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Help! Aggressive landlord and unknown territory!
Tdpd
Posts: 2 Newbie
We could really do with some advice from anyone out there that might know about property law/litigation as we can't seem to get any definitive advice from out lawyers!
We had a commercial lease which expired in jan 2014. The lease is governed by the landlord and tenancy act 1954. We have always paid our rent on time. The landlord has always spoken to us via agents and never directly and has never come to see the property. For health reasons we knew we could not continue with the business (our home was also the same property in the flat above) so we decided to proceed with a surrender of the lease and sell our goodwill on under a regrant of a new lease.
Unfortunately over a 2 year period and 3 buyers, all buyers withdrew as could not agree with the terms the landlord was requesting.
We did not provide notice to vacate as we were hoping for a sale to complete. At the 11th hour, the buyer put forward a new request to the landlord. As the day of our lease expiry drew near and no response was received by the buyer from the landlord, we decided to rely on section 27 (1a) of the LTA and vacated 2 days before expiry of our lease without notice to the landlord.
We then completed some works that was due under our schedule of Dilapidations in the garden before we handed the keys back. This was approximately a month after our lease expired.
When the landlord received the keys, their solicitor wrote to us to advise we were still liable for the property as we had not given notice and as the keys were handed back late it is assumed we did not vacate before the end of the fixed term of the lease. After arguing this we subsequently put forward a notice of termination without prejudice to stop the clock ticking but to allow us to contest this.
We are really worried now we will have to pay thousands of pounds in rent having closed and vacated our business and home. We want to fight this at least to the date the landlord received the keys rather than pay 6 months rent. However we do not want to fight if we have no case and end up losing with significant court and legal costs on top. Does anyone have an opinion on whether we have a case? Thank you!!
We had a commercial lease which expired in jan 2014. The lease is governed by the landlord and tenancy act 1954. We have always paid our rent on time. The landlord has always spoken to us via agents and never directly and has never come to see the property. For health reasons we knew we could not continue with the business (our home was also the same property in the flat above) so we decided to proceed with a surrender of the lease and sell our goodwill on under a regrant of a new lease.
Unfortunately over a 2 year period and 3 buyers, all buyers withdrew as could not agree with the terms the landlord was requesting.
We did not provide notice to vacate as we were hoping for a sale to complete. At the 11th hour, the buyer put forward a new request to the landlord. As the day of our lease expiry drew near and no response was received by the buyer from the landlord, we decided to rely on section 27 (1a) of the LTA and vacated 2 days before expiry of our lease without notice to the landlord.
We then completed some works that was due under our schedule of Dilapidations in the garden before we handed the keys back. This was approximately a month after our lease expired.
When the landlord received the keys, their solicitor wrote to us to advise we were still liable for the property as we had not given notice and as the keys were handed back late it is assumed we did not vacate before the end of the fixed term of the lease. After arguing this we subsequently put forward a notice of termination without prejudice to stop the clock ticking but to allow us to contest this.
We are really worried now we will have to pay thousands of pounds in rent having closed and vacated our business and home. We want to fight this at least to the date the landlord received the keys rather than pay 6 months rent. However we do not want to fight if we have no case and end up losing with significant court and legal costs on top. Does anyone have an opinion on whether we have a case? Thank you!!
0
Comments
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So how was the LL supposed to know you had vacated if you were still entering to do things and handed the keys back a month later? What evidence would you present in court to show you actually vacated on time?
Suspect your lawyers have no ideas because you have not got a leg to stand on.0 -
We have a removal notice and confirmation with HMRC we had ceased trading. We had to do some of the works as did not have an opportunity to previously due to the pending sales and part of the conditions of the new lease is for the new buyers to undertake some of the works. We are not saying that we don't pay rent but to the point we returned the keys rather than full 6 months.0
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