Rental advice needed.

saajan_12

treelove wrote: »

I'm afraid we were stuck between a rock and a hard place. I had become ill and needed major surgery. My husband couldn't put enough hours into our company so we then had to claim housing benefit. It only covered 3/4 of our rent which meant we had to cover the other £300. We did this by selling everything of any value, even our wedding rings. We struggled with that rent and were very much hand to mouth. I was bedbound for most of the day. Our daughter is autistic and doesn't cope with change. I'm very sorry you had a tough time and hope you're doing better. Unfortunately these are your personal circumstances, and nothing to do with your landlord.


During the whole time the agent would send people round to do quotes then after a week or so would tell us the LL either refused the quote or they couldn't reach her. It was an awful time. The first 6 years were fine. It was only once the agent took over things got stressful. I've not long had my surgery and during my recovery I've been looking at the communications and to me it looks like the agent hoped we'd leave and when we didn't they advised the LL to evict. I have paperwork and emails which confirm everything I've said is fact. She did breach the tenancy agreement - There is a defined Shelter process for reporting repairs and eventually deducting the cost from rent but you have to follow through properly while in occupation. This is now irrelevant.

and the property was falsely advertised. I can understand your points about the heating and accept that it would be a waste of time. But I have a solicitors letter from her stating it was expensive to heat the property but she had advertised it with a false energy rating whilst a bill for the exact time showed a bill for over 2x that stated amount for the time the property was vacant after we had left. - EPCs are a rough guide, you can't compare them to exact fuel costs. You could only have a claim if the original EPC was fraudulent and teh LL knew it was incorrect when it was advertised. The energy efficiency could change due to window issues and besides, you lived there for 6 years - clearly wasn't that important to you.
Im genuinely concerned about the rental field in general if tenancies can be breached, officials lied to and properties falsely advertised. I honestly appreciate the responses

I understand this has been a stressful time for you, with your own circumstances and (slightly) with the property. Don't make it worse by persuing a claim you won't win. Your remedy was to follow through the Shelter process for repairs or to leave. If a consistent place to live was worth dealing with the LL / property, that was your choice.

FBaby

So is you claim that the EPC was wrong and therefore provided you with a false of belief that you could afford to heat the house, but because of the actual costs, you find yourself in serious financial disarray?

The problem is that even you could sue as a result of the above (in which case, not sure legally the LL could be made responsible for the inappropriate banding resulting from the EPC), how would you evidenced your loss? Remember, getting compensation from the courts is about evidencing loss, not stress/anxiety? Even if you could put an actual figure to it, the first counterclaim would be that you had plenty of opportunity to move out and therefore mitigate your loss.

It comes across that you are desperately trying to find a reason to get back at your LL because you have decided that they are the cause of your trouble. Ultimately, by being a tenant, you were facing the risk of being asked to leave the property at any time after the end of your fixed contract, whether with cause or not. It sounds like you benefited from a property rented to you under market value for 6 years, so it doesn't sound like you gained no benefit from the situation.

In any case, as all have said, you have no case for suing your LL on the basis of your high energy costs. You really are wasting your time and energy with this.

treelove

Thank you. Shelters solicitors did start a case as a no win no fee claim and have only just told us that the cost will outweigh the claimed amount so we've been told to take it through the small claims caught ourself. I hear what everyone is saying and it does look pathetic that I wanted to pursue this. I know that personal feelings shouldn't have come into it but despite not doing the repairs the rent was put up causing us to struggle further but yes we did sign the section 13 to agree to this so nothing can be done.In the ideal world we would have left but had no money and no where to go as I was so ill. The only way I could think to protect us was by not signing a new tenancy in Dec 15. But, it appears by doing that we were victims of a retaliatory eviction and there's nothing we can do about it. If my health had been better I'm sure we would have been more on the ball. I've heard through the grapevine that the new tenants ( a family of 3 adults) are having issues with the fuel/heating and have decided to subsidise their rent by subletting rooms. Thank you all very much for your time and help, everyone.