Reclaiming overpaid rent

Tootingmum

Can anyone help please?

We recently had to move due to our family expanding and our old property not really having enough room for 2 little ones.


We gave the required 2 months notice but the new property we found and wanted caused us to have a 3 week overlap until our contract was up. Our new landlord wasn't willing to wait the additional time so we decided to take the hit. We spoke to our old letting agents who advised that we were required to pay until contract end but if new tenants were found any overlap money would be refunded. If we did not fulfil our contract payments we would not be provided with the required references for our new property.


After discussing with our previous letting agents when the property would we vacant they advertised the property as being a available sooner and new tenants were found and moved in 15 days before our contract end, we also completed a check out and handed keys back at this time.


We received an email from the letting agents saying our overpayment will be processed. We waited about 5 working days and still had no money (over £600) we were then advised that the rent had been mistakenly forwarded in full to the landlord and they were waiting for them to return the money.


This is now 8 weeks ago, on a separate issue we are going through a deposit negotiation process as we felt many of the charges against the property were unjustified. We are fully willing to accept the verdict of this process. However after constant chasing and stalling by the agents we have now been told in no uncertain terms that the landlord is refusing to return our money as they will now be using this in replace of the deposit payments they feel they are owed. They are angry we are delaying by not agreeing to their deductions. They still might win the deposit dispute although we feel this is unlikely. This is in the process and it might not be resolved until mid Feb.


Is our only option to take the landlord to small claims court for the rent? Our letting agents have advised us that legal action is our only option as they can't make the landlord see that they are being unreasonable. We were wondering if when the new tenants next pay rent the agents could forward on the amount we are owed before forwarding on the rest to the landlord as they know the LL is in the wrong or is this unreasonable?


Sorry for the very long post, hope someone can offer some advice.

talulahbeige_2

The agent work for the landlord so I would doubt they would risk their relationship with him to give you the money back.

Small Claims Court is your only option, fingers crossed you have the details of refund they promised in writing.

Tootingmum

Yes we have it all in writing from the agents. Thank-you for your reply. Looking like we will have to go to small claims court.

tbs624

The LL is confused - if they want to make deductions from your tenancy deposit & agreement on that cannot be agreed with you then they have to either use the deposit scheme's dispute process or go to the small claims court. If the LL wants to claim more than your deposit equivalent then s/he *has* to use the courts herself to be able to do so.

The rent overpayment is an entirely separate issue: whilst a LL is not obliged to release you early from a FT contract once they have agreed to do so if a new suitable T can be found, they may not "double dip" by charging both the new T and the exiting T rent for the same period.

Send the LL a Letter Before Action ( no emails ) , giving a brief outline of original tenancy dates, montly rent due, agreement made on early exit, your moving out date, new Ts moving in date and confirmation of any discussions with either LL or T.

Say that as x days/weeks have elapsed you are formally requesting the return of £xxx overpaid rent within 5 working days of their recipt of your letter , after which date you will proceed to the small claims court. State that this matter is entirely separate to deposit negotiations, which are currently being dealt with under the relevant Scheme.

Add that your claim will include an amount for interest (yes, a pittance but...) plus court costs. Post two copies from two different post offices and [edit:obtain] a free cert of posting for each. You may like to also copy in the LA, and obviously keep a copy for your own records.