Question about dealing with landlord

renter1990

I need some advice on how to deal with our landlord please.

My brother rents a flat with 2 friends. One moved out to work abroad about 6 weeks ago, so I moved into his room.
We emailed the letting agent and she said that was fine - I transferred the other tenant's share of the deposit directly to him, and the letting agent agreed to pay me that share of the deposit when we move out.
We continued paying rent as normal.
At the beginning of October, letting agent emailed us an invoice - it says "£50 non-refundeable referencing fee" and "£100 September rent". We went on holiday for 10 days so didn't get a chance to deal with it.
When we returned, agent sent us another email, it said: "I am yet to hear from you regarding these issues. If I do not hear from you by Monday the 20th of October I will have to issue your notice." On Friday morning I sent her a delaying email (along the lines of, "sorry for not replying, we were on holiday; we are dealing with your letter and will reply on Monday").

You are going to ask me - what kind of contract are we on, what are the dates, etc. Problem - the tenancy agreement is not in our 'communal bills' folder; if we can't find where it went (maybe the previous tenant took it/chucked it by mistake? I have emailed him, no response yet), is the letting agent obliged to give us a copy?

What do we do about the invoice / threat of giving us notice, how do I respond? I feel like I have no bargaining power without a copy of the tenancy agreement in my hand - I know they can't just increase the rent by £100 when they feel like it (let alone charge us back-rent), but I don't have a contract with an amount written on it.

Finally - what is our situation re. eviction....? I know that technically, there's no such thing as 'transferring' a tenancy agreement - we would have to sign a new agreement. That's fine, except: I've been living here more than a month, paid 2 lots of rent already; yet my name/signature is not officially on any paperwork. Am I technically "sub-letting" from the previous tenant, and can they give us notice for that?

Finally to complicate things further, we were planning to move out at the end of January anyway. I'm unwilling to sign a new contract (hopefully with 6-month break clause) if I can avoid it. I'm hoping we have some possibility of negotiating with the landlord/management company: ideally we just want to carry on paying the same rent for the last few months, we give our notice at the end of November, and we move out at the end of January.

What's the best strategy here?

(Ok my flatmate is back. We're going to turn the bookshelves out and look for this tenancy agreement. And the deposit certificate!)

Thank you for your advice!

sandsni

They can't evict you without going through the full legal process which could take months and I doubt if they'd pursue it and risk a void period while they look for new tenants for the sake of £150. I'd guess they're just employing a standard scare tactic to get you to pay up quick.


Is the £100 maybe for pro-rata rent for part of a month?


Pay what you owe at the soonest opportunity and I doubt if you'll hear any more about it.

renter1990

thanks sandsi

i understand it would take a while to evict (by which time we'd have moved out anway) and yep, logically i get that its a scare tactic. still, not a pleasant thing to have to deal with :eek:

the £100 is not pro-rata. i think it's a £100 rent rise - we've already paid rent for september (and october) each month in advance, so i think that's what they claim we owe them.

normally i would be ok with just ignoring an "invoice" (ie a "request" we are free to turn down) and obviously continuing to pay the rent stated on the TA. but if the situation is that the other tenant moved out and i moved in, have we then started a new tenancy? even though we havent signed a new contract? where do we stand legally...? the old contract "ran out" at the start of september, so as i understand it, we would just transfer to a rolling contract - but we've changed tenants, so.... ?

thanks for any advice

thesaint

What date did the tenancy start, and how long was the fixed term?
What does the tenancy agreement state about sub-letting/assigning the tenancy?

The agent is not obliged to give you a copy, but to prove monies are owed, they are going to find it hard without it.