RENTING AND RANTING

There are better ways than legal route for landlords to handle disputes with tenants

- MEERA SIVA

If there is one relation that is possibly as vilified as that of the mother-in-law, it is the one between a tenant and the house owner. For the landlord, the hassles of finding a tenant, dealing with agents, fixing issues in the house and ensuring things run smooth is, of course, stressful.

With rental yields not much, it may not be worth all the hassles. For tenants, the apathy of the house owner towards critical issues causes resentment.

Many owners choose to lock up the house rather than rent it out — data from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation show that there are 2.25 million vacant houses in Maharashtra alone, even as there is an acute shortage of houses in the State. Regulations such as the Draft Model Tenancy Act 2019 are looking at smoothing out the landlord-tenant relation and helping make rental housing an attractive option.

While that is being worked on, what can owners and tenants do to resolve the issues?

Issues landlords face