Can somebody please explain to me what these people were doing?

Fluff15

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3171969/Judge-orders-elderly-couple-Chelsea-home-owned-ex-Goldman-Sachs-banker-discovering-lied-not-actually-lived-1968.html

Read this article earlier - I don't understand what this case is about? The people who were fined were paying rent, albeit under market value, but not actually living there.

Can somebody please explain why they were getting it below market rate? And why it was an issue that was taken to court? As usual with the Daily Mail they forget to explain the story.

PasturesNew

The couple, under a (cheap) protected tenancy as their main home moved out 50 years ago to another/bigger house and pretended the cheap one was their main home in order to continue to pay low rent on what was actually their "holiday home", or pied-a-terre.

If they'd remained living there it'd have been OK. They pretended to in order to keep the posh address at a discount price.

Old tenancies used to give many tenants a "home for life" at a fixed/low rent. Them being there meant the property was "only worth about half" what the open market value would be because they had "sitting tenant" rights and a new owner couldn't put up their rent or turf them out.

As they weren't living there, the new owner felt p155ed off that they were taking the mick. He wanted them out so it's now worth double what it would've been - or he can charge a full market rent.

He had to prove they weren't living there in order to try to get their ancient tenancy agreement overruled.

G_M

As usual with the Daily Mail they forget to explain the story.

No they didn't:

Retired solicitor Mr Clarke said his family had a protected tenancy claiming the Chelsea address was their primary residence.

A protected tenancy is one where the rent is fixed, so the couple were supposedly living there at a rent far below the market rent. the landlord is unable to raise the rent in a PT.

So for all those years the LL was denied the market rent he could have charged if the property had been vacated and he re-let it on an assured Shorthold Tenancy.

You really should stop reading te Daily Mail though.......

Fluff15

Thank you so much! I had no idea about the home for life thing - I am of an era where I've only known over inflated rents with sadly short tenancy protection.

I wonder if they were subletting it out at the market value too?

Fluff15

G_M wrote: »

No they didn't:


A protected tenancy is one where the rent is fixed, so the couple were supposedly living there at a rent far below the market rent. the landlord is unable to raise the rent in a PT.

So for all those years the LL was denied the market rent he could have charged if the property had been vacated and he re-let it on an assured Shorthold Tenancy.

You really should stop reading te Daily Mail though.......

Ah, see I've never heard of a protected tenancy. I've only known about ASTs and thought it was the same thing on reading that. I was born in 1991, so a quick search shows me I wasn't even born at the time these were offered.

Well, I try and not read it but the badly written articles and shameful celebrity column pull me back.

onlyroz

What were they using the house for then?

PasturesNew

onlyroz wrote: »

What were they using the house for then?

Probably a combination of: him staying over occasionally if he were working in town; weekends shopping; let the nanny use it as a perk to her job; let friends/family stay there.

Mostly shopping/theatre trips probably. It saves hotel costs and inconvenience.

As an address to invite your town friends back to, who wouldn't know it was rented, it was probably a statement of wealth and importance in their eyes too.

Browntoa

probably got away with it until the new owner happened to live virtually next door


would expect he spotted they were never about and invested a bit of money in getting someone to follow them and get the whole story

Pixie5740

If the banker (landlord) is 50 then he was born in 1964/65 so there's no way he was their landlord back in 1968. I wonder if he bought the Cheyne Walk property at a knockdown price because it had sitting tenants with a protected tenancy? Mind you I suppose he could have inherited it. Then again maybe I'm overthinking a Daily Mail story.

Edit: I'm not saying the tenants are in the right, just that the banker might not really have come out this all that badly really.

moneyistooshorttomention

I'm reading it too that both sides were culpable.

Mr New Landlord because he would have deliberately bought it at much lower price than market value because of that "protected tenancy" - whilst all along planning to get them out.

The tenants - because they weren't really living there.

Neither side show up that well here.

belisha-beacon

Pixie5740 wrote: »

If the banker (landlord) is 50 then he was born in 1964/65 so there's no way he was their landlord back in 1968. I wonder if he bought the Cheyne Walk property at a knockdown price because it had sitting tenants with a protected tenancy?

Yeah, that's part of the story. In the article I read (think in the Metro, sorry not much better than the Mail!) the tenant's argument is that the landlord bought it at a knockdown price because they are protected tenants, and he didn't dispute it then (when their status benefitted him) and is only disputing it now because it doesn't.

The thing I am confused about is - why would them not always living there be a problem? I don't know much about protected tenancies but I thought that they remained in place as long as you didn't default on the rent etc. Would it be that perhaps there was a clause in the tenancy requiring continuous occupancy?