Already being asked about renewing tenancy

edwardmluk

I'm in a shared house AST. The tenancy ends next August. The letting agency is asking us to let them know by the end of this month whether we will continue to live there.

Personally, I think it's a bit early to be making that decision. Can we just say yes to stop them organising viewings? And so long as we give a month's notice prior to the current tenancy end date if we decide to move then we should be perfectly within our rights to do so?

If they start asking us to sign up for another year now, can we decline until nearer the end of the tenancy? What if they sign other people up now, won't there be two agreements? The new one and our current one (which will become a monthly rolling AST then)? What happens in that situation?

Thanks,
Ed

SerialRenter

They can't just sign up new tenants to the property whilst you're still in there. Well... they could, but they would have to be idiots as it would mean the new tenants (not you) would have to be put up in alternative accommodation.

You don't have to sign a new agreement and can just let it go onto a rolling monthly agreement, for which there are no fee's. Estate agents tend to dislike this option as they'll do anything for fee's.

Tell them it's far too early to know for certain and all appointments must be agreed with yourselves. They are not to let themselves into your house.

BitterAndTwisted

No sensible tenants would be looking now for accommodation available in August. Students might once they've got their A Level results, but not now.

If you are on a fixed-term AST you don't even have to signify whether or not you intend to move out at the end, never mind eight months in advance.

For the moment I would ignore the agent completely.

Lokolo

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

No sensible tenants would be looking now for accommodation available in August. Students might once they've got their A Level results, but not now.

If you are on a fixed-term AST you don't even have to signify whether or not you intend to move out at the end, never mind eight months in advance.

For the moment I would ignore the agent completely.

When I was a student we started looking around January/February time and this was the norm.

BitterAndTwisted

To start looking around Jan/Fen when you don't even know which Uni you would be offered a place at might have been the "norm" for you but no sensible landlord would agree to sign a tenancy agreement only to find any number of those signed-up tenants would have to withdraw when the results were announced. It would all be a complete waste of everyone's time.

Still, the answer to the OP's questions is "you are not either legally-bound or even morally-bound to give the agent any answer whatsoever, never mind eight months in advance".

Lokolo

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

To start looking around Jan/Fen when you don't even know which Uni you would be offered a place at might have been the "norm" for you but no sensible landlord would agree to sign a tenancy agreement only to find any number of those signed-up tenants would have to withdraw when the results were announced. It would all be a complete waste of everyone's time.

Still, the answer to the OP's questions is "you are not either legally-bound or even morally-bound to give the agent any answer whatsoever, never mind eight months in advance".

Most students won't be living in a shared house in their first year, most would already be at university. First years majority are in halls which are also booked before knowing which univeristy you are going to.

I am not pointing out the legality of it, just your view of whether it is sensible to be looking at accomondation now which I disagree with. Most first year students would start to look at next years accomondation in the new year. And this is normal.

The agents are most probably just trying to work out whether they would need to be advertising the accomondation to future students or not.

BitterAndTwisted

The OP has not disclosed whether they are a student or not. In most circumstances there is no good reason why the agent would need to know now whether the tenants intend to leave in August, renew their AST or go on to a periodic tenancy eight months in advance.

I would say that the chances of the agent wanting to carry out viewings when they don't even know whether the property will be available in summer are extremely low.

princeofpounds

Lokolo is right, if they are students I would be giving a totally different answer to if they are not. My experience was also that rentals got nailed down just after new year for the following summer. If you didn't do it early, you really had little choice by the time you got to summer. Sometime you could get lucky and land a good place that had fallen through, but ususally not.

edwardmluk

To those interested. I, nor anyone I am living with is a student. And neither were the previous tenants. However the agency is using students as their prime reason for the early clarification.

I still think it's stupidly early. The agency also stated lack of response counts as a "yes we are moving out next August" so I need to reply.

My plan, just say yes we're staying and to ask for no viewings to be done. Should we decide to leave, I believe legally we only have to give a full month's notice but we'd be willing to give 2 or 3 if the agency is really pushy (which they are).

No one can complain at that, surely.

Also, can I presume that an email stating we will be staying can't be used as legal evidence to force us to stay?

Thanks for the help, as always.

RAS

England, Wales, Scotland?

Is your deposit protected and were you sent the prescribed information in time?

BitterAndTwisted

No, you don't need to reply. Your consent is not signified by your silence.

Just tell the agent that eight months in advance is far too early to be making any decisions about whether you wish to continue with the tenancy or not. And until you have made a decision either way you won't be agreeing to give them access for viewings either.

In order to leave a property at the end of a fixed-term tenancy you are not obliged to give any notice whatsoever. Any notice you do give would be purely out of courtesy and nothing else.

I would not advise you to intimate that you will want to re-sign another fixed-term or go onto a rolling periodic tenancy by text-message, voice-mail or any other informal method. This is the sort of thing which needs to be done in writing but I would not put it past an agent to try and tell you that you've made a legally-binding agreement if you had.

It's completely unreasonable of the agent to press you on this issue so soon.