Ex-landlord involving solicitors

helpstudents

Hi all,

My flatmates and I (3 of us in total) are university international students, who have been renting this house for 2.5 years (from August 2015 to March 2018), have recently moved out. Throughout the 2.5 years in the house, the landlord did not pay the bills (as part of our contract) and was threatened by the gas and electricity company to have ours cut off, there was zero maintenance of the house (of which he promised during the month we left the house), the boiler was leaking that it destroyed the wall and the ceiling (of which we mentioned multiple times to get fixed but did not happen). We tolerated till our contract ended.

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March 2018

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We moved out 2 days before our contract ended (of which the landlord knew before, as we told we are not renewing the contract months in advance), and informed the landlord we have officially moved out now. We have cleaned the house before we left, I believe in a much better state than when we moved in (I wrote an email on the 2nd day we've moved in regarding the state of the house). We are all heading back to our home countries.

We received an email from the landlord mentioning that we have not "deep clean" the house (this was not mentioned in the contract we've signed) and have left the house in a state that he finds it "unacceptable" and threatened us that he would report us to our university.
I quote from his email:
- "we will have no choice but to inform and new agent of your non-actions.
- Also you will be charged for all of our Costs to re-let and loss of rent"

We replied to his email, to summarize in bullet points, I quote:
- "You do not have the right to disclose any information to non-relevant parties."
- "we have cleaned the house to what we think is acceptable"
- "Again, as I have repeated several times, there is no !!!8220;Deep-Clean!!!8221; mentioned in the contract."
- "It states !!!8220;to yield the Property at the end of the tenancy in the same clean state and condition...!!!8221; It has been 2.5 years and I am unable to remember the exact state but like I have mentioned, we have cleared it to what we feel is acceptable."
- "If you are to seek reparations for !!!8220;lost of Rent!!!8221;, May I ask for you to provide evidence of an intended tenant who wanted to move in but is unable to do so due to these allegations."

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May 2018

---

We did not hear anything from the landlord after this email (this was in March), till yesterday (4th May 2018), all of each received an email from a solicitor demanding £150/pp and to be paid within 7 days.

I decided to send an email to our landlord and these were the email exchanged:
Me:
Hi,
Today, the 3 of us (copied in this email) have each received a payment claim from ______, which I believe to be hired by yourselves with respect to a debt that you believe is owed; a sum of £150 per person. I believe this is in relation to our most recent rental of ______ but do let me know if I am mistaken.

As far as we are aware from our conversations with your representative, all issues should have been resolved and we were not expecting any outstanding payments. I have attached evidence of the correspondence for your perusal.

If for any reason you believe otherwise, we would appreciate if you could provide us with an explanation for the incurred debt and we can work to resolve any misunderstandings that you may have.

Them:
Dear Ex-Tenants
Unfortunately you failed our Inspection and did not Deep-Clean the house after your 2.5yrs of occupation.

We have incurred Costs to make good; cleaning, rubbish removal etc!!!8230;

There may have been a misunderstanding but as per all UK tenancies the house should have been Fully-Cleaned and Cleared etc. upon vacating.

Please make payment to the usual bank details.

Thank you in-advance

Me:
Thank you for your reply.

Before we continue our discussions any further, I would like to direct your attention to both the underlying contract as well as the original email in this trail, as I believe the misunderstanding here lies fully on your part.

If you have evidence to suggest otherwise, please provide a legal contract that supersedes the wording I mentioned below - in particular I would like to understand your premise for why there is any obligation for us to 'Deep-Clean', 'Fully-Cleaned' and 'Cleared' as per your implied (and if I may dare say, rather subjective) definitions.

Please treat this email as confirmation that if you continue to not provide categorical evidence for the claims you make, all future correspondence without sufficient backing will be ignored as we have explained our position time and again. Suffice to say, communication by yourselves / representative has been intermittent and lacking in continuity, given the previous communication was over a month ago and no further queries were raised.

Therefore, unless you are able to justify otherwise, we are in no way obligated to continue this discussion any further as you should have the necessary documentation to work out where legal obligations lie - our current correspondence only further evidences our attempt at an amicable resolution to this matter.

Them:
g) to yield up the Property at the end of the tenancy in the same clean state and condition as it was in the beginning of the tenancy and make good pay for the repair of or replace all such items of the Fixtures, Furniture and Effects as shall be broken, lost, damaged, or destroyed during the tenancy (reasonable wear and tear and damage by fire storm or tempest excepted)

You chose to give No Notice, Clean the property and ignore our emails upon-vacating so find yourselves now in this position.

This is now out of our hands, the Solicitors will issue Court Action in 5 Days and ultimately will cause you embarrassment by instructing Bailiffs/Enforcement Agents to attend the University to collect your Debt with further added substantial Costs and Fees.

---

End of Email Exchange

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The landlord and solicitor are not aware of our current address as we are not UK residents anymore, and the current address they have billed it to under my name is to our university. We all have returned back to our home countries and am not sure when we will be returning back. I am not sure if they can do anything.

This is all so far that has taken place. I would kindly like your advice! Thank you!

Pixie5740

helpstudents wrote: »

Hi all,

My flatmates and I (3 of us in total) are university students, who have been renting this house for 2.5 years (from August 2015 to March 2018), have recently moved out. Throughout the 2.5 years in the house, the landlord did not pay the bills (as part of our contract) and was threatened by the gas and electricity company to have ours cut off, there was zero maintenance of the house (of which he promised during the month we left the house), the boiler was leaking that it destroyed the wall and the ceiling (of which we mentioned multiple times to get fixed but did not happen). We tolerated till our contract ended.

We moved out 2 days before our contract ended (of which the landlord knew before, as we told we are not renewing the contract months in advance), and informed the landlord we have officially moved out now. We have cleaned the house before we left, I believe in a much better state than when we moved in (I wrote an email on the 2nd day we've moved in regarding the state of the house).

We received an email from the landlord mentioning that we have not "deep clean" the house (this was not mentioned in the contract we've signed) and have left the house in a state that he finds it "unacceptable" and threatened us that he would report us to our university.
I quote from his email:
- "we will have no choice but to inform and new agent of your non-actions.
- Also you will be charged for all of our Costs to re-let and loss of rent"

We replied to his email, to summarize in bullet points, I quote:
- "You do not have the right to disclose any information to non-relevant parties."
- "we have cleaned the house to what we think is acceptable"
- "Again, as I have repeated several times, there is no “Deep-Clean” mentioned in the contract."
- "It states “to yield the Property at the end of the tenancy in the same clean state and condition...” It has been 2.5 years and I am unable to remember the exact state but like I have mentioned, we have cleared it to what we feel is acceptable."
- "If you are to seek reparations for “lost of Rent”, May I ask for you to provide evidence of an intended tenant who wanted to move in but is unable to do so due to these allegations."

We did not hear anything from the landlord after this email (this was in March), till yesterday (4th May 2018), all of each received an email from a solicitor demanding £150/pp and to be paid within 7 days.

I decided to send an email to our landlord and these were the email exchanged:
Me:
Hi,
Today, the 3 of us (copied in this email) have each received a payment claim from ______, which I believe to be hired by yourselves with respect to a debt that you believe is owed; a sum of £150 per person. I believe this is in relation to our most recent rental of ______ but do let me know if I am mistaken.

As far as we are aware from our conversations with your representative, all issues should have been resolved and we were not expecting any outstanding payments. I have attached evidence of the correspondence for your perusal.

If for any reason you believe otherwise, we would appreciate if you could provide us with an explanation for the incurred debt and we can work to resolve any misunderstandings that you may have.

Them:
Dear Ex-Tenants
Unfortunately you failed our Inspection and did not Deep-Clean the house after your 2.5yrs of occupation.

We have incurred Costs to make good; cleaning, rubbish removal etc…

There may have been a misunderstanding but as per all UK tenancies the house should have been Fully-Cleaned and Cleared etc. upon vacating.

Please make payment to the usual bank details.

Thank you in-advance

Me:
Thank you for your reply.

Before we continue our discussions any further, I would like to direct your attention to both the underlying contract as well as the original email in this trail, as I believe the misunderstanding here lies fully on your part.

If you have evidence to suggest otherwise, please provide a legal contract that supersedes the wording I mentioned below - in particular I would like to understand your premise for why there is any obligation for us to 'Deep-Clean', 'Fully-Cleaned' and 'Cleared' as per your implied (and if I may dare say, rather subjective) definitions.

Please treat this email as confirmation that if you continue to not provide categorical evidence for the claims you make, all future correspondence without sufficient backing will be ignored as we have explained our position time and again. Suffice to say, communication by yourselves / representative has been intermittent and lacking in continuity, given the previous communication was over a month ago and no further queries were raised.

Therefore, unless you are able to justify otherwise, we are in no way obligated to continue this discussion any further as you should have the necessary documentation to work out where legal obligations lie - our current correspondence only further evidences our attempt at an amicable resolution to this matter.

Them:
g) to yield up the Property at the end of the tenancy in the same clean state and condition as it was in the beginning of the tenancy and make good pay for the repair of or replace all such items of the Fixtures, Furniture and Effects as shall be broken, lost, damaged, or destroyed during the tenancy (reasonable wear and tear and damage by fire storm or tempest excepted)

You chose to give No Notice, Clean the property and ignore our emails upon-vacating so find yourselves now in this position.

This is now out of our hands, the Solicitors will issue Court Action in 5 Days and ultimately will cause you embarrassment by instructing Bailiffs/Enforcement Agents to attend the Hospital to collect your Debt with further added substantial Costs and Fees.



This is all so far that has taken place. I would kindly like your advice! Thank you!

The short version is that the landlord, or an agent acting on his behalf are talking pish.

Assuming this is England or Wales then there is no requirement to give a set amount of notice or notice in writing that you'll be moving out at the end of the fixed term because the contract just ends what with being a fixed term and all.

If you paid a deposit then it should have been protected in one of the three government backed schemes and you should make a claim with the scheme for the return of your full deposit asap.

To take you to court and win your landlord would need to provide evidence and convince a judge that you owe money. Nothing you have written so far indicates that your landlord would be successful in court.

Read the following guides by our very own G_M for further information and don't enter into any more dialogue with the landlord or his agents because they sound like a shower of fannies.

Ending/Renewing an AST: what happens when a fixed term ends? How can a LL or tenant end a tenancy? What is a periodic tenancy?

Deposits: payment, protection and return

tom9980

Is there an inventory?

tae117

Thank you for your response @Pixie5740. Another thing to note, and my friend the OP has just updated her post with this info is that they are international students who have just returned to their home countries after finishing their degree here. Would a CCJ even be valid if they cannot physically return to the UK for the lack of a valid visa?

We are aware that this is not a law forum but what we are trying to do is convince them not to even bother as the ex-tenants are unlikely to return to the UK for say, the next 5 years.

We will check about the deposit and get back to you.

[Deleted User]

In fact, if you paid a deposit and it wasn't protected, you might be able to take the LL to court for this and get 1-3 times the deposit back.

Was the deposit protected? Did you pay a deposit, I can't see any mention of a deposit in your OP.

Pixie5740

tae117 wrote: »

Thank you for your response @Pixie5740. Another thing to note, and my friend the OP has just updated her post with this info is that they are international students who have just returned to their home countries after finishing their degree here. Would a CCJ even be valid if they cannot physically return to the UK for the lack of a valid visa?

We are aware that this is not a law forum but what we are trying to do is convince them not to even bother as the ex-tenants are unlikely to return to the UK for say, the next 5 years.

We will check about the deposit and get back to you.

To take them to small claims court the landlord would need an address in England or Wales for your friends and if they're all out of the country now then he has no address to use. No point using the rental property address because he knows they no longer live there which is part of the reason he has such a bee in his bonnet.

helpstudents

@Pixie5740 @deannatrois

Thank you for your replies. We do not have any deposit with them since the beginning of the contract (that was the deal we agreed on before we signed the contract).

@tom9980
No, there was no inventory record from the beginning.

helpstudents

Pixie5740 wrote: »

To take them to small claims court the landlord would need an address in England or Wales for your friends and if they're all out of the country now then he has no address to use. No point using the rental property address because he knows they no longer live there which is part of the reason he has such a bee in his bonnet.

The landlord is threatening to contact my university, as currently the solicitor's email states my name and my university's address. In his last email, he also threatens to go to my university. My university has my home country address, and I am not sure if the university is obliged to provide them with such information.

Pixie5740

It doesn't matter if he has your home country address because Small Claims Court requires the defendant (that's you) to have an address in England or Wales.

I think you should pre-empt the landlord and contact the university yourself. The students union usually has a housing officer who should be able to advise you.

helpstudents

Pixie5740 wrote: »

It doesn't matter if he has your home country address because Small Claims Court requires the defendant (that's you) to have an address in England or Wales.

I think you should pre-empt the landlord and contact the university yourself. The students union usually has a housing officer who should be able to advise you.

I have just sent an email to the student union regarding this matter as well before posting this case in the forum. Awaiting their reply.

DigForVictory

If your former landlord is going to send enforcement folk to the university, it's a courtesy to let the university know so these folk can be directed to the right office & told "all of the named folk no longer live in this country, please leave".