Landlord didn't tell us about work to house - advice please?

Fire_Fox

nightsong wrote: »

Thank you for your professional opinion in your first two sentences.

We have taken the property on a six-minth lease (for which we payed in full before we moved in). The landlord was previously trying without success to sell the flat. We have every reason to suspect that he is doing the work now in order to sell in the spring, and that we will be given notice to quit. So despite your heart-warming feelings that he is only acting in our interests I think the truth may possibly lie elsewhere.

Sorry to be such an ungrateful tenant :rolleyes:

Is your landlord A director or THE director of the management company? Is the building entirely self managed or partly self managed? Is he or is he not a/ the freeholder? The answers to these questions are key to whether your landlord is at fault or not.

You don't appear to know anything about leasehold properties and the amount of consultation that is required before major works can be carried out to the external fabric of a building and charged to leaseholders. You also don't appear to have accounted for the fact that listed building consent will have been required.

I rather suspect the fact that the works are being done now is simply a product of how long it has taken to get the appropriate permission and consultation documents in place and not a spur of the moment decision in any way related to your landlord's intention to sell the flat.

clutton_2

OP - i think the person that you are the most angry with is yourself - for having paid 6 months upfront and now you cannot move easily without a huge financial loss.

as someone else has said, noise and disruption are a part of the repairs - and even if you take LL to court for "consequential loss" i suggest that a judge will see repairs to make a property watertight and to comply with H&S legsilation will far outweight the "quiet enjoyment" right.

you WERE told in advance, but maybe you did not think it through sufficiently - as ANY external redecoration will need scaffolding and that will detract from your privacy.

if you feel this strongly, why not write to your landlord and ask him for a rent reduction for the inconvenience - or even write and ask him to let you out of your agreement due to the stress if causes you - until you ask you will not know what his response is