Please help - long term air bnb user here, told to leave

acarter1970

Hello, all.

I have been renting a room in an air bnb for 13 months. I have always paid for the room on time, direct to air bnb.

Landlord does not live in the property. There are six rooms, all rented out to other people, for short-to-medium terms i.e. a week to six months.

Landlord comes by once a week to clean communal areas, and sometimes our rooms, but does not live here. There are locks on all the doors, and only tenants and landlord have the individual room keys.

So four weeks ago, landlord told me he is selling the house and asked me to vacate by end of July.

Problem is that I am leaving the country for work in a few days and to go then go straight on holiday, so coming back in five weeks time.

I told the landlord this, and asked for a grace period and further right to pay rent and stay until the end of August to get my affairs in order and then find somewhere else (very difficult in the current housing market) and she said tough, it is a holiday let, be out by end of July.

I have been in touch with shelter and been told it sound like I have an assured tenancy as it could hardly be claimed I am on holiday, but their legal team are yet to get back in touch with me.

Landlord was contacted again, and told me she would be changing the locks if I am not out by last week of July.

What are my rights? Especially if I can no longer get back in the building to get access to my stuff?

Bookworm105

I doubt you will get a more reliable answer on here than the (eventual) reply from Shelter's legal team, since they presumably have more details than set out above. I particularly note the comment re regular cleaning....

Airbnb renting and the law – occupation types » The Landlord Law Blog

propertyrental

This may help

https://www.landlordlawblog.co.uk/2016/10/24/airbnb-renting-law-occupation-types/

acarter1970

Thanks all! I should have mentioned - I am in Wales.so this applies: "Note by the way that the law has now changed in Wales with the coming into force of the Renting Homes (Wales)Act 2016 which has eliminated most of the differences between tenancies and licenses.  See our separate Welsh posts for more on this.  This Airbnb series is based on the English law."

Voyager2002

I went through something similar about 8 years ago in England (law may have changed since then), and took detailed advice from Shelter and from a housing solicitor. 

The advice from Shelter was that in a situation such as yours (you have your own room and the landlord does not come into it for cleaning or other reasons) then you have an Assured Shorthold and the landlord would need to go through a process such as Section 21 in order to regain possession, and that this is the legal position no matter what your tenancy agreement may say otherwise. (I presume that through AirBnB you have agreed to it being a short-term let with the landlord having an immediate right to regain possession.) However, the solicitor warned that in such a situation, where a written agreement exists that seems to give the landlord more rights than he would normally have under a short-hold tenancy, it is uncertain what a court would decide. In my situation he put my odds of winning a court case at around 60 per cent. More to the point, the judge might consider the legal questions complicated and so rule that a full day's hearing would be required to explore the issues properly. Unless you are eligible for legal aid, you run the risk of being ordered to pay the landlord's legal costs, and for a hearing lasting a full day this could well be a bill of up to £10,000 (ten grand back in 2016). So, how fat is your wallet?

In the short term, it is probably the case that if the landlord were to change the locks or otherwise evict you without a court order he would be committing a criminal offence. Doubtless you could ask a solicitor or housing charity to send him a letter explaining this.

Realistically, what you need is somewhere to store your possessions while you are away, plus some kind of accommodation immediately after you return while you are looking for your next home. The cost of this would not be enormous (certainly far less than the legal costs you might face if you try to stay!) and perhaps the landlord would be pleased to assist with this in return for a smooth handover to enable him to sell the property without difficulty.