip owing lots of rent after using the system to stay in the house rent free for as long as possible. The insurance compnay paid up.

Hey Garry,

A couple of ideas come to mind here.

First and obvious (if you haven't tried this one yet), does the real estate agent they went through have a forwarding address for them? If not, ask the neighbours and they may have one (for forwarding mail to).

Second is post an empty envelope to the people c/the old address. Nothing in it, just an envelope, no return address on the back. Then a couple of days later check the house to see if it arrived. If it didn't then they have mail forwarding through the post office, this should be linked with electoral roles so may account for the delay in that changing, but then you will know they can be tracked through the post office which shouldn't be too hard to do. Or arrange for someone to send a letter to them telling them they have won a prize somewhere and to contact the sender. Works for the cops in the US all the time.

Failing that, if their electoral address changes, it will most likely be before the next election, if it hasn't, vote in their name 50 times and have them fined!

These are just a few ideas, they could also be tracked through their electricity and phone bill. Google is another way as long as they don't have a common name. There are lots of online listings of people and unless they really don't want to be found, they will surface somewhere. I've managed to track people down from just a name before, not saying its a walk in the park but it isn't too taxing either.

Anything you have to outlay to track them down gets added to the cost of the amount they owe you, so as long as you find them you won't be out of pocket.

Not sure how you find them, but you can make their life difficult in the future. Add them to the National Tenant Database. They will find it much more difficult to rent after this is done. Most agents now check this for any new rental. The only way they can get thier name off it, is to have the person who put their name on it agree to it being lifted. This of course only happens once they pay up...

Check out TICA at Welcome to TICA - Australia's Largest National Tenant Database

Cheers - Gav.

Ask your Property Manager for a copy of their original application for rental. They will have signed a privacy agreement with it, so the agent can share this information with you. It should have a list of previous references plus next of kin information that will give contacts for family members. You could try contacting them on the basis that you are an old friend who would like to catch up. We use this method quite a lot to track bad tenants.( we are property managers and this sort of thing happens occaisionally) Also as previously said, now that you have judgement you can list them on TICA, please do as it makes it harder for bad tenants to get through the system. If they have done it to you they will try to do it to someone else as well.