leak in ceiling

Gorgeous_George

Withholding rent is not the answer. This 'could lead to eviction and additional costs to the tenant.

What if the rent is not due for another 4 weeks? Should the tenant suffer in silence before committing contractual suicide?

GG

paintpot

I agree with the other posters, your landlord stinks. It's their responsibility to deal with this and as it involves electrics and water it is an emergency. If anything happened to you then they could and should be held accountable if they ignore the problem.

I am a landlord and when one of my tenants text me at 11pm saying water was pouring through the kitchen ceiling I rang them immediately. I talked them through the problem, the water came through the light fitting in the kitchen and then tripped the lights. I told them to leave the lights for downstairs off on the fuse box for the night, identified where the water was coming from and had an electrician/plumber with them at 8am the following morning, (with me in toe) to repair it. The problem was the bath waste had failed and when the tenant had a bath in the evening it tipped virtually the entire contents onto the kitchen ceiling. I popped out to buy a new ceiling light fitting because it was broken from the water but it was necessary to have happy and safe tenants. By mid morning they were fully functioning again but more importantly safe and I redecorated the ceiling to remove the water stains straight after.

Some landlords make me sick, they don't deserve the name "landlord".

Make sure everything is in writing between you and your landlord, I would offer them one more chance by phone because of the urgency but tell them you are backing everything up in writing and if they don't treat the matter as urgent and get someone round you will get it fixed yourself and bill them, through the courts if necessary.

3dsmills

Well, the LL managed to find a relative of the guy who lives upstairs, OH had a look in the kitchen with him and they found the pipe bringing water into the washing machine was not connected properly so they've fixed that and turned the water off up there for now.

But I reckon we're still going to have 2 days of water coming through. OH spent an hour on the phone to LL and finally managed to persuade him to get a sparky in to check the lights etc, he really wasn't happy about it but there's no way we're turning anything on without it being checked first. LL said no chance of getting anyone in before Tues, OH told him we were confident we could get someone in tomorrow. 5 mins later the LL's electrician calls, not that I have that much confidence as he 'assured' us (over the phone) that there would not be a problem. Told OH to stick a screwdriver through the damp patch 'is there water dripping through?' 'errr YES!' 'oh' :rotfl:

What wound me up was LL said 'we let our tenants to treat the property as their home, and we therefore expect them to deal with problems as if it were their home' - :mad:

Anyway, meant we got to have take away pizza tonight, will have to wait and see what the electrician says tomorrow...

nelly_2

Gorgeous_George wrote: »

Withholding rent is not the answer. This 'could lead to eviction and additional costs to the tenant.

What if the rent is not due for another 4 weeks? Should the tenant suffer in silence before committing contractual suicide?

GG

oh contractual suicide thats the crime of the century init

Still its better than being scared of touching anything electrcal though eh

People act when it becomes 'in their intrest to act'

stoping the cash flow will soon deal that on their plate

Gorgeous_George

nelly wrote: »

oh contractual suicide thats the crime of the century init

Still its better than being scared of touching anything electrcal though eh

People act when it becomes 'in their intrest to act'

stoping the cash flow will soon deal that on their plate

I know you mean well Nelly. What if rent isn't due for 3 or 4 weeks? I'm just trying to be realistic.

GG

tbs624

3dsmills wrote: »

What wound me up was LL said 'we let our tenants to treat the property as their home, and we therefore expect them to deal with problems as if it were their home' - :mad:

Your LL needs to understand that you are entitled to treat the property as your home. There is a long standing implied obligation that tenants should treat a property in a “tenant-like manner”(Lord Denning) ie doing what they’d do if it was a property they owned but that was referring to things like changing fuses and unblocking sinks:the LL has a legal obligation to (among other things) provide a safe electrical system and to maintain it that way. S/he also owes the Tenant a “duty of care”. A LL cannot and must not attempt to offload their legal obligations onto a tenant.

Clearly the source of the leak is beyond the LL's control in this case but s/he is still legally responsible for dealing with the result of it

Talk to the Tenancy Relations Officer for private tenancies (within local Council’s Housing Dept) for advice. They are there to deal with issues like these between LL and Tenant

paintpot

I agree with GG to an extent. Withholding rent would have to be a total last resort when all other methods have failed. However, I think there are some landlords that are so far removed from being a landlord and understanding the meaning of the word that the only way to wake them up is to stop paying rent. I don't condone it as such and therefore other methods should be used first as other posters have mentioned but where landlords are in serious breach then a very affective method is to have the likes of environmental health etc (depending on the type and nature of the breach) crawling all over them giving them enforcement notices which could end up costing them more than if they had fixed the main problem the tenant was complaining about in the first place. If I had failed in my obligations as a landlord and my tenant stopped paying rent for that reason alone then I, as a landlord, would only have myself to blame.

I am vocal about bad tenants but I am equally vocal about poor landlords and poor agents.