Landlord Not Meeting Any Legal Obligations - Where Do We Stand?

alcsl

Hey Guys,

We need a little assistance and advice please. We've been in our current rented premises just over 6 months now and since we've moved in we've had bailiffs on our door every month looking for the landlord (they liquidated their company and went abroad trying to avoid paying their bills), the bailiffs range from company related to personal related stuff like council tax, we even had a pair of builders on our door looking who were past looking for money and now more interested in knee-caps, etc...

That aside, we have had a family bathroom which has had a faulty shower since we moved in 6 months ago (its a wet room and the water is leaking through the floor and out of the wall in the room below when the shower is on for more than a minute), they kept saying they would get it repaired and now finally we have had a plumber come around and rip off some of the tiles to reveal it's just never been sealed properly when he made it - the landlord is/was a builder and did the house himself and he's trying to claim on the insurance now which means it's going to take another age and we've been left with a bathroom full of tiles ripped off that makes it completely unuseable now (is he even allowed to claim on the insurance for work he's done himself?!) We do have an en suite in a guest room that we need to use, but that's far from ideal when we have guests around. Where do we stand with getting that fixed? Could we have it fixed ourselves and deduct it from the rent if it continues being delayed more and more?? Or withold rent perhaps?

Also, it turns out that our en suite in the main bedroom has a septic tank just for the en suite - which we only learnt about when we pulled up in the moving van on the day we moved in. Even the letting agent didn't know about this and it's not in the contract. We have mains drainage, the landlord simply put the septic tank in out of convenience for that room to save money hooking it up to the mains drainage, and they expect us to pay to have it emptied. I don't think we're liable to pay to have this emptied, can anyone clarify? Secondly, they reckon it was emptied before we moved in - we used it about 10 times for quick showers and it was full and started stinking the house out of excrement, we figured it must be blocked but when we had a septic tank guy look at it, it turned out to be FULL - around 500 gallons plus solids (we've never used that en suite toilet BTW). So we paid to have it emptied which sorted the smell out and deducted the money from the rent - there's no way we're paying to have someone elses **** removed. Now they're asking why we've deducted it! Surely we're legally allowed to do this?

There's more too - they've left loads of their stuff in the garage that they said would be removed (we rented it unfurnished), so the double garage that's attached to the house we've rented is actually only a single garage, and we only have a key to one door - plus the builder/owner who did all the extension work himself didn't think of drainage, the garage floods whenever we have heavy rain, and they obviously knew about this before we moved in having lived here themselves beforehand. They are complete liars/scum who enjoyed a champagne lifestyle at the expense of not paying any bills, (turns out they have a reputation for being bad payers that everyone in town knows about) and we are looking for a route out of this place having signed a 12 month contract. Our main concern is just getting our deposit back, as i think there's some law that says the max term you can hold a lease in place for is 6 months and in a court of law that overules anything longer.

As this place is completely riddled with problems and not at all what we were led to believe when we signed the lease, where do we stand and can we get out of the lease legally? They have said in the past if we weren't happy that we could leave, but knowing them they're going to try and do something to keep our deposit, so any advice would be most welcomed.

Thanks

clutton_2

is there a break clause in your contract ? if you dont understand that, then take the contract to CAB or to your local council Private Sector Housing Advisor and ask them - or a solicitor who specialises in Landlord and TEnancy legislation - some sols do a free surgery for a 15 minute consultation.

if there is a break clause then you need to give one months notice and i would strongly recommend you go - this LL is awful and is not going to improve and is not going to make your life any easier.

if you paid a deposit when you moved in - has he lodged it with any of the Tenancy Deposit Schemes ? - search TDS on here for further infor - or on www.landlordzone.co.uk If he has not you can take him to court for a penalty fine of 3 times the deposit

however

i am a landlord and this type of LL makes me very angry - i very very rarely give this next bit of advice - but in this case

find somewhere else to live and just dont pay your last months rent - let him sue you for it - i doubt very much if he will bother

alcsl

Thanks for the advice Clutton, we took the place through a letting agent so our deposit is protected by the TDS. However, the LL only used the letting agent to find their tenants, so the house is managed by the LL who is living on the other side of the world currently, we have no contact number for them and their forwarding address is a PO box abroad (just to give you an idea how badly this guy and his wife are trying to hide). The only way we can contact them is through their sons facebook account! And then they take an age to reply and only answer the questions they choose to.

The contract doesn't have a release clause added to it as far as i know, but i will double-check. The letting agent normally only does 6 months lets but we choose 12 to give us a bit more security against them trying to put a rent increase to us after the first 6 months were up. When we took the place we had no idea the LLs were total scumbags who were clearly living WAY beyond their means and about to jump ship abroad to dodge paying their bills - real lowlife cowards & the ultimate cowboy builder who couldn't even do a good job of his own house!

Does anyone have any recommendations about getting anything fixed in the meantime, we don't want to move into further rented accommodation - instead we will buy a place but we're frantically saving for the deposit (almost there too), so it may be another month or two before we can actually do anything like leave & buy a place...

Pee

Speak to Shelter and CAB and when you know you are moving, sure that you can move in two months, stop paying the rent. It would take at least that long to evict you, although the deposit might be used... Send a letter to the Landlord asking them to fix things at the last known address and saying you won't pay the rent until they do. This is reasonable, but because they are avoiding debts i think it is highly unlikely that they will get back to you.

breaks

Why not forward the builders and anyone else trying to get whats owed to them, to the landlords son, maybe give them his facebook details. What goes around comes around, When daddys little johnny starts getting people knocking at his door maybe it will make him realise to come back to planet earth!

clutton_2

what address do you have for your landlord on the tenancy agreement ? is it his overseas address or the sons address in uk ?

""Does anyone have any recommendations about getting anything fixed in the meantime, we don't want to move into further rented accommodation""

you absolutely know that you will not get these repairs done - you could go to environmental health and they will write to the LL, who will not respond, they will write again- they will not respond - they may visit your property and write again - the council will eventually issue a Repairs Notice - the LL will not respond - and all this will take months - during which you will have to live in this squalor

i know it is not fair, nor right, but, for your own peace of mind, just leave....

do check with the letting agent WHO is responsible for the deposit via DPS (or whichever scheme is used) - is it the agent or the LL or the LLs son - you can do this on DPS via their website.

alcsl

Thanks guys, sorry i should have said - the son has gone abroad with them (he used to work for his dad and lived at home with them over there too), hence why we can only reach them via him through facebook. The address on the agreement is this one as they have only moved abroad a couple of months ago.

I agree they're not going to get this fixed, and surely it's fraud anyway if he tries to claim on his own home insurance for improper work undertaken by him (or technically his own one-man-band company) in a professional capacity. It turns out no one will do anything for him without payment upfront now. We could put his stuff in storage and charge them for that, but again it's all hassle - and we have to do the non-resident landlord deductions for HMRC every quarter on their behalf! I was going to get our accountant to do it for us and bill them, but again they're saying they wouldn't pay the accountants fees, and i have a really good relationship with my accountant and would never wish them upon him!

We have been giving the builders/debt collectors the parents (in-laws) address, but i guess they're a pair of scumbags too as they never return our calls - apparently they didn't receive the messages - utter rubbish. And if i turn up on their doorstep what's that going to do apart from give them a heart attack?!

clutton_2

if you are not provided with a name and uk "address for service" for your landlord i believe there is no legal obligation on you to pay rent at all.

put a post up about his question on www.landlordzone.co.uk - there are very clever and fully qualified solicitors on that site....

theartfullodger

Clutton is correct about there being no obligation to pay rent without an address (in England & Wales...- Scotland or Jersey being no good)- Section 48 Landlord & Tenant Act 1987 see
http://www.landlordzone.co.uk/landlord%27s_address.htm

Further, as they are outside UK you should be withholding 22% of the rent as per HMRC guidance here...
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/CNR/nr_landlords.htm
- but I'm sure the Landlord has told you that already...

- and I'm sure he has told HMRC all about his affairs... ;-)...

Cheers!

Lodger

Trollfever

they've left loads of their stuff in the garage

Invite the bailiffs into the garage.

alcsl

Lodger - I will need to dig out the contract and see, my guess is that it will have the letting agents address on it, if not then it will be this address that we are residing at as tenants, is that allowed?

Also, i thought it was 20% we had to deduct, rather than 22%? We have been deducting 20% so far...

Clutton - thanks for the landlordzone tip, i've put a thread up there!