Landlord Lies

emperess

Hi all, I am not sure if I am in the right Forum for this,but I am strssed abd depressed about my situtaion and would love some good advice.

I currenlty reside in a 3 bed Privately rented accomodation and it is too expensive and I would love to downsize as my financial situation has deriorated. I would love to get a Housing Association accomodation which will be cheaper and more secure however my ex landlord is holding me back. He says my husband and I owe him £4500 rent arrears! This is a lie, the most we owe is around three months which I will happily repay. This landlord became very good friends with my husband and I and we both worked for him. The situation deteriorated when I found out my husband had been paying the rent in cash for the last two yrs ( we were there 8 yrs) but was not getting receipts as the landlord kept fobbing us off. He asked us to leave the property which we did, and we never received the deposit back. I have registered with the local Housing Association but cannot bid for a property until the arrears are below £300. This will take yrs, but I am so fed up I dont know what to do as we cannot move on unless we pay him £4,500 which I think is disgusting. Please is there anything we can do? Like I said, we would happily repay the debt we know we do owe, but the landlord is not a very nice man at all, but as we dont have proof of rent paid what can we do, just accept and pay up?

BitterAndTwisted

Do not pay that swindling swine another penny! Paying off the arrears which you know you legitimately owe will not change a single thing. I suspect that the proper term for the situation you find yourselves in is "scuppered" unless you can persuade the HA that your ex-landlord is a liar. And very possibly not declaring the rental income to HMRC among other things. If he thinks he can prove you owe rent-arrears he should be taking you to court if he want to be repaid. Any other course of action shows him to be the liar and swindler that he truly is.

emperess

Thank you. He has never tried to take us to court for the money which I find odd, if someone owed me that amount or even less I would be pursuing them. I only found out how much he said we owed from the Housing Association last month. We left that property almost 3 yrs ago.

caeler

You said you owe around 3 months rent which you will pay, I think you need to be quite clear about how much you believe you owe. What was the deposit taken for? Unpaid rent or other things.

BitterAndTwisted

In which case I would use this as a compelling reason why you should explain to the HA exactly how he's a swindler and a liar. I refuse to believe that a Housing Association won't have encountered the same or similar in the past.

silvercar

Why is an ex-landlord involving himself in your current housing?

I've never known HAs to inquire over rent arrears with private landlords, particularly ex-LLs, I've also never heard of an acceptable level of arrears being set on what are by now very old debts.

emperess

The deposit was the original months deposit paid in advance when we moved in the property. The rent was £350 then, byt the time we left it was £450. The other thing is he ran a business right underneath our flat so I seen him almost daily and he never mentioned these arrears. I can only remember getting one letter about the arrears when he asked us to leave the property. Re the HA asking about previous rent arrears, I think this may be because we have lived at the current property for less than 3 yrs, and they wanted about 5 yrs of history. It clearly states that any rent arrears current or previous have to be reduced to under £300. This is why they have told me I cannot bid on a property.

emperess

I am assuming the deposit was taken against the arrears, when I contacted the company who holds deposits they told me it was too late to get it back. This was approx 18months - 2 yrs ago as I had forgotten about it's existence.

BitterAndTwisted

Go and see someone face-to-face, explain that your ex-landlord was a crook and a liar, so his word should not be taken for anything, not even what day of the week it is. If this landlord was certain that he had proof that you actually owed four and a half grand he would have started proceedings in court, believe me. No-one in their right mind would write off a sum of that magnitude.

bris

I have been on the other side of this coin on a couple of occasions so I can sympathise with the LL.
In my case a tenant done a runner owing 4 months rent. About a year down the line a housing assosiation sent me a letter looking for a reference for said tenant, very strange I thought.
It turns out they wont get the house without the reference and the arrears is the stumbling block. After making a payment plan with them the letter went to thee housing association to say an agreement had been reached. Of course I should have known better because after just one payment the the tenants stopped paying. They were of course in the new house by now and the housing association were no longer interested.
I can understand why the LL is not interested in helping, pay your rent the next time and you won't be in this position again.

paddygirl

Surely the HA will contact your current private LL?