landlord being repossessed

mdeaton · 12 January 2009 at 2:30PM

Good Afternoon,

We recently started renting a new property from a private landlord, his family live in spain and he works over he running his own business. We get people knocking at the door constantly asking for our landlord saying he owes money to HMRC for his business. We've been getting a few letters from some company which i've found out to be a mortgage lender.

On friday we got a letter addressed to "The Occupier" so i opened it thinking it may be something from the gas/water/electricity board. It turned out to be from the landlords mortgage company telling us that they were taking my landlord to court to claim repossession of the house.

Now i want to know what i can do about it? I'm guessing as this was his own house it wont have anything in his contract about letting the property out? Do i have any rights if this is the case? I've spoken to the landlord who claims that he doesn't know the company and never heard of them. We haven't seen the landlord since before xmas and he used to come around once a week to collect his letters. There are loads of letters from this finance company and loads of HMRC / tax returns stuff. He went to spain to see his family before xmas and we haven't seen him since. He never answers his phone but has rang us back once.

I'm really worried about this situation.

Any advice would be great.

Thanks,

Michael

BASFORDLAD · 12 January 2009 at 3:27PM

the landlords lying through his back teeth.
Basically you have very little if no rights esp if the landlord didnt advise mortgage company.
Once the property has been repossed you will get a knock from the baliffs.
So this is what i would do:

Find some where else to live.
Stop paying any rent immediately.
Be ready to more when they baliffs come, depending on who they are they may give you a few days grace.

but the most important thing now is to find some else to live and stop paying your rent, simply because you dont know exactly when the house will be respossed (it wont be straight away so dont panic to much).

chairmanofthebored · 12 January 2009 at 3:37PM

Also don't forget about safeguarding your deposit.

Pay your rent into a savings account or something up to the deposit amount and be glad you got it back (even if it was through holding back your rent) because if the place gets reposessed and he owes money to HMRC, you can bet your bottom dollar the guy will declare himself bankrupt very soon and then you can wave goodbye to it for good.

Also having this amount sitting in your account will take a lot of the stress out of finding a new place rather than having to beg, steal or borrow to get it together at the last minute.

clutton_2 · 13 January 2009 at 12:03AM

write to the lender and tell them that you are there - they may not know. if you have children it will be in your interest to attend to the court hearing (or at least write to the court) to tell the judge of your tenancy and your circumstances, he may be able to give you another 28 days, but, i would start to look asap, as others have suggested.

5bellies_2 · 13 January 2009 at 1:51AM

http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/housing/assuredassuredtenants

Assuming you have a tenancy agreement, the law does protect you to an extent. Seek out CAB advice.

landlord being repossessed

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