We’d like to remind Forumites to please avoid political debate on the Forum.
This is to keep it a safe and useful space for MoneySaving discussions. Threads that are – or become – political in nature may be removed in line with the Forum’s rules. Thank you for your understanding.
PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING: Hello Forumites! In order to help keep the Forum a useful, safe and friendly place for our users, discussions around non-MoneySaving matters are not permitted per the Forum rules. While we understand that mentioning house prices may sometimes be relevant to a user's specific MoneySaving situation, we ask that you please avoid veering into broad, general debates about the market, the economy and politics, as these can unfortunately lead to abusive or hateful behaviour. Threads that are found to have derailed into wider discussions may be removed. Users who repeatedly disregard this may have their Forum account banned. Please also avoid posting personally identifiable information, including links to your own online property listing which may reveal your address. Thank you for your understanding.
📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!
The Forum now has a brand new text editor, adding a bunch of handy features to use when creating posts. Read more in our how-to guide
Issues with a past flatmate
valten
Posts: 35 Forumite
Hi guys,
First of all a thank you. I've been trawling this site for the past few weeks as I prepare to buy my first house. I've found much of the advice on here to be excellent and very reassuring. However I'd now like to ask some advice of my own.
About 2 and half years ago I moved out of my old flat which I shared with an old friend of mine. I always knew he had money issues and letters from debt agencies where common. However they where always addressed to him and I considered them to be non of my business.
The flat was above a shop which was part of a chain and the flat was owned by them. They where basically our landlords and we both had direct debits for our respective halves of the rent.
About a year and a half into our tenancy my flatmate lost his job. As I understand it he had gone to the council office and signed on for housing benefit. I never questioned this or gave it a 2nd thought and as I never heard anything from our landlord to tell us there where any issues I considered everything to be hunky Dorey.
About a year after this I received a call from a man who was an new accountant working for the chain of shops we rented from. Part of his job was to manage tenants accounts and he had come across our file. He told turned out that for the last year only one half of the rent had been paid, namely mine. They kept track of which direct debits have failed and knew that it was my flatmates half that had failed.
I confronted my flatmate about this and told him to do something about it. He was very apologetic and promised to sort it all out. He called the landlords up and admitted full responsibility and said he wanted to pay it all back and didn't want there to be any negative impact for myself. I heard him have this conversation myself.
I've no idea what he did after that, but I realised that living with him was just too much of a risk and about 4 months later I moved out. Before I did I contacted the landlords and told them was moving on and that they could sort out the rest of debt with my flatmate. I even told my flatmate to contact the landlord himself and state that he admitted full responsibility for all outstanding payments, I know he did this as I was copied in on the E-mail.
That was about 2 and a half years ago and I've not heard a thing about it since. I have bumped into my old flatmate a few times and I know he subsequently moved out himself about 6 months after me. As far as I am aware the flat has since been refurbished and rented out to someone else.
I've long moved on from that and I've not been contacted by my old landlords since moving out, so I assume that my Flatmate sorted it out, for all I know he may still be paying it off to this day or has declared himself bankrupt, who knows?
However my mortgage application is now about to go through and since it was only 2.5 years ago I have had to provide that address as an old address. As a result I'm worried that my flatmates old debt may come back to haunt me.
Now I've had credit checks since moving on for other things and have never had any issues so I assume that no official action was taken that would register with credit agencies. This wouldn't surprise me as they where very disorganised. That they took 12 months to inform us of arrears on the account is testament to that.
Between no one attempting to contact me in over 2 years and the successful credit checks I've had since, I'm fairly confident I've nothing to worry about, but is there anything I can do to check this?
First of all a thank you. I've been trawling this site for the past few weeks as I prepare to buy my first house. I've found much of the advice on here to be excellent and very reassuring. However I'd now like to ask some advice of my own.
About 2 and half years ago I moved out of my old flat which I shared with an old friend of mine. I always knew he had money issues and letters from debt agencies where common. However they where always addressed to him and I considered them to be non of my business.
The flat was above a shop which was part of a chain and the flat was owned by them. They where basically our landlords and we both had direct debits for our respective halves of the rent.
About a year and a half into our tenancy my flatmate lost his job. As I understand it he had gone to the council office and signed on for housing benefit. I never questioned this or gave it a 2nd thought and as I never heard anything from our landlord to tell us there where any issues I considered everything to be hunky Dorey.
About a year after this I received a call from a man who was an new accountant working for the chain of shops we rented from. Part of his job was to manage tenants accounts and he had come across our file. He told turned out that for the last year only one half of the rent had been paid, namely mine. They kept track of which direct debits have failed and knew that it was my flatmates half that had failed.
I confronted my flatmate about this and told him to do something about it. He was very apologetic and promised to sort it all out. He called the landlords up and admitted full responsibility and said he wanted to pay it all back and didn't want there to be any negative impact for myself. I heard him have this conversation myself.
I've no idea what he did after that, but I realised that living with him was just too much of a risk and about 4 months later I moved out. Before I did I contacted the landlords and told them was moving on and that they could sort out the rest of debt with my flatmate. I even told my flatmate to contact the landlord himself and state that he admitted full responsibility for all outstanding payments, I know he did this as I was copied in on the E-mail.
That was about 2 and a half years ago and I've not heard a thing about it since. I have bumped into my old flatmate a few times and I know he subsequently moved out himself about 6 months after me. As far as I am aware the flat has since been refurbished and rented out to someone else.
I've long moved on from that and I've not been contacted by my old landlords since moving out, so I assume that my Flatmate sorted it out, for all I know he may still be paying it off to this day or has declared himself bankrupt, who knows?
However my mortgage application is now about to go through and since it was only 2.5 years ago I have had to provide that address as an old address. As a result I'm worried that my flatmates old debt may come back to haunt me.
Now I've had credit checks since moving on for other things and have never had any issues so I assume that no official action was taken that would register with credit agencies. This wouldn't surprise me as they where very disorganised. That they took 12 months to inform us of arrears on the account is testament to that.
Between no one attempting to contact me in over 2 years and the successful credit checks I've had since, I'm fairly confident I've nothing to worry about, but is there anything I can do to check this?
0
Comments
-
Its your debt too, as if you had one tenancy then you would have probably been jointly and serverally liable for the whole rent.
The easy way to check would be to get a copy of your credit files from experian and equifax (2 quid a throw) and see if there are and CCJs registered against you. If your credit record is "clean" then your fine.0 -
Well I've just tried this with creditexpert.co.uk and I've hit a snag.
The website will not acknowledge the existence of my old address, Presumably as it was a flat above a shop.
The !!!!!! was that the shop was on a corner with the entrance to the shop on one road and entrance to the flat on the other. So technically we where on a different road to the shop. I think this may be the cause of the confusion. The address never appeared on any automatic system that pulled data from the list of UK addresses.
I'm sure the address was genuine as we paid council tax and TV licence whilst I was there and was on the electoral roll, so I cant for the life of me work out why it wont accept it.
The website tells me I need to provide official version of the address, but I'm not aware of any other version.
Any ideas?0 -
Try royal mail postcode finder.
Try the address on the other street.
Try speaking direct to Royal Mail or the council.
Then speak to the credit agencies direct.0 -
Well I've checked with the post office postcode finder and it seems my old address doesn’t exist, officially anyway.
I'll check with the council.0 -
Quick update. I've just heard back from my Mortgage broker who has done a 'soft' credit check on me and evreything has come back clean. Looks like I'm in the clear.
Thanks for the advice.
0 -
No he moved out about 6 months after me and I was officially removed from the tenancy when I left.
I've got written confirmation of this.0
This discussion has been closed.
Confirm your email address to Create Threads and Reply
Categories
- All Categories
- 354.4K Banking & Borrowing
- 254.4K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
- 455.4K Spending & Discounts
- 247.3K Work, Benefits & Business
- 604K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
- 178.4K Life & Family
- 261.5K Travel & Transport
- 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
- 16K Discuss & Feedback
- 37.7K Read-Only Boards