My AST Tenants have turned my House into an Airbnb

noddynoo

Just tell them you know and give them time to hand the property back before you contact Air BnB A friend did this with a flat in Brighton and she was asked to leave and did to be fair to her no section 21 nothing just left quietly no fuss BUT she is now living at her ex husbands as she can't get a reference

ProDave

IMHO this is NOT a HMO, is is a B&B or guest house.

Now that may raise different issues, e,g where we are, you need planning permission to turn a house into a guest house (though it is exempt if you only have 2 guest rooms). Then food hygeine standards, fire alarms etc may be required.

There is also the matter of insurance. Ordinary household insurance will not cover you running it as a guest house.

It still seems like grounds to end the tenancy though.

Annie35

I agree with noddynoo that you could try to get an agreement to quit first, thinking about the cost of eviction you could use this as leverage ie. Pay them to leave if you had to, depending on their operation they may just leave (move onto the next in exchange for no fuss)

Pixie5740

theartfullodger wrote: »

HMO regulations are about - see the 2004 Housing Act - not about signed-up tenants.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/34/part/7/crossheading/meaning-of-house-in-multiple-occupation
(it would apply if you had a 3-storey house in England with 8 bedrooms and you invited 7 unrelated people to live with you for free...)

He says he's got 6 people there (yes, he only wants 3..) so he's got a licensable HMO. The council should be sympathetic, but..

Slàinte mhath!

It also says:

A building or a part of a building meets the standard test if—
(a)it consists of one or more units of living accommodation not consisting of a self-contained flat or flats;
(b)the living accommodation is occupied by persons who do not form a single household (see section 258);
(c)the living accommodation is occupied by those persons as their only or main residence or they are to be treated as so occupying it (see section 259);
(d)their occupation of the living accommodation constitutes the only use of that accommodation;
(e)rents are payable or other consideration is to be provided in respect of at least one of those persons' occupation of the living accommodation; and
(f)two or more of the households who occupy the living accommodation share one or more basic amenities or the living accommodation is lacking in one or more basic amenities.

The property isn't the main residence of the AirBnB guests, in fact is doesn't even sound like the main residence of the three people named on the tenancy agreement.

molerat

Annie35 wrote: »

What an awful situation! I'd get talking to some professional eviction companies to get some more options but section 8 isn't just for arrears.

Our could go for these 2 grounds, yes they are discretionary but it's more about not making innocent people homeless, in this case they do have other homes to go to. It's worth looking into this before dismissing -

Ground 12(breach of contract)
Ground 17(false info provided by tenant)

However it's Ground 6 which maybe your trump card, (redevelop the property) which is a MANDATORY ground! There are steps to take but if your wanting to do building work anyway next year a push to gain the gain finance now could get you out this mess.

Oh! would ground 1 work? (Ll wanting to move back in, but you need to have lived their before)

I think any judge would take a dim view of anyone using G1 or G6 after recently issuing a new 12 month contract !

Pixie5740

molerat wrote: »

I think any judge would take a dim view of anyone using G1 or G6 after recently issuing a new 12 month contract !

Is doesn't matter if the judge takes a dim view because those grounds are mandatory not discretionary providing the landlord has dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's a possession order must be granted. Like it or not the judge would have to apply the law.

Ground 1 wouldn't work in this case because it is only permitted when the landlord has already lived in it as their main home or they, or their spouse require it to live in as his or her main home. Evidence of this may be required, together with evidence that the landlord intends to leave their current home, and I think the landlord has to have notified the tenant in writing that this might happen before the start of the tenancy.

I'm not sure if ground 6 has the same caveat.

PasturesNew

Phone the Housing section at the local Council, or go down there if you can. Ask them for help advising you of the situation - if you're in a heavily licensed area they might even have the powers to "shut it down" pretty quickly.

You can't give notice to the tenants on an AST. They are not sub-letting as the people they are renting to are short-term and a sub-let implies they've rented the whole thing to somebody else and they're just doing "overnight room rentals", so it all gets a bit blurry.

They are potentially running a hotel/b&b and various other combinations/permutations of wording .... and you might have more clout by going to the Council to find out what laws they're breaking at a local level in doing so.

Overcrowding, unsafe, fire alarms, HMO regs, all sorts of things you could suggest.

They might have a special person that deals with these instances as they're increasingly occurring - not just overnight short-term stays, but pop up brothels.

The Council MIGHT be able to "shut it down" but your tenants would still have a legally binding AST with you. AirBNB out/closed doesn't mean AST tenants have to leave.

G_M

I've not read the entire thread (bit rushed) but seems to me you could serve a S8 Notice.

Ground 12?
Ground 13 maybe.....?
Ground 17

Al these are discretionary, but with evidence of the extent of the tenant's activities the court may well grant possesion.

HMRC might also be interested.......


http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/50/schedule/2

HouseBuyer77

Is doesn't matter if the judge takes a dim view because those grounds are mandatory not discretionary providing the landlord has dotted all the i's and crossed all the t's a possession order must be granted. Like it or not the judge would have to apply the law.

Ground 1 is no use though because it can only be applied outside of the fixed term. There's little point in using whilst S21 is available:

https://www.landlordzone.co.uk/information/ground-1-notice
http://www.landlordlawblog.co.uk/2016/01/27/grounds-for-eviction-ground-1-returning-owner-occupier/

ThePants999

I don't understand why discretionary grounds are to be avoided. Yes, I totally understand that a judge is going to be reluctant to make someone homeless when they're having the occasional trouble with rent, so I imagine there aren't many ground 11 success stories. But I really can't see a judge having much sympathy for someone who signs an agreement to become a tenant in a property, said agreement having a clear "no sub-letting" clause, knowing full well that they have no intention of residing at that property, instead sub-letting it as part of their business. I would be very surprised, and disappointed, if a section 8 on ground 12 failed - provided, of course, that you had previously attempted and failed to resolve this amicably with the "tenants".

The reason ground 12 is discretionary is because there's judgment required in whether a tenancy agreement has actually been breached, and how serious that breach is, unlike rent arrears where there's a precise definition of what meets ground 8 and therefore no need for a judge's discretion. But it's pretty clear in this instance that there is a breach and it's serious!