Landlord slaps 'toerag' guests with £4,500 bill for trashing holiday home
A furious property developer slapped 'toerag' guests with a £4,500 bill after they 'hosted a party ' and trashed the place ripping doors off hinges and smashing holes in walls.
Ryan Luke, the CEO and founder of Luke Capital Group, had rented out his five-bedroom townhouse in Gateshead, Newcastle, to a group of people in their 20s for the weekend.
When cleaners arrived once the guests checked out, they were met with a 'bomb-site', he claims.
Internal doors were ripped off their hinges and in pieces, holes punched in the walls and the TV damaged.
Ryan said it wasn't his 'first rodeo' with destructive guests and, thanks to a contract he had them sign when booking, they were liable for all the damages, he has claimed.
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A cleaner arrived at the property to find the damage (Kennedy News and Media)
Ryan had the guests sign a contract before their stary (Kennedy News and Media)The guests were forced to fork out £4,500 to cover the refurb as well as lost earnings for the time the rental had to be closed.
The 38-year-old has now shared footage of the extensive damage and refurb job from May to warn other hosts and urge them to have adequate contracts in place to protect themselves.
Ryan said: "It was a group of little toerags in their mid to late twenties.
"One of them booked and invited too many people round and got carried away.
"They had a massive party in there, God knows how many kids were in there at one point.
"The cleaners are scheduled to go in once they've checked out so they obviously walked into the bomb-site it was.
"It's disgusting and really they should go behind bars for doing it.
A TV Ryan says was broken by the guests (Kennedy News and Media)"My handyman went down and sent me the video. He'll assess the damage and then obviously we'll get a cost, which we'll then send to the guests that they need to pay."
Ryan predicted that the guest would have an excuse ready.
"We can only contact the lead guest and it's normally the same excuse every single time - 'I went home the night before because I wasn't feeling well so I don't know what happened but I'll speak to whoever stayed behind'," he continued.
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"There are plenty of other properties that have been in the same state or worse over the years so it's not our first rodeo of having a damaged property because of guests.
"We have accidental damage insurance but anything malicious, in my mind is 'why should we claim on our insurance?'
"They've vandalised the property so they should have to pay for it. Why should we suffer?
"They should be the ones suffering because they're the ones that have been disrespectful.
Ryan has sent a bill out to the guests (Kennedy News and Media)
The rental property owner says it's not his 'first rodeo' (Kennedy News and Media)"We've got a pretty good contract in place that they have to sign that says 'I will pay for everything and I am liable for everything', so they really don't have an argument."
The property investor owns, rents and manages around 375 houses and flats across England and Dubai and is looking to expand his business globally.
Companies such as Ryan come under criticism for inflating the value of homes not on the holiday let market in the area.
He runs many of his rental properties like 'mini hotels' on short-term leases to guests online rather than having long-term tenants.
A recent study showed how much money people with large amounts of capital to buy properties can make by renting them out.
At the same time the cost of the average house has almost double in the UK over the past decade
There were 28,882 homeless households recorded in 2021/22, many of whom live on the streets or in small hotel rooms.
Ryan runs many of his rental properties like 'mini hotels' on short-term leases (Kennedy News and Media)
He said he is emotionally disconnected from the properties (Kennedy News and Media)Ryan said: "At the end of the day it's a business so my first thoughts were 'how much deposit have we got off the guests? Can we charge more on their card?' which they give us access to via the contract they sign.
"Most of them obviously decline given the amount of money it is but the team then speak to the guests and say 'you've trashed the property. The bill's this, how are you going to pay it?' and then we go into the battle of getting the money.
"For me it's just about getting that money back and getting that property turned around before the next guests are in and nine times out of ten, we do that because of the processes we have in place.
"We give them seven days to pay and then if they don't, we start the court proceedings and then they typically pay up.
"These guys clubbed together and got us the money in about three days and it took us probably about five days to put all of that right.
"The guests have to pay for the days that it's closed - that's part of the contract as well - so not only are they paying for the damage, they're also paying for us to be closed as a business.
"So it is quite penalising for them if they do treat our properties with disrespect."
The CEO says he has become accustomed to seeing the odd property get damaged and so has a good system in place to deal with it.
Since this incident he has changed part of his business strategy to avoid renting properties out for just the weekend, when he feels they are more likely to be trashed.
Ryan said: "I'm very emotionally disconnected from the properties having done it for so long - we've probably hosted a thousand guests so that wasn't the first property I've ever seen trashed.
"Although that got trashed we got every single penny off the guest to fix it. It's more the hassle of having to repair it.
"It was a few years old so it was probably due a refurb anyway. They paid for the refurb, so it kind of worked out alright in the end."
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