Major problems with LL

vic1987

not sure if the property is safe but planning was given but never signed off at the end

Pumpkin_Pie_5

Well this was many years ago, but when we had problems with our shared house we went to student housing - you'd be surprised how much they hate dodgy landlords preying on students!:rotfl:

They fought our battles for us so we didn;t have to - Worth a go?

Caz_87

Hi guys, thanks for all the replies. I share this house with vic1987.

My room is next to the room they are doing work on and there is only a partition wall between the 2 rooms so it is very noisy for me especially as I have exams to revise for (but I think that we shouldn't have to put up with the noise even if we had nothing to do but sit and watch TV all day - we are paying rent to live in a house not a building site).
Also the insulation will have to be fitted in my room because it is part of the new extension so they didn't put any in this room either. As I have to pack up all my stuff and move into another room while they do my insulation, I would rather just move out so I don't have to have the hassle of listening to all this work when I want to concentrate on exams.
I have now told the landlord this and he said that we can have our deposits back and leave but only if all of us are planning on leaving. Some people in the house don't want to leave. (Like vic said some people in the house are happy to just let them do anything because it's easier than saying no).

So does anyone know about getting out of contracts? I want to leave but not if it makes things difficult for everyone else. I know that if we stop paying rent then the landlord can give us notice to leave and obvisouly this isn't good as others don't want to leave. So I guess I would somehow have to prove that he has broken his side of the contract so it isn't valid and I can stop paying my rent? And without a valid contract don't people have some kind of tenants rights which would stop them being easily evicted? People can squat in a house with no contract and no rent so there must be some way of the others staying? (I'm not saying they should squat but if squatters are hard to evict then they must be able to stay?)

tbs624

It’s unfortunate that you don’t all agree on the best way to proceed. If you are all on the one contract together, you will be jointly and severally liable for the rent and any other payments due under the Contract Terms. If the contract is a valid one ( and you seem to have concerns about who has signed it on behalf of the LL or who the actual LL is) what this means is that if a couple of you move out the LL can enforce payment from the remaining tenants. It’s possible that your fellow tenants haven’t realised this and whilst you may not want to risk upsetting your housemates by landing that one on them, discussing it may help focus their minds on how the two of you feel about things and the stress it is causing you.

It does sound as though your LL is taking advantage of the fact that all you’re all young & pretty new to renting. You obviously don’t need all this in the run-up to exams, but if you have a look at www.clsdirect.org.uk. you should be able to get some local qualified legal advice, from a solicitor who has a legal aid franchise. There are too many strands to this one for you to try to sort it out without proper advice.

Guy_Montag

!!!!!! would the others not want to leave?

My advice, find somewhere else that you can all go as a group. Offer it to the others on a plate - make their life easy. Or as tbs says tell them your moving out & they will be liable for all the rent. That will make them think.

tbs624

On the subject of deposits - you may find the information here helpful http://www.communities.gov.uk/housing/rentingandletting/privaterenting/tenancydepositprotection/

As your LL appears to operate under his own personal interpretation of how things should be dealt with, it's maybe worth you checking that there is a current gas safety certificate, effective from the date that you all moved in. If not he can be reported to the HSE (Health & Safety Exec) for that one.

carolt

Thanks, tbs624, for taking time out to offer detailed advice to this poster as you have done to many others in similar situations. An example to us all.

Best of luck to the OP - sounds really, really stressful. Hope you manage to get it all sorted and best of luck with your exams too.

morg_monster

Wow what a nightmare. We had a similar situation in our student house, with building work not being finished when we moved in; although it didn't carry on like this has. Through the rest of the tenancy the LL seemed like a reasonable guy. In May, the previous year's tenants came round and told us that they had never got ANY of their deposit back from the LL despite leaving it in a reasonable state and were taking him to the small claims court. They also told us that the name on the contract wasn't the man who we believed to be our LL and who had signed it. So expecting the worst we went to student advice and they said officially we should pay our last months rent and then if no deposit was returned in all likelihood we would have to go down the small claims route too. Off the record the girl told us if she was in our position she would send the LL a letter saying we would withold the last month's rent in lieu of our returned deposit and provide the LL with photocopies of all bills to prove they were paid off (realise now this wasn't necessary!), and say that we would be in the house until end of June for him to come, inspect the place, and we would additionally pay for any damage he found.
We all agreed to do this and sent the letter. He came round as usual for the rent and my brave housemate just repeated what we'd said in the letter. We also told him we knew that although he had signed the contract, it was not his name and address on the contract. After this he left. He never came round for an inspection, we moved out as expected, sent him the photocopied bills and never heard from him again.

Anyway I know that people say don't withold the rent, and in this situation it is obviously more complicated than that with lots of other avenues to explore before going down that route. But I just wanted to let you know that if it gets to this point, in my experience, LLs running their houses this badly (and it is so true in student lettings because students generally don't expect much) are not going to go down any legal route because they know they have a lot more to lose than their tenants do.

bap98189

vic1987 wrote: »

We later found out that the name on the contract was his son who is at school in another country although our LL signed this in front of us. First problem...

Would this not be enough to invalidate the entire contract?

kathleenryd

He may have power of attorney - his son may be a minor

K