Continuing saga of my spiteful landlord

Excited13

Mediation only takes place if both parties agree and if he doesn't agree it will go to court or if an agreement can't be agreed. I also think that whatever is discussed in mediation can't be brought up at court if an agreement isn't reached.

Thrugelmir

sussexchick wrote: »

Thank you for your post. I'm going off the advice of a post as follows " If you go to court, they do have a mediation service which you can go to where the mediator goes between the two of you and they try very hard to get to a solution without going ahead with the court hearing. If this doesn't work, you still go ahead and take it to court".

Are you saying this is not correct ?

Your LL can remain to be intransigent throughout the mediation process. The Court itself will not mediate as not it's purpose.

mart.vader

Without wishing to contradict any of the above posts, Courts now expect parties to be open to mediation, (as any disputes that can be resolved by mediation, before court, clearly lessen the court's workload). Parties that refuse to take part in mediation, in theory, are liable to have their claims for legal costs dismissed or reduced.

The case-law that applies is : Burchell v Bullard [2005 EWCA civ. 358]

http://www.alway-associates.co.uk/legal-update/article.asp?id=80

tim123456789

franklee wrote: »

I can see that it feels like he ought to, and a sympathetic judge may side with the tenant on the day but unfortunately IIRC there is case law that says a landlord isn't obliged to mitigate his loss in the case were a tenant leaves early.

That's correct

and here are some links explaining the case.

http://www.goodmanlegal.co.uk/site/library/legalnews/landlord_has_no_duty_to_mitigate_loss.html

http://www.wellerslawgroup.com/site/services_business/landlord_has_no_duty_to_mitigate_loss.html

tim123456789

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Oh dear - sorry to hear about your continuing problems here.

I wouldn't say your landlord is "spiteful". He's just absolutely looking out for his own best interests and blow yours. I wouldn't say he's out deliberately to be nasty/spiteful - just wants what he wants for himself personally and it just happens that its at your expense.

I'd say that he is

the fact that he wont even countenance the OP finding a lodger as a replacement tenant proves that

SternMusik

Any news, sussexchick?

cshowell

How to get yourself removed from a house (by our ex-military tenants).

Take 1 lovely and much loved house, owned by a fellow military man and rented out while he and his family are posted away.
Treat it like a barrack block.
Have parties and do lots of damage to carpets, walls and ceilings.
Do £5,500 worth of damage.
Get kicked out.

The end.

While this won't go down well with anyone, we had it done to us. We were good landlords, made repairs within 24 hours of notification and left our tenants alone. We have always done 6 month tenancies to allow both sides to end the agreement if required. On the one occasion a tenant did get moved by the company we happily allowed the tenant to break the lease as they had looked after our home well and we wished them well and found new tenants within a week of them leaving.

However, we made the mistake of letting our lovely house out to the MOD and the soldiers used it as a barrack block and trashed it, causing over £5,500 worth of damage. We kicked them out. As the amount was way over their deposit and over the £5000 limit to take them to the small claims court, we would have had to take them to county court (which would have involved solicitors and cost us a whole lot more). We got back £3700 from the MOD which was much less than our losses.

While I could not possibly suggest that you trash the place to get kicked out, it certainly got us to remove our tenants very quickly when we saw the damage done to it.

N79

I've watched this and your other threads developing - what an intransigent LL.

A couple of points raised in the thread first.

CCJ / Adverse Credit Information: You would only get an adverse credit CCJ if your LL takes you to court, wins AND you fail to pay the LL the amount awarded by the court within the specified time period (usually 28 days). So there are no worries here unless there is the possibility you wont be able to pay.



LL Duty to Mitigate: Covered extensively above - case law (which is based on a sound legal reasoning) says no duty but the case law is from commercial tenancies so there would be differences that might make it less persuasive. It is equally possible to construct a sound legal case for why there is a duty to mitigate. However, defending a court action for outstanding rent on the basis of this legal argument will mean: it will not be a small claims case (= cost), will require you to instruct a lawyer (=cost) or successfully argue a technical legal point (=difficult and unlikely). You may get the costs back if you win but equally if you lose you will also have to pay the LL's costs (=expensive). Of course you can always bluff with the threat of litigation on these lines but be clear what you will do if the LL will not back down.

My personal opinion is that the LL probably (ie >50%) has no duty to mitigate but, as with all litigation, you roll the dice and take your chances.



AST/Non AST: You state somewhere many posts ago that you have signed an AST on a new property. There is a contradiction here. Section 1 (1) b of the Housing Act 1988 requires an AST to be the Tenants principle home and a tenancy only remains an AST while this is the case. So in fact, when your new home becomes your "principle home", which is clearly the case, then your old tenancy is no longer an AST. This has good and bad points. The bad being that tenancy deposit protection no longer applies. The good being that S21, S8 and other statutory terms for an AST no longer apply. The tenancy becomes a common law tenancy.

Can this be useful to you? It depends on the contractual terms in the tenancy. In particular, does your tenancy have the following terms:

a) a clause allowing the LL to terminate the tenancy
b) b clause allowing the LL to recover possession in the case of non payment of rent
c) a clause forbidding you from assigning the tenancy without the LL's consent.

If the tenancy is missing any of these terms then your leverage is hugely increased (especially if c is missing) as you will have a stick to add to your fair carrot to get the LL to agree a surrender. That said, of course, I do not condone blackmail but so far you have been very reasonable so I'm sure you will continue to negotiate reasonably.

Finally, personally I would not send your letter. Don't get involved in your LL's tax / sale issues as ultimately they are nothing to do with ending the tenancy.

vuvuzela

Only thing I would say would be to send it as a letter rather than an email. Get proof of posting and send it from 2 different post offices on the same day.

Stujclark

Why not just pay a letting agent to replace you as tenants? it will cost max 2 weeks rent, as long as its for the same rent and doesn't end up costing the landlord anything, then there's no way he won't agree. His option is to wait until you move out, have a property empty for a month until new tenants are found.

Contact the same agent he used to find you, they will jump at the chance and contact the landlord. You pay rent until the new tenants found, pay the agents fees, will cost you less than letting it run and landlord isn't financially out of pocket and has a new 12 month tenancy without any void periods.