Rights when letting agent finding new tenant after ending contract midterm

silvercar

If the LA had continued showing the property to the other potential tenants and the tenants booked for 11 days later had consequently looked at other properties and gone elsewhere, you would potentially be looking at a lot more than 11 days extra rent.

Catherine_Johnson_2

Southwest wrote: »

Hi all,

We are buying a house and are breaking our letting contract midterm which is accepted by our landlord, as long as we pay the fee to the letting agency to market the property in order to find a new tenant to take over. We are bound to pay the rent until the new tenant moves in.

Now, we agreed on a checkout date at end of June, which would mean the house is available from July 1st. Having agreed this, we signed and exchanged contract on the house purchase based on that date.

As it turns out, the letting agency marketed the property, accepted the first person who was interested but that person could only move in 11 days later than the date we had agreed on. Now, the letting agency thinks we should pay rent for these extra days! But we think they should have tried harder to find someone to move in on July 1st.

Can anyone give us any tips on how to proceed with this and what our right are?

Thanks.

Just because you've moved out and the house is AVAILABLE from 1 July doesn't mean that your contract ends at that date. It ends when the next tenant takes over and, if that's 11 days later, then so be it.

As you are legally liable to pay the rent up until the end of your contract, you should consider yourself lucky to be let off the remainder of the contract (3 months?).

Quite frankly, I don't know why you're even querying it? The LL/agent would have been within their rights to say no to your request to be let out of the contract early and you would possibly have lost the house you are purchasing or it would have cost you many hundreds (or even into the thousands) of pounds extra to pay rent and the mortgage at the same time.

Perhaps you should be thanking the LL/agent rather than questioning it.

dodger1

Seems a perfectly acceptable response from the LA, 11 days is excellent in comparison to what it might have been.

makeyourdaddyproud

I suspect the OP is not happy with the responses.:D