Can a Landlord do this

System

Don't worry about it guys. Cheers for your help.

Was just curious.

Doesn't seem to be a solid definite yes or no consensus on here as to the situation with the garage.

What may or may not come into whether the garage can be rented out.....is that us tenants will potentially be hassled by it in terms of noise....who knows how often and how noisy the garage renter will be. We could have some stranger turning up at our property at any time. We could be hassled to move our cars off the driveway whenever the garage renter wants us to.

Doesn't seem right to me. But there we go....

Luckily I'm not in the bedroom above the garage. Some unlucky tenant will have to deal with whatever noise is made from the garage.

AdrianC

dburford9 wrote: »

What may or may not come into whether the garage can be rented out.....is that us tenants will potentially be hassled by it in terms of noise....who knows how often and how noisy the garage renter will be. We could have some stranger turning up at our property at any time. We could be hassled to move our cars off the driveway whenever the garage renter wants us to.

Doesn't seem right to me. But there we go....

And that, children, is why it's cheaper to live in a shared house than to rent an entire property.

Don't like that trade-off? You know the answer...

System

AdrianC wrote: »

And that, children, is why it's cheaper to live in a shared house than to rent an entire property.

Don't like that trade-off? You know the answer...

Is it....

I'm fairly sure that if a family was renting out this house - the landlord could do the same thing and choose to take the garage away from the renting family and rent it to some Hells Angel to store his Harley.


I will likely be buying a property this year so renting will be long gone for me....


There are worse things than the landlord taking a garage way from us.....noisy housemates, housemates that don't know how to empty a bin, agents having parties in the house. Just 1st world relatively trivial issues.....but it's part of being in a house-share. You realise 50% of people in this world have zero respect for others.....actually you realise 90% of the UK population have no respect for others when you get in your car and drive anywhere.

AdrianC

dburford9 wrote: »

I'm fairly sure that if a family was renting out this house - the landlord could do the same thing and choose to take the garage away from the renting family and rent it to some Hells Angel to store his Harley.

No, because they would be renting the entire property.

You aren't. You are renting one room, with access to undefined "shared areas", and you've already accepted one reduction in them.

getmore4less

You seemed to have ignored that they can't just put the rent up with a month notice.

Not sure you even need to give the landlord a deposit,
if you so they need to protect it properly.

is this a new landlord?

mwpt

Your rent must be incredibly cheap for you to put up with this stuff. In that case, market functioning I guess. You decide on what you're prepared to pay and put up with.

As others have said, if you are not socially connected with the landlord and so don't care about ruining relations, you could treat him as he is treating you and refuse the rent increase, force him to go through legal means, and even check his HMO licence. But if the rent is really cheap then you may just decide to put up with it all.

Pincher

When I was starting out, went to a house share containing male intern doctors, I was/am not one. The sofas were draped with nurses. The room on offer was the path to the bathroom! Even then, they didn't want me.


A fellow student paid the same rent as me, but she had a posh flat share a friend introduced her to. I had a crummy terrace with old carpets.


A male student came to me for a room, because he was in a house with five female students, and it was driving him up the wall.


Lots of juicy house shares out there, but it's like hot night clubs, they don't let you in there.

nubbins

Pincher wrote: »

When I was starting out, went to a house share containing male intern doctors, I was/am not one. The sofas were draped with nurses. The room on offer was the path to the bathroom! Even then, they didn't want me.


A fellow student paid the same rent as me, but she had a posh flat share a friend introduced her to. I had a crummy terrace with old carpets.


A male student came to me for a room, because he was in a house with five female students, and it was driving him up the wall.


Lots of juicy house shares out there, but it's like hot night clubs, they don't let you in there.

Erm, no comment

Lost_Property

I've no idea why you would voluntarily pay the deposit, seeing as the agent returned it. More power to you by retaining the money, in case he later tries to make any of you jointly or severally liable for damage to communal areas.

As for the loss of use of the garage and other areas, see if you can make sense of this section of the Housing Act '88 :-

www (dot) legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/50/section/3

"3) Tenant sharing accommodation with persons other than landlord :-
(1)Where a tenant has the exclusive occupation of any accommodation (in this section referred to as “the separate accommodation”) and—
(a)the terms as between the tenant and his landlord on which he holds the separate accommodation include the use of other accommodation (in this section referred to as “the shared accommodation”) in common with another person or other persons, not being or including the landlord, and
(b)by reason only of the circumstances mentioned in paragraph (a) above, the separate accommodation would not, apart from this section, be a dwelling-house let on an assured tenancy,the separate accommodation shall be deemed to be a dwelling-house let on an assured tenancy and the following provisions of this section shall have effect.
(2) [ Section Irrelevant to discussion ]
(3)While the tenant is in possession of the separate accommodation, any term of the tenancy terminating or modifying, or providing for the termination or modification of, his right to the use of any of the shared accommodation which is living accommodation shall be of no effect.
(4)Where the terms of the tenancy are such that, at any time during the tenancy, the persons in common with whom the tenant is entitled to the use of the shared accommodation could be varied or their number could be increased, nothing in subsection (3) above shall prevent those terms from having effect so far as they relate to any such variation or increase.
(5)In this section “living accommodation” means accommodation of such a nature that the fact that it constitutes or is included in the shared accommodation is sufficient, apart from this section, to prevent the tenancy from constituting an assured tenancy of a dwelling-house."

Would the issue here possibly revolve around whether the original agreement had a written or verbal understanding, whether explicitly expressed or merely implied, regarding which areas where shared? E.g. if you and another two tenants rented separate rooms individually in a three-bed flat with a shared living room, would it be reasonable or even lawful for the LL to later rent out use of the living room either as is, or perhaps by partitioning it off?

Also, in terms of rights of access to the shared areas, would it be reasonable or unreasonable for the LL to expect to have access not just for repairs, inspections and viewings, etc, but, in addition, to occasionally use, say, the kitchen for cooking a meal, or to hangout and do work on his laptop, or to kip down on the sofa for the night, or to allow a friend to do so, etc, etc?