How big a rent increase is fair?

Crashy_Time

ACG wrote: »

The landlord can put the rent to whatever they like, you have an option of staying or leaving. Not ideal but that is the world we live in.

With no contract I think they can up the rent with little notice (but I stand to be corrected there - I was a nice landlord when I was a landlord).

I would ask who your deposit is saved with and the details. If it is not, I would use this as a bargaining chip to keep the rent as it is whilst you find somewhere new to move in to.

I suppose arguably you could try to blackmail him and keep the rent artificially low for a lot longer, but I doubt you will relax knowing your landlord wants rid (aside from the fact it is illegal).

If the rent has been £200 less than the market rate for a year thats over £2k. More than enough to pay for a bathroom, I did a bathroom on a house I renovated and it cost me well under a grand. Likewise if you have low rent for some time, I am sure that would have more than paid for the works you have done - I would be surprised if you are out of pocket, and if you are it probably means you have been spending too much on a rented property.

I would have been pocketing the low rent to save for a house deposit if I were you.

Or to invest somewhere else, other than a property bubble

G_M

catkins wrote: »

We signed a 12 month agreement in 2004 then no agreement until 2015 when we again signed a 12 month one.

Then in 2015 your deposit should have been protected in a registered scheme.

The protection against eviction applies, as does the potential to claim the 3 times penalty.

Crashy_Time

Have you researched other similar properties to see if his increase is fair?

Glbooth3

We've just had this, landlord who does nothin! So many repair jobs still not done and then we had a letter sayin rent going up £20 a month, yes I know not the biggest amount but it is the principle that he's a rubbish landlord and has the audacity to put the price up! So we are moving out

Cakeguts

catkins wrote: »

We took the house because it was in the area we wanted and the landlord was ok with us having pets. The rent when we took it was the going rate.

The house was in a state inside when we moved in. The previous tenant's children had drawn over a lot of the walls and her dog had obviously been frequently weeing on the living room carpet as it stunk. Also the toilet was absolutely disgusting and the bath not much better.

We are not the sort of people to just live in a dump and as the landlord made it clear he was not prepared to do anything we did work. We put in a new bathroom (the cheapest we could get), tiled the walls etc. We decorated every room as it looked as though the rooms had not been decorated for many years.

The living room carpet had to come up as it was soaked and stunk and the carpet in all other rooms was threadbare and just awful. We told the landlord about the living room carpet but he was not interested.

We were not particularly happy about spending money but the rent not going up was some consolation.

We are definitely going to move out and are taking almost everything we have bought. This will be the oven and hob as the ones here when we moved in packed up quite a few years ago (in fact we are on the second oven bought since we moved in), most of the carpets (not the living room one as too large to bother with, the decent curtains (we will leave the awful shabby ones originally here).

I am not sure he will find new tenants easily. There are a lot of things that need doing:-

The kitchen cupboards are falling apart and the worktops are badly stained. Almost all the double glazed windows have condensation in between the panes. The outside wood such as front door and surround, patio door frame, fascia board etc is rotten (most of it has no paint or varnish left on it). The bathroom and toilet has terrible black mould over the outside wall, some of the ceiling, some of the tile grouting and the silicon along the bath and sink. I have bought many things to try and get rid of it all and painted the wall and ceiling several time but it still comes back.

Outside the paved patio, which is quite large, has lots of cracked or broken stones. The garage leaks like a sieve and the window in it has fallen out as the frame rotted so badly.

Also some of the roof tiles on the house have moved although there have been no leaks and the gutters are blocked.

We haven't done any decorating for several years so most of the rooms could do with freshening up especially the ones that we decorated when we first moved in.

This is actually where the problems started. You decided to rent a house in bad condition. Having decided to do that you then decided to spend some money on it. If a landlord offers a house in bad condition you already know that they aren't going to maintain it. The landlord could have served you with a section 21 as soon as the fixed term ended so the fact that they didn't means that you did at least get time to enjoy what you put into the house but actually it wasn't a good idea to rent it in the first place.

Crashy_Time

Cakeguts wrote: »

This is actually where the problems started. You decided to rent a house in bad condition. Having decided to do that you then decided to spend some money on it. If a landlord offers a house in bad condition you already know that they aren't going to maintain it. The landlord could have served you with a section 21 as soon as the fixed term ended so the fact that they didn't means that you did at least get time to enjoy what you put into the house but actually it wasn't a good idea to rent it in the first place.

Well it was, because supposedly the landlord has been charging £200 less a month than he could actually have got at "market rate" since 2004? The reality is that it is time to move on, he probably just wants the OP out so he can sell because he sees the tax raid coming and this is his way of avoiding them saying that they don`t mind people viewing (as well as decorating the house for him)

catkins

Crashy_Time wrote: »

Have you researched other similar properties to see if his increase is fair?

The increase will take the rent to what seems to be the going rate. Of course there are some cheaper places but there are also some that are quite a bit dearer.

Looking at them online though they almost all seem to be in much better condition that ours.

Crashy_Time wrote: »

Well it was, because supposedly the landlord has been charging £200 less a month than he could actually have got at "market rate" since 2004? The reality is that it is time to move on, he probably just wants the OP out so he can sell because he sees the tax raid coming and this is his way of avoiding them saying that they don`t mind people viewing (as well as decorating the house for him)

As I have already said, he does not pay tax on the rent as he does not declare it. His building society think he lives here.

I am pretty sure he is not intending to sell. When we move out he will try and rent it probably at an even higher rent then he is asking from us. He still has at least 5 years on his mortgage and has always said he will rent it at least until the mortgage ends

Crashy_Time

Why has he suddenly decided he needs more rent after all these years?

Crashy_Time

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/may/25/tuc-pay-debt-wages


Good luck raising rents in this environment, I think the OP`s landlord`s timing is a bit off?

catkins

Crashy_Time wrote: »

Why has he suddenly decided he needs more rent after all these years?

He originally said he was not putting up because he knew we were spending money on the house. Also he said we were good tenants so he would rather have us at a lower rent than people who may not be so good at a higher one.

When he put the rent up in 2015 it was short of the average rent for our area but not by masses.

I know a couple of his friends rent out properties and so do his parents and they all seem to charge the going rent. My OH does the gas safety checks for all their properties and also some maintenance work so the tenants have told him what they are paying.

I believe he is hoping to retire very soon so I guess he thinks the extra money will come in handy

Crashy_Time wrote: »

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/may/25/tuc-pay-debt-wages


Good luck raising rents in this environment, I think the OP`s landlord`s timing is a bit off?

Well we are definitely moving out but not until August. I very much doubt he will get a tenant at the higher rent but who knows