Any ideas?

DVardysShadow

FireWyrm wrote: »

I am in rented right now, but we are on a schedule. If we don't complete on a house of our own, we are stuck here for another 6 month contract which I don't want. My landlord is a !!!!y so and so. Perhaps 'acceptable' was a poor choice of word. I wasn't sure about the house to begin with but it's growing on me. I just want a house of my own whopich is the bottom line here. My standards and my budget are somewhat lower than most people seem to be able to manage, but I think this one might actually be better in the long run.

Unless your landlord is a complete idiot, the tenancy could go periodic after the fixed term of 6 months. If the Landlord is being awkward about this, tell us where things are up to with the rental - there are ways of making the tenancy go periodic.

FireWyrm

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Unless your landlord is a complete idiot, the tenancy could go periodic after the fixed term of 6 months. If the Landlord is being awkward about this, tell us where things are up to with the rental - there are ways of making the tenancy go periodic.

Wait...hold on...what do you mean? I have a 6 month contract via a letting agency, about 2 months before the end of that, they send me a letter asking for £60 and telling me the landlord has agreed to allow me to stay another 6 months. I don't see what choice I have in this. If I sign the letter, I have to stay another 6 months, if I do not, I get evicted.

Now, we started this let about 3 years ago. I have two children, so I told them I wanted a long term tenancy. I was told that it would be 6 months initially, but that we could discuss it later. The first 6 months came and went and I requested a further extension of 12 months which was agreed. We were on a 12 month rota until April this year. Now, when we came up for renewal, I was told by the agent that the landlord does not trust us and wants us on a 6 monthly rota for which I have to pay two reletting fees a year which makes me mad anyway. I think he is planning to evict us anyway because of the accident in January which cost him money. Basically, I slipped in the shower and broke two ribs, but I also broke the bath which needed to be replaced. Our insurance company said they wouldn't pay because a bath is fixtures and fitting which is down to the landlord. The landlord said he wouldn't pay because he didn't have insurance apparently and said it was all down to us. Morally, I agree with him, but £500 is allot to find in January all of a sudden. I asked him what he expected me to do (via the agent) and basically he was pretty unsympathetic. Eventually, he grudgingly agreed to pay half and I had to borrow the rest.

Since then, he has been pretty nasty, instructing the letting agent to put us on 6 monthly rota, dragging his feet over fixing his ancient dodgy appliances which only work sometimes and now, putting the rent up by £25 per month to £875 per month. For this I get inspected every 3 months....I'm sick of it. I want to buy my own house before I get trapped here again for another 6 months. So, that's where we are right now.

tiernsee

I really feel sorry for you. Exactly same happened to me recently. I'd even discussed the gas fire on the Monday with the vendor, spoke to the EA who told me how committed the seller was to the move and then on the Thursday he changed his mind. At least I got a reason - his daughter's divorce which meant she may need to move into the house.

I would also caution about buying on the rebound. I took a couple of weeks off and only started searching again last week. Found one property that looked good but the agent had just received an acceptable offer (it was a repo so I could have bid more) but morally I didn't feel happy to so left that one. Then another property which mysteriously disappeared off the agent's book - no explanation at all.... Finally last week saw two - one good prospects but legal nightmare, the second a probate sale probably hadn't been touched since the 70s and on investigating the lease rather than 978 years it was 78 years (explained as a typo by EA!!). Saw five more properties on Friday - two potentials, three nos, of the nos one turned out to be above a shop in the High Street which strangely wasn't mentioned at all in the details, one complete with tarantula and snake but was quite cute and the final one complete with hole in the roof, boarded up windows and no plaster on the wall (I assumed they had bought it to do up but when I was chatting to the owner she said they had lived there for 20 years).

Anyway now have three properties I am thinking about, don't like any of them as much as the one the vendor changed his mind about but all have potential and benefits in different ways. Hopefully will make a positive move forward on one of them next week. Good luck and hope you find a house and all goes smoothly soon.

FireWyrm

tiernsee wrote: »

Anyway now have three properties I am thinking about, don't like any of them as much as the one the vendor changed his mind about but all have potential and benefits in different ways. Hopefully will make a positive move forward on one of them next week. Good luck and hope you find a house and all goes smoothly soon.

Yes, that's how I feel about this new house. My husband says I'm just being silly and grieving over the other house which I absolutely loved. This new one isn't as nice and I suspect it needs rewiring but it has bags of potential. I could possibly forgive the lack of a back garden too but I'm leaning towards investment rather than forever house. The other one would have been The One, but this one isnt for sure.

ruggedtoast

You just don't re-sign the tenancy. They will issue you a section 21 but in the meantime you will get at least another month.

I'm not totally sure why you think the landlord should have replaced the bath you broke though.

DVardysShadow

FireWyrm wrote: »

Wait...hold on...what do you mean? I have a 6 month contract via a letting agency, about 2 months before the end of that, they send me a letter asking for £60 and telling me the landlord has agreed to allow me to stay another 6 months. I don't see what choice I have in this. If I sign the letter, I have to stay another 6 months, if I do not, I get evicted.

Now, we started this let about 3 years ago. I have two children, so I told them I wanted a long term tenancy. I was told that it would be 6 months initially, but that we could discuss it later. The first 6 months came and went and I requested a further extension of 12 months which was agreed. We were on a 12 month rota until April this year. Now, when we came up for renewal, I was told by the agent that the landlord does not trust us and wants us on a 6 monthly rota for which I have to pay two reletting fees a year which makes me mad anyway. I think he is planning to evict us anyway because of the accident in January which cost him money. Basically, I slipped in the shower and broke two ribs, but I also broke the bath which needed to be replaced. Our insurance company said they wouldn't pay because a bath is fixtures and fitting which is down to the landlord. The landlord said he wouldn't pay because he didn't have insurance apparently and said it was all down to us. Morally, I agree with him, but £500 is allot to find in January all of a sudden. I asked him what he expected me to do (via the agent) and basically he was pretty unsympathetic. Eventually, he grudgingly agreed to pay half and I had to borrow the rest.

Since then, he has been pretty nasty, instructing the letting agent to put us on 6 monthly rota, dragging his feet over fixing his ancient dodgy appliances which only work sometimes and now, putting the rent up by £25 per month to £875 per month. For this I get inspected every 3 months....I'm sick of it. I want to buy my own house before I get trapped here again for another 6 months. So, that's where we are right now.

If you have a deposit for a house, surely you could have taken the money from that???? If things are that tight, perhaps it would be better to rent somewhere else in the mean while?

As for the 6 months contract, I think I would be saying that I want to buy, so it is more appropriate to go periodic? There is a provision in law that once the Assured Term of a tenancy expires, the contract continues unaltered except that the Landlord has to give 2 months notice and the tenant 1 month [both to end at the end of a rental period]. There is never a need to renew a tenancy - except for the Agent to have a pretext to claim another fee.

When does the assured term expire?

FireWyrm

ruggedtoast wrote: »

You just don't re-sign the tenancy. They will issue you a section 21 but in the meantime you will get at least another month.

I'm not totally sure why you think the landlord should have replaced the bath you broke though.

1) it was an accident, it's what we have insurance for. Since I can't insure his property, he should have the insurance. He didn't have the insurance pay it....incidentally, I was told that if it had been deliberate damage, he had the insurance for that! :eek:

2) it was January. Short of using up every bit of the months food bill and starving for a month, I don't see how we could have paid for the repair. I'd like to see most people magic up £500 on the nose.

3) the shower is over the bath. The bath was cracked, therefore the shower is unusable. It needed to be fixed immediately but we had no resources to do it and the landlord was being tight in not having the correct insurance.

FireWyrm

DVardysShadow wrote: »

If you have a deposit for a house, surely you could have taken the money from that????
It was tied up in a long term savings account. I couldn't get to it. It was deliberately put there so I wouldn't be able to dip into it.

If things are that tight, perhaps it would be better to rent somewhere else in the mean while?
It was January. I had just gone 6 weeks between paydays and we had no food in the house. It's not normally tight, I can afford it, but it annoys me he has put the rent up by £250 per year.


As for the 6 months contract, I think I would be saying that I want to buy, so it is more appropriate to go periodic? There is a provision in law that once the Assured Term of a tenancy expires, the contract continues unaltered except that the Landlord has to give 2 months notice and the tenant 1 month [both to end at the end of a rental period].
I had no idea....double b!!!!cks. I could have just ignored it. I was under the impression that you had to sign the form or you would be evicted....

There is never a need to renew a tenancy - except for the Agent to have a pretext to claim another fee.

When does the assured term expire?

The term expires on October 2nd.

kingstreet

I have every sympathy with anyone who gets right to the point of exchange and then finds their vendor pulling out.

If you lost your job a few days before exchange and were unable to proceed, how would you feel about having to pick up the tab for others' wasted costs?

hcb42

ceridwen wrote: »

I can well understand your fury. That was totally unacceptable conduct on their part.

No one knows the reason except them, so speculating doesnt help. These things happen unfortunately.

OP: you mentioned Scotland, granted the process is a bit smoother there, but there are still ways and means to pull out, especially after a "verbal offer". I know, as I went through a closing date and got an offer, and they were then able to pull out no penalty (buyer pulled out)

Good luck finding a new place.