Rental property is being repossessed - Do I have to stay until the bitter end???

DiscoCat54

The Landlord did not obtain consent from his Mortgage lender. He told the agency that he had but further enquiries from me revealed that it wasn't the case.

Jeffrey_Shaw

Well, I suppose that you could sue him for misrepresentation; but that's probably not worthwhile if he has no £££.

DiscoCat54

I'd love to however he is in negative equity and as he gave a false address on the contract the only address that I have for him is mine...

Jeffrey_Shaw

Did the Letting Agent also misrepresent the position? Maybe there's more assets available there!

DiscoCat54

I'm not sure that they're guilty of mis-representation, they just took the LL's word that he had permission to let his property. To be honest I didn't ask them the question until after I moved in so they didn't check with the LL until I had signed the contract. I believe that they have been renting it out on his behalf for 5 years and just assumed that everything was ok. He explained away the first debt collection letters from his building society as being a misunderstading over payment of additional charges that he had incurred from his building society due to him telling them about letting it out...

Jeffrey_Shaw

DiscoCat54 wrote: »

I'm not sure that they're guilty of mis-representation, they just took the LL's word that he had permission to let his property. To be honest I didn't ask them the question until after I moved in so they didn't check with the LL until I had signed the contract.

Aha; so it's too late. Any misrepresentation then post-dates the contract. Sorry.

may_fair

DiscoCat54 wrote: »

the immersion heate doesn't work anymore and now the upstairs lights are failing when it rains... ...

There is a procedure you can follow to carry out the repairs yourself and deduct the cost from the rent. It involves writing to the LL repeatedly but as you don't have his address, you could write c/o the letting agent. See this link for full details of the procedure (if the repair is urgent you're probably okay to reduce the timescales). Be sure to keep copy letters and get certificates of posting for them. You would need this evidence if LL were to claim against you for unpaid rent.

nikki1520

How much is the rent? Do the letting agents manage the property?

I'm sure there's some facility to withold the rent if urgent repairs aren't carried out (it is very important to advise the person managing the property and to put the money aside for the rent) and pay for them yourself from this money if needs be - the procedure is here:-http://england.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/repairs_and_bad_conditions/repairs_in_social_housing/withholding_rent_over_repairs

As it says, your landlord may evict you over the non payment of rent. Of course, this is going to happen anyway, and at least he's not trousering the rent in the meantime. Also, the procedure looks pretty long, so you may have enough put aside to cover the deposit by the time you move out.

If the landlord wants to allocate the deposit to unpaid rent he'll need to get a court order. Otherwise, he cant get his hands on it without your agreement (unless you can't be traced after a reasonable amount of time - make sure you inform the deposit scheme of your whereabouts) It may also work the other way, and if he cant be traced, your deposit gets released to you.

Assuming that all goes to plan, make an offer to the lender in writing to pay the rent you have withheld after you've moved out and got your deposit back, and I don't think any court in the land will be able to say you've done wrong (am hoping some of the professional landlords will be along in a bit to say if this all works as I think it does)

Good luck

franklee

DiscoCat54 wrote: »

My deposit was £4k so I can't afford to just leave and move somewhere else without it being official as I'll need my deposit back for the next property...

Have you rung the scheme it's meant to be in to check it's really there. Can you ask the scheme what happens to your deposit when the property is repossessed? You really need to make sure you can get this back as it's a lot of money.

DiscoCat54

The Lettings agency have decided to play ball and are advising me to leave at the 6 month point, they have agreed to arrange for my deposit to be released on behalf of the Landlord (not sure how that works legally). I thought I'd found somewhere else to move to but the lettings agency won't take my OH's income in to account as he is self employed and although my income is £3X rental (it scraped in by £200) because I also have a mortgage on another property they don't deem it as being enough... nothing is ever easy....