Moving out of uni halls

nikinak

My daughter wants to move out of university halls. She hasn't signed a lease or any agreement with the university. The accommodation people weren't hugely organised at the start of term I think due to the website being down. She wants to move out this weekend but they say she has to pay up until Feb. It wasn't verbally stipulated that she had to stay for any length of time. Can they force her to pay till feb even though she hasn't signed any agreement or contract with them?
Do university halls accommodation legalities differ from renting elsewhere?

19lottie82

nikinak wrote: »

Can they force her to pay till feb even though she hasn't signed any agreement or contract with them?

I doubt it. If they tried to take her to court, I wouldn't ahve thought they would have a leg to stand on, without the necessary documentation.

tom9980

From what i understand there is an implied contract despite no contract being signed. which in short means she has to pay. Normally uni contracts are sept to june/july, and are similar to the normal 6 or 12 month AST rental contracts. Often a Uni will let a contract be broken IF another person can be found to take the room.

see what others have to say. (you may find a better response on the students sub forum)

BitterAndTwisted

Usually Uni halls are rented on a per-academic year or per-term basis. We're only a few weeks into the current term, so it's going to be difficult for the halls to find a replacement tenant now that the students have all made their arrangements, so I think it's entirely reasonable to expect your daughter to pay until February. Presumably she's only been there for two months or less, so what has precipitated this decision?

Lokolo

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

Usually Uni halls are rented on a per-academic year or per-term basis. We're only a few weeks into the current term, so it's going to be difficult for the halls to find a replacement tenant now that the students have all made their arrangements, so I think it's entirely reasonable to expect your daughter to pay until February. Presumably she's only been there for two months or less, so what has precipitated this decision?

The daughter is home sick and finds it too expensive.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/48825081#Comment_48825081

The OP has already posted in Student bit. I am unsure, personally from what I think, she has a contract, though not formally and signed, as she has been using the halls as student accomondation so it would be through the academic year. But obviously if the university tried to charge her money and she refuses, well they could just kick her off her course.

Brallaqueen

It's unusual to have no contract or anything at all. Some accommodation providers don't use paper contracts per se, but have students register online which is taken as the same as signing a contract. If a deposit or any rent was paid online there may have been a ticky box agreeing to terms and conditions?

nikinak

She's is feeling homesick but there are reason for that, its not purely to do with being away from home comforts as this isn't the first time she's been away, she is extremely independant, social and has always adjusted to knew situations really well. The building is separated into flats. There are 8 bedrooms in each flat with one kitchen sitting area, it seemed perfect, but she hasn't really clicked with anybody for various reason so its quite lonely. On top of that a chap from her course has moved in to a differnt flat in her block he is a little bit obsessed with her and she is finding that intimidating to say the least he seems to spend a lot of time waiting for her and then getting angry when she won't socialise with him. When she has told him to back off he's implied that she is not interested in him because he's not English and has coming very close to implying she's racist (her long term boyfriend is actually 1/2 indian so quite clearly she's not!). She's loving the course she just wants to get her head down and go for a first class honours.

She has never seen a contract, they only called two weeks ago when payment was due (payments were delayed for some students as loans came through late) to tell her she needed to come and sign one and pay for the accommodation up till that point the only paper work she had signed was to confirm that she had taken a key card and that if she lost it she agreed to pay for a new one.

BitterAndTwisted

Too expensive? Were the costs kept secret when she signed up? I doubt it. It's more likely that this student isn't used to having to budget. I have little sympathy for young peeps being "home-sick". Uni is the big, bad world of adults and some just aren't prepared for it. Trying to find a way to live by their decisions should be the start of cutting the apron-strings.

princeofpounds

The student DOES have a contract. The tricky point is working out what type, and without knowing a lot of details about what was said verbally and what documents passed between the parties it is not straightforward.

If this were an AST, that would be easy. But university halls are not AST tenancies.

nikinak

Brallaqueen wrote: »

It's unusual to have no contract or anything at all. Some accommodation providers don't use paper contracts per se, but have students register online which is taken as the same as signing a contract. If a deposit or any rent was paid online there may have been a ticky box agreeing to terms and conditions?

The online registration was down, so nobody could register online at all in the week before she moved in. It was all chaotic, she couldn't get through on the phones for a couple of days to confirm anything although they had told me when I had managed to get through that they had spaces in one of the halls but couldn't tell me details. In the end she just had to turn up to the accommodation office on the Monday of freshers week. they had lots of students just turning up to the office and two people trying to sort out accommodation for everyone. I guess that why they didnt have a paper contract ready, what with the website problems.

agrinnall

She could ask the university accommodation office to point out exactly where in the agreement, that they presumably believe exists, that it says she has to pay until February - if they can do so then that gives her a starting point to argue her case, if they can't then they have no case.