A flat owner was left furious after 'toerag' guests 'hosted a party' and trashed the property.
Ryan Luke, the CEO and founder of Luke Capital Group, rented out his five-bedroom townhouse in Gateshead, Newcastle, to a group of people, all in their 20s, over the weekend, he says. However, when cleaners arrived after the guests had left, they were greeted by a 'bomb site'.
Internal doors had been ripped off their hinges and left in pieces, holes were punched in the walls, and the TV was left damaged. Despite the shocking scene, Ryan said it wasn't his 'first rodeo' with selfish guests and, thanks to a contract he had them sign upon booking, they were liable for all damages.
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The group was made to fork out £4,500 to cover the refurbishment of the property as well as lost earnings for the time the rental had to be closed. Now, Ryan has shared footage of the extensive damage to help warn other hosts of booking some guests.
Ryan, from Newcastle, Tyne and Wear, said: "It was a group of little toerags in their mid to late twenties. 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.
"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.
"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'.
"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.
"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. He uses many of his properties as 'mini-hotels' on short-term leases to guests online, instead of having long-term tenants.
His high turnover of guests means that every once in a while he encounters a situation like this - where his property is left in a sorry state. But the experienced host says he has water-tight contracts in place to ensure the offending guests cough up the damage costs and any lost bookings while the refurb is carried out.
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 gotten used to disruptive guests causing damage and has a way of sorting it out. He added: "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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