Letting Question

makingendsmeet_2

We are due to complete on our first house purchase very soon. A the moment we are in privatley rented accomodation, our letting agent have been nothing but a pain from day 1. They have even tried to insist on copies of our contents insurance and they wanted to know the value of contents insured, which i'm sure they have no right to. Anyway we need to give notice to leave but they insist that we give notice on the 9th of a month then move out the 9th of the next month as thats the date we signed our contract. We want to move on the 20th of a month but they say we have to pay for the whole month. i.e we can't give notice on the 20th of May to move out on the 20th of June. The monthly rent is £650 and we pay in advance. We did put down a £750 holding deposit. If we don't pay the rent on the 9th of june and just move out on the 20th june, they have our deposit to get the owed rent from and more. What we need to know is we were stand legally. The house is is perfect condition and nothing is damage.

lynzpower

Sounds like a tricky customer.

Did you do inventories when you moved in? If so, you might want to get a private sector officer from your local council to come round and check that what the landlord is wanting to claim off you is "reasonable" if he is thinking of withholding any deposit.

Are you still within contracted time of your tenency agreement or has it expired?
ie moved in on 9th June, 1 year AST?

Alleycat

Why not just pay the rent up until the 9th July, get your deposit back and you won't lose out. By effectively losing your £750 deposit for the sake of an extra two weeks or so, you would be shooting yourself in the foot.

Also, it might be worth noting that if the landlord wanted to evict you, they would have to go by the 9th of the month as well, so you aren't really being hard done by.

makingendsmeet_2

We are well over our 1 years AST are we moved in June 2004. We could pay the last months rent, we wont loose out on £750 though as we would owe the landlord £325 for rent from 9th/20th June, so it is in effect only £425 we loose. But then we would have to pay until the 9th of July which would be another £325 anyway, so in effect we only stand to loose £100 by not paying the last months rent and not bothering to get out holding depostit back

sarah_elton

If you're going to lose out anything at all, then keep on your rental place.

I had overlap - I completed on the 23rd (ish? can't quite remember) January, and had a rent date of the 11th so had to keep my rented flat till 11th Feb. These few weeks were actually a great luxury - I could do the painting and any other bits to the new place I needed without my stuff in the way, and move stuff at my leisure. It gives you a lovely buffer too in case of last minute completion delays - no prospect of ending up homeless and therefore massively less stressful.

Bear in mind your first mortgage repayment won't be for at least a month (I'm sure this is all mortgage companies not just mine). 28 days will pass, then your payment will be on the date specified.

So for instance, my mortgage is on the 1st. I paid my last rent on 11th Jan. Then first mortgage on 1st March. So actually I had Feb as a mortgage and rent free, and got my deposit back.

If the agent really won't back down, surely it's better to have both places than to lose £100 out of principle? Just trying to look at it from a different perspective...