Can I take my lodger to small claims court?

00ec25

you should have searched on here for posts about the company that you bought that agreement from, you'll find it not very good and is not enforceable

yes you can try the case on in the small claims but NO you will not win, a fixed term is not enforceable on a lodger, you might recover the £30 rental excess for 1st months rent over the deposit held, then again you might not, either way I hope however you are not that pathetic to try it

beaten to it by DVS

lynzpower

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/pdf/151564.pdf
]
Hmm maybe take a look at this-section 5

Kavanne

00ec25 wrote: »

you should have searched on here for posts about the company that you bought that agreement from, you'll find it not very good and is not enforceable

yes you can try the case on in the small claims but NO you will not win, a fixed term is not enforceable on a lodger, you might recover the £30 rental excess for 1st months rent over the deposit held, then again you might not, either way I hope however you are not that pathetic to try it

beaten to it by DVS

It was free so I didn't buy an agreement. You're right I wouldn't bother for £30 but if i could claim the whole lot I'd def consider it

N79

Kavanne wrote: »

It was free so I didn't buy an agreement. You're right I wouldn't bother for £30 but if i could claim the whole lot I'd def consider it

Which would explain why it is really quite poor. However, what did you early termination clause say in full as your scans only include the first 2 lines?

Since the agreement clearly anticipates early termination you have no chance of claiming 6 months rent - at most only the period allowed for early termination. If the rent was to be paid monthly then I would put money (only a small amount though) that a court would allow a notice period of a month (unless your missing early termination clause says something else).

westlondonbuyer

Stop brooding and start looking for a new lodger. The sooner you start, the sooner you'll have a new housemate. Plus the old one's £300 deposit. You'll be quids in.

Bad luck happens. I don't know when we all decided that legal action was the only way to deal with it

Wickedkitten

Kavanne wrote: »

Technically in that case I'm £30 down as deposit was £300 and rent £330

You're still up 300 quid that you didn't have last week as he has let you keep the deposit.

Judge Judy would have made you give it back since he was a lodger that didn't technically move in :P

Jenniefour

[QUOTE=Kavanne;42370928 I had trouble finding a lodger and I have no reason to suspect it will be any easier this time.

[/QUOTE]

Whilst it is annoying that he didn't take up his tenancy he did say to keep the deposit - as another poster said, that's decent of him. You got to keep the deposit money so if you had found another lodger the next day you would have been quids in.

Whatever the legal ins and outs are of this kind of agreement, I believe both the landlord/lady and the lodger need to have a reasonable agreement regarding notice period, perhaps a week or two. So that in the event that either the landlord or the lodger find themselves in an unsatisafactory situation they can bring it to end end fairly quickly - simply because the arrangement is very different from other kinds of tenancies - the most important on a day to day practical basis is the landlord and lodger share most of the living accomodation - and it is the permanent home of the landlord.

So I don't believe the fact that it is difficult for you to get a lodger means that it is OK to have an agreement that in some way makes the lodger responsible for that. It may be that you live in an area where lodgers are hard to come by - I sympathise with that, especially as you are probably wanting a lodger to help out with the bills. And there may be ways to make the accomodation you are offering more attractive to potential lodgers.

Would it help to say why it's difficult to get lodgers - then you might get some useful suggestions. And please bear in mind that the agreement you have been trying to enforce on lodgers will only work with those who are really not in the know at all - and may not be attractive to someone else for that very reason. And that whatever might be in an agreement if the law says different it would probably be unenforceable anyway. We are not allowed to make our own legislation.

Jenniefour

And just another clarification - I am assuming that you do own the flat and that you are not a tenant yourself, simply because that situation might be very different, depending on what kind of agreement there might be with a landlord.

evoke

Jeez.

OP: get a grip. You want to sue someone for £30???

I'd focus more on two things if I were you:

1. Why the lodger thought your property was sh*te;

2. Why you feel you're going to find it hard to get another 'lodger'.

Otherwise you might end up in the same boat again.

00ec25

N79 wrote: »

Which would explain why it is really quite poor. However, what did you early termination clause say in full as your scans only include the first 2 lines?

Since the agreement clearly anticipates early termination you have no chance of claiming 6 months rent - at most only the period allowed for early termination. If the rent was to be paid monthly then I would put money (only a small amount though) that a court would allow a notice period of a month (unless your missing early termination clause says something else).

I assume the rest of that sentence reads "as stated in the" ... terms and conditions overleaf?

overleaf clause 7 states that written early termination notice may be given by either party using the notice period set out in the early termination clause - assuming therefore that this has been filed in the timescale for notice has been set - the fact that it only apparently refers to LL's notice period is contradicted by clause 7 and is partly twhy this document is useless - it also contains other outrightly unfair clauses already flagged as such in OFT guidance

the lodger has in fact therefore (mostly) complied with the contract as written since they have given one months written notice, albeit that they have not actually paid a full month's rent due to the deposit shortfall