Owning your own home

for the past year i had a friend living at my old flat but when i moved out i went to fully managed by a local estate agent. They found a tenant got him moved in and send me the money on the 1st of every month - that is until this month when the tenant decided not to pay because he's lost his job. Apparently he's managed to get benefits now and will be paying the rent tomorrow, but where do i stand? the agent tells me i can't evict him until he's not paid for 8 weeks. i don't have landlords insurance yet but starting to thing i really should have got some! anyone dealt with this before? i can't imagine it being easy to make a claim for this kind of thing

Kind of right.

To definitively evict someone for non-payment they need to be 2 periods in arrears, or persistently late with rent. The two periods things means that so long as you take rent in advance you can evict them the day after the second payment becomes due, most of the time this means one month and one day without payment.

You can go for possession before but most judges would think it unfair on the tenant and you'd not win - and to be fair if the bloke has lost his job the last thing he needs is to be made homeless because he's a bit late with the rent.

If they are late again and don't look like paying up, put in for an accelerated possession as soon as the second payment is overdue but be aware that :

The court might be busy so you might not be heard for weeks.
If they pay you a fiver they're suddenly not two periods behind and you might not get possession.
If you do get possession the judge will give them some time to move out, so you won't get the flat back immediately.
If after getting kicked out they don't leave you have to apply to the court to get the bailiffs in which could take a while.

Basically it doesn't have to be 8 weeks before you apply for possession but often it's a little while after that when you actually get it, hence the advice if to have 3 months' mortgage payment in hand in case this happens.

Google AST Grounds for Possession.

If he is outside the fixed period of the AST and you're worried about the future payments you could always give him his two periods' notice now and say you'll rescind it if he pays the next two months promptly.

EDIT : IANAL