resedential lease

laney85

Can anyone point me in the direction of a blank lease for resedential propery can be printed of for free ?

Thanks

Richard_Webster

If you mean a shorthold tenancy agreement you can buy them in Smiths.

If you mean a lease for 99/125/999 years etc then, unless you know what you are doing, if you find a precedent and you use it without understanding what is involved, you will be creating a lot of work for lawyers sorting it all out when you come to sell - and that will probably cost you a lot more than any saving you might make by not getting a solicitor to do it for you now.

laney85

Richard_Webster wrote: »

If you mean a shorthold tenancy agreement you can buy them in Smiths.

If you mean a lease for 99/125/999 years etc then, unless you know what you are doing, if you find a precedent and you use it without understanding what is involved, you will be creating a lot of work for lawyers sorting it all out when you come to sell - and that will probably cost you a lot more than any saving you might make by not getting a solicitor to do it for you now.

Just a lease /rental agreement for a letting out a house.

tbs624

Sign up to Landlordlaw or join the NLA/RLA. You need to have a clear understanding of any agreement you are asking a T to sign. Membership fees tax deductible and much guidance on all aspects of property letting, plus discounts on LL insurance premiums.

Don't d/l tenancy agreements off random web pages - you need to properly protect yourself and your property, and many of these agreements will have clauses that just cannot be enforced.

Richard_Webster

Sign up to Landlordlaw or join the NLA/RLA. You need to have a clear understanding of any agreement you are asking a T to sign. Membership fees tax deductible and much guidance on all aspects of property letting, plus discounts on LL insurance premiums.

Don't d/l tenancy agreements off random web pages - you need to properly protect yourself and your property, and many of these agreements will have clauses that just cannot be enforced.

Unless you want to spend thousands of pounds in court arguing/giving evidence about whether or not some obscure clause has or has not been complied with, in the real world the only clause you need to be able to enforce is that to pay the rent - the rest of it is frankly window dressing.

G_M

Richard you are right that much of landlord/tenant law is governed by statute rather than the terms in the lease but I am surprised by your uncharacteristically cavalier attitude.

A well-drawn up contract can avoid such legal disputes. Indeed there are elements other than the rent payable that by law have to be included.

There are zillions of poorly drafted ASTs in use, many of them on the internet (or at Smiths). That's not a reason to use one of them.

tbs624

We each of us clearly have our own "real world" views and experience so I'll agree to disagree with Richard on this one.

tbs624

see https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2759958

Richard_Webster

Richard you are right that much of landlord/tenant law is governed by statute rather than the terms in the lease but I am surprised by your uncharacteristically cavalier attitude.

A well-drawn up contract can avoid such legal disputes. Indeed there are elements other than the rent payable that by law have to be included.

There are zillions of poorly drafted ASTs in use, many of them on the internet (or at Smiths). That's not a reason to use one of them.

In terms of being able to evict a bad tenant for a breach of a term of a tenancy the simplest and cheapest methods are either bringing the contractual tenancy to an end and seeking possession or proving non-payment of rent. If the tenant does a runner it is very difficult in practice to actually recover any arrears of rent from him so most landlords would just write it off, g;lad to have got rid of a troublesome tenant.

Any other grounds for possession involve providing evidence of the facts alleged to constitute a breach in court and this is usually very time consuming and expensive. If you have 6 month tenancy and tenant is paying say £800 pcm. After 2 months he defaults on the rent and you give him a chance to pay but after a few weeks issue proceedings to recover possession for non-payment you are going to be waiting until maybe 4 months of the tenancy have gone before you get your court order for him to go in 28 days so by that time you have lost 3 moths rent. He is ordered to pay it and doesn't so you have just lost £2,400 plus legal fees.

He breaks the tenancy agreement in some heinous and grievous way and because you have had a really good agreement drawn up it is abundantly clear that he is in breach. (It will have to be serious for you to bother - would you bother if the agreement said he had to clean the windows every month and didn't?) You commence proceedings claiming a breach of the tenancy agreement and the court hearing is about the same time as it would have been if it has been a non-payment case.

If you have had to go as far as the courts then it is likely he will stop paying the rent just to spite you - but you will have all the extra costs of proving the other heinous breach. The most likely will be a situation where his behaviour is causing a nuisance to the neighbours who will moan like anything but be too frightened to give evidence so having fancy clauses about not doing anything remotely like causing a nuisance won't help very much in practice. Anyway cross-examination TV court drama style is a very expensive business and runs up thousands of pounds in legal bills which are unlikely to be recouped. You are out of pocket to the tune of £2,400 plus the legal fees involved in the more complicated court case.

So my point is that even if you do have a fancily worded agreement it is still usually going to be easier and cheaper to wait until the end of the 6 months and seek possession after that, or possibly seek possession earlier for non-payment of rent. Why rely on the fancy clause when proving the facts related to it will probably be expensive?

There may be something I haven't thought of and possibly somebody can point out some situation where the existence of the better wording would make a difference in practice.