difficult land lord - desprate need advise

Sillalewies

Good day,

My husband and I moved out of our one bedroom flat on the 31st December 2008, so that our bathroom can be fixed as tiles started to fall off and moss starting to grow out of the floor. we still have a tenancy agreement with them that only expires on May 2009

we are now paying for our one bedroom flat and our house we are currently living in. getting pretty expensive.

the bathroom was suppose to be fixed within 3 weeks it is now been 7 weeks and the bathroom is still not done yet, which means i cannot get new tenants in and the landlord is not advertising. i have started advertising but what does that help if the house is not in a liveable condition.

at the moment the house is a complete mess, no curtains, no sofa cover and we still have to pay them.

what am i suppose to do as they don't want to come to an any sort of agreement with us and keep coming up with excuses for us to keep paying them. I have photo's of how our bathroom looked like when tiles were falling off, how we left the property in good order and when we went in the property last week to see how far the bathroom is as the landlord said they are just waiting for the pump which is clearly not the case.

When we spoke to our landlord last week he said it won't take more than a month to get tenants in but doesn't want to accept our deposit as our months rent and doesn't want to come to any kind of agreement what so ever to end the agreement.

what am i to do? please i desprately need some advise

Robert_Sterling_3

Perhaps you should not have left the flat.

poppysarah

Ring shelter or the private tenants bit of the council's housing dept.

tbs624

Sillalewies wrote: »

Good day,

My husband and I moved out of our one bedroom flat on the 31st December 2008, so that our bathroom can be fixed as tiles started to fall off and moss starting to grow out of the floor. we still have a tenancy agreement with them that only expires on May 2009

If the LL needed you to move out of the property so that he could sort out repairs issues then he should pay for the alternative accommodation for you.

If you are saying that you simply chose to move out because the repairs were taking so long to get done, your contract commits you to paying for the full term until a new Tenant can be found, plus paying for the reasonable advertising costs involved. The LL cannot just take his time over necessary repairs, fail to do anything to get a new T in and then look to you to entirely pick the bill up though.( Depending on how bad the condition of the property is you would be able to look at a counter claim against the LL for failing to get repairs done, should he pursue to court for non-payment of rent)

It's good that you have the photos - what you could do is ask to see someone with LL&T experience at the local CAB and/or talk to the local Council's private sector rentals team. The Council can make a LL sort serious repairs issues out, but they would obviously need full information from you - sometimes damp issues are caused by structural defects, plumbingor heating problems etc, sometimes they are caused (or added to ) by the Tenants living style- washing dried indoors, not enough ventilation, heating not on enough etc.The Council can assess the house under what is called HHSRS ( housing health & safety rating system) and can liaise with the LL.

Make ordered notes on what has happened to date: the LL needs to have a formal letter and the CAB etc can help you with this.