advice for potential & current LLs please

snowball68

Hi

a few questions from (me - potential LL and friend - current LL)...

1) once the initial 6/12 month tenancy is up if the tenants wish to stay and the LL is ok with that does another contract need to be drawn up? If so, should this occur for each subsequent 6/12 months if both parties are happy? Also can the intial contract just be copied?

2) if tenants entered a property before the govt deposit scheme is it still necessary (possible?) to pay their deposit into the scheme?

3) if good long-term (3 years) tenants struggle with paying rent due to redundancy how long 'good grace' should LL allow?

many thanks!

tbs624

Welcome as a newbie poster

1) You can continue on a statutory periodic agreement which runs from month to month under the terms of the original contract (if rent period of original contract is monthly) - you don’t need to sign anything to do so, as it arises under law where neither side have requested a new Fixed Term and the T has not moved out. If your T pays monthly, you would have to give them 2 months notice, they have to give you one month.

2) If you are both signing up to a new FT then you should scheme-register the deposit to cover your own back: different cases have produced different judgements on this one. Even if you’re going with the periodic agreement why not just register the deposit anyway - to do so is straightforward enough, but you should also make sure that you have a good inventory in place.

3) A tenant may lose their home if they have two months rent unpaid (if rent paid monthly) at the time of the LL’s application to court for repossession and at the time of the court hearing, and there are 2 further discretionary grounds relating to unpaid rent and persistent late payment of rent. The answer to your question is how much “good grace” you personally can afford, balanced against what it will cost you to get new tenants in, with a potential void period and the possibility that your new unknown tenant may of course also get made redundant and/or be a poor payer from the start .If the T has been reliable up until now can you get them to draw up a payment plan with you in the short term? You can check out what the LHA for your area is here, if the T is going to be claiming benefits.

Troubled_Joe

You're not going to get much better answers than that^^^^^